Bbc world service
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‘I like to have a martini,/ Two at the very most./ After three I’m under the table,/ After four I’m…
Crime and punishment
How do we have difficult conversations? Especially in an age of polarisation, where everything is immediately politicised? But also where…
Big hooks but no mackerel
The narrative podcast remains a form in search of a genre. The template set by the hit show Serial —…
Gnarly men and pretty boys
If you study History of Art, people generally assume you’re a nice, conscientious, plummy-voiced girl. Sometimes, people are right. It…
Oracles, perverts and the Dirtbag Left
For 500 years the State Oracle of Tibet has worked as a kind of angry immortal advisor to the Dalai…
It’s your funeral
The rise of ‘coffin clubs’
What would you do if you were a Syrian migrant?
‘Put yourself in their shoes,’ says Zahra Mackaoui, a British-Lebanese journalist who has been following the stories of refugees from…
The attempt to bring back topicality to Ambridge has been far too effective
It’s becoming clear that the travails afflicting all the major players in The Archers, Radio 4’s flagship drama, are intended…
Remembering the 1968 Apollo mission – when the world was reaching to the future rather than drawing in
Take yourself back to (or try to imagine) Christmas 1968; a year full of disturbances, dashed hopes and extreme violence…
It’s Christmas. You don’t want Götterdämmerung. You want a waltz-operetta
Grade: A– 1898: two Parisiennes and a housemaid secretly invite each other’s partners to the Paris Opera ball and… c’mon,…
Radio 3 had the most simple yet effective way of reflecting on war’s impact
Amid all the remembrance, Radio 3 came up with a simple yet effective way of reflecting on war’s impact. Threaded…
A week of extraordinarily direct and honest radio on the World Service
The most inspiring voice on radio this week belongs to Hetty Werkendam, or rather to her 15-year-old self as she…
Robert Redford turns his hand to radio
Much ado is being made of the latest listening figures, which have suggested that the percentage of those aged between…
How hospices make you think differently about life
The timing of the Today programme’s series about hospices could not have been more apt, coming as it did so…
The ties that bound us
Only Neil MacGregor could do it — take us in a single thread from a blackened copper coin, about the…
Universal appeal
Yet another sign that we are living in very strange times: a pair of celebrities, their names made by TV,…
What stopped Stoppard?
Two programmes this week presented two radically different world views, or rather ways of life. Aditya Chakrabortty’s series for Radio…
You can’t forget what Will Self says – even if you wish you could
It lasted for just a few seconds but was such a graphic illustration of the statistics behind the bombing campaign…
Words on war
It’s really hard to imagine now a world before 24-hour news, continually and constantly accessible in a never-ending stream of…
Matters of life and death
‘Bait by Cartier,’ she growls as her priceless diamond bracelet is strapped to a piece of rope and dropped overboard…
Why I still have a deep attachment to the BBC
After I failed my O-levels and decided to leave school, my father suggested I go to Israel to work on…
Recorded delivery
‘You can hear pretty clearly the sound of one of the helicopters and you can see it in the darkness,’…
Arab spring
Last weekend BBC Arabic celebrated 77 years since John Reith (as he then was) launched the first foreign-language service of…
Voices of the world
‘Don’t take it for granted,’ she warned. ‘It’s one of the few places where you can hear diverse voices, different…
