Blog posts by year and monthApril 2011
Posts (21)
The Silver Sword comes to Radio 4 Extra
[L to R] Barry Letts as Joseph and Frazer Hines as Jan in the 1957 BBC serialisation of The Silver Sword The first time I saw my father's book The Silver Sword being transferred to another medium was in 1957. I was 7, and Dad took me and my older sister Helen up to Shepherd's Bush, where a b...
The Royal Wedding, 1947
The wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten was broadcast live on BBC Radio and highlights were also screened on television later that day. A mute film showing the royal couple leaving Westminster Abbey and their appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, was origina...
Celebrating the lives of great entertainers: Radio 4 Extra's May anniversaries
With Union Jack flags fluttering the length of Regent Street, London, you can certainly tell that there's some sort of celebration in the air. At Radio 4 Extra, we aren't planning to broadcast any weddings, royal or otherwise, but as an archive network on which comedy is a high proportion of ...
Desert Island Discs on mobile: A 70 year radio archive in your pocket
At Radio 4, we've been trying to make the experience of listening to programmes on the internet as comfortable as listening live on a radio set. For far too long, listening online has meant things like retreating to a dark home office where your computer lives, or precariously balancing your lap...
Radio 4 Extra: Responding to your feedback
Hello again, I've been reading your comments and feedback on the blog and elsewhere and wanted to respond to some of the points that people have made. I commented last week on the blog and Streetlight2 has identified some of the other things many of you are asking about so I've based my answe...
Comedy podcasts: BBC Radio 4 comedy in your pocket
Building on the runaway success of the Friday Night Comedy podcast (featuring The Now Show and The News Quiz), there are now three comedy podcasts on offer from Radio 4. Yes, the Friday Night Comedy podcast is now being downloaded over a million times each month, putting it at the top of the i...
Morrissey is in the building
Awkward legend, vegetarian curmudgeon, my generation's Proust: Morrissey is on Front Row tonight at 1915. It's not his first time on the programme (listen to his previous appearance from February 2009) but it's no less dramatic for that. Broadcasting House was all aquiver this afternoon and pres...
What do you do when a programme is cancelled?
We reported briefly at the weekend about the cancellation of Any Questions (and, as a consequence, of Any Answers). Just as the blog was wondering what happens in these situations (is there, for example, a whole alternative universe of programmes in reserve for every eventuality?) Katy Hubbard, ...
Woman's Hour: Cook the perfect brownies
The Radio 4 blog popped over to the Woman's Hour studio to grab a few pictures of the chocolate brownies that Claire Burnet made on the programme this morning. The blog is pleased to be able to report that the brownies were truly delicious. Paul Murphy is the acting editor of the Radi...
From the Any Questions archive
'Any Question' from Taunton. Major Lewis Hastings, Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, Ralph Wightman and St. John Ervine, the team of experts answering questions put to them by members of the audience during the broadcast from the Corfield Hall, Taunton. 1 October 1948. You'll have noticed that this...