Blog posts by year and monthJuly 2011
Posts (27)
Moving the furniture at Radio 4
You change Radio 4 at your peril, for the slightest alteration to the schedule is likely to produce a rebellion, and not just in the Home Counties. David Hatch, Controller from 1983 to 1986, learned that the hard way when he introduced Rollercoaster, which almost ran him over. His successor Mic...
Questions Questions: What are the origins of hair jewellery?
The mid point of the series is fast approaching and we've already been inundated with fabulous questions from you. This week a question from listener Barry Greenwood prompted Stewart to ponder, excuse the pun, the spawning rituals of frogs. Stewart was marching to the beat o...
More on the Radio 4 schedule changes: Short stories: Update
From 1949, archive caption reads: "Miss Stevie Smith, poet, one of the finalists in the BBC Third Programme Short Story Competition, reading her story Sunday at Home" Short stories and contributions from writers are an integral part of Radio 4's programming. This week Michael Morpurgo g...
The Return of The Pickerskill Reports: Series 2
Behind the scenes during the recording of the second series of The Pickerskill Reports. Series 2 starts on Wednesday 27th July at 11:30am For four days in April an ordinary house in London became Haunchurst College for Boys, the setting for The Pickerskill Reports. The kitchen became the dini...
The House I Grew Up In: New series and podcast
If you're not familiar with The House I Grew Up In, it's a series in which I get to visit the childhood homes and neighbourhoods of influential Britons, uncovering the experiences which shaped their lives. This year, for example, in the first programme of the new series, Baroness Shirley Will...
Voices from the Old Bailey: Exploring the Old Bailey's online archive
Most people, when they go to the Old Bailey Online look for a name, a place, or perhaps a crime. As the largest collection of transcribed trial accounts on the web, the site is used by thousands of family and local historians searching for lost black sheep, and local villains. It has als...
Questions Questions: Can the church bells of drowned villages be heard ringing from the depths? Is it possible to drown nits? Is the earth getting fatter?
From the BBC picture archive, 1959: "The Archers: Bob Arnold as Tom Forrest, Chris Gittins as Walter Gabriel and Harry Oakes as Dan Archer. Bell ringing is the favourite pastime of many Ambridge characters. " It was wonderful to be back on the air on Thursday. We featured Mrs Heilwen Goo...
The Slanket of Con: Origins
Martha Kearney in the Slanket of Con. Martha subsequently tweeted: "I have reached the pinnacle of my career thanks to Corrie Corfield..." Editor's note: Some of you will be familiar with the Slanket of Con, some of you will have no idea what's going on. I first saw it being discussed onli...
Today on Feedback; Your questions for the R4 Controller
Editor's note: You can leave your questions for Roger to put to the Radio 4 Controller on next week's Feedback in the comments on this blog post - PM. Just after 4am in the Today office at BBC Television Centre in west London. The programme team has been working since eight the previous e...
Thinking Allowed Newsletter: 'Do you promise not to tell?'
It's a perfectly ordinary looking box file, with the perfectly innocuous title 'Letters'. But it's not stacked alongside the other box files in my study - the ones labelled 'Tax' and 'VAT', 'Personal Documents', and 'Miscellaneous'. Instead, it has been neatly fitted into the space between the t...