Blog posts by year and monthJune 2011
Posts (31)
Radio 4 presents... Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
Last month we announced that Radio 4 will be dramatising Vasily Grossman's epic novel Life and Fate starring Kenneth Branagh. During a week in September, it will take over every drama slot on Radio 4 - apart from The Archers - to tell the novel's interconnected stories about members of a Russian...
Radio 4 Extra's Book at Beachtime: Before I Go to Sleep
Editor's note: Radio 4 Extra have been running a season of readings for the summer, Book at Beachtime. Each of the books in the series has been adapted in five parts and is broadcast on 4 Extra Monday to Friday at 2.30pm and is then available to listen online for seven days afterwards. This week...
Trevor Eve on Front Row
Actor Trevor Eve came into Broadcasting House yesterday to chat to Mark Lawson about his life and career and how age (Eve's 60 later this week) changes the roles you can plausibly play: Eve: "How old is Clint Eastwood?" Lawson: "Oh, he's far older than you! He's 82." Eve: "I'm still 59 unt...
Afternoon Play: the sign version of 'Shall I Say a Kiss?'
I'm in the radio drama studio in Cardiff and there are four people falling about laughing about a joke they've just shared - and I've not got a clue what was so funny. They are signing, and I don't, to my great chagrin. It's one of the many highlights of Shall I say a Kiss?, a project that ...
Reith lectures 2011, lecture one - Aung San Suu Kyi: Liberty
This morning, during the broadcast of Aung San Suu Kyi's first Reith Lecture, Liberty, we hosted a live chat about the lecture and the topics discussed here on the blog. Lots of you joined in, by typing comments directly into the live chat, by emailing the programme via the Reith pages on the Ra...
The great thinkers of the last 63 years - all in one place
Rarely if ever can BBC Radio 4's Reith Lectures have caused such a stir as they have this year. What is more, this year the conversation has started before a word of Aung San Suu Kyi's lectures has been broadcast. (On Radio 4 at 9.00am on Tuesday 28 June.) On the Radio 4 website there will be fu...
The fate of children's radio
I was drifting in and out of sleep the other day when I thought I heard the sound of Tubby the Tuba, shortly to be followed by Nelly the Elephant, and Burl Ives swallowing a fly. I waited with keen anticipation for Danny Kaye to sing 'Inchworm' or perhaps 'The Ugly Duckling'. Well we do regress...
Interrail Tales
'It had seemed a good idea at the time to go interrailing,' I thought, as the heavily armed Italian soldiers ordered us to put our hands up and lie on the ground. Lesley McAlpine and friend Mandy on their interrailing trip It was July 1982 and I was on my first trip backpacking aro...
Book at Beachtime: Daughters-in-Law by Joanna Trollope
Editor's note: You can catch up with each episode of the Radio 4 Extra adaptation of Daughters-in-Law on the website for seven days after it's first broadcast. I am always thrilled to bits to have a novel of mine serialised on the radio. I don't know if it's generational, but there'...
Book at Beachtime
Editor's introduction: For the next four weeks Radio 4 Extra's running a season of "gripping, escapist summer reading... twisted family drama, sweeping romance and, above all, great story-telling by best-selling authors old, new and to come..." I asked the producers, Lucy Collingwood (LC) and Ge...