THE BOOK OF DISQUIET BBC Radio 3, 1 x 28 minutes
Saturday 25 January 2003 at 10.30 p.m.
It's sometimes said that everyone has a book in them; with Fernando Pessoa, Portugal's finest poet, it was almost the other way round. He was the book, a monster he could never finish and which came to dominate his waking life: The Book of Disquiet.
"I've made myself into the character of a book. Whatever I think is promptly put into words, mixed with images that undo it. From so much self-revising I've destroyed myself. I'm now my thoughts and not I..."
Producer: Matt Thompson
IT'S MY STORY:
ACCEPTING JACK BBC Radio 4, 1 x 28 minutes
Monday 10 February 2003 at 8 p.m.
When she was 24, Jaime Skollick gave birth to a baby boy with Downs Syndrome. Her husband was devastated. "It never entered our heads as a possibility. I just remember turning round to my Mum and Dad and saying: 'how am I going to learn to love him?'"
Three families describe the struggle they underwent in coming to terms with the birth of a child with a severe disability.
"..incredibly powerful and, ultimately, inspiring montage documentary"
- Radio Times
"..poignant and dignified radio" - Elizabeth Mahoney, Guardian
"As a parent of a 15-year-old child with special needs I felt terribly moved by the programme, which put so many things I have felt into words. It's left me here crying. Thank you." - listener
Extracts played on Radio 4's Pick of the Week
Producers: Kim Normanton & Nigel Acheson
PM POWER (series II) BBC Radio 4, 3 x 14 minutes
Sunday 13, 20 & 27 April 2003 at 10.45 p.m.
1. Sir Robert Walpole
2: William Pitt the younger
3: Benjamin Disraeli
Presenter: Professor Peter Clarke
Producer: Matt Thompson
THE SUNDAY FEATURE:
GOD'S FIRST ENGLISHMAN BBC Radio 3, 1 x 45 minutes
Sunday 20 April 2003 at 5.45 p.m.
A programme examining the importance of the Venerable Bede, "the father of English history", journeying through the remnants of Jarrow, Lindisfarne and the North East in search of a community which was once among the most enlightened in Europe.
Presenter: Professor David Wallace
Producer: Paul Quinn
SOUNDS LIKE BBC Radio 4, 1 x 28 minutes
Monday 2 June 2003 at 8.30 p.m.
What does a smell sound like? Or a taste for that matter? A fantasy on the senses in sound.
Presenter: Kirsten Beasty
Producer: Matt Thompson
THE BUNNYKINS BUSINESS BBC Radio 4, 30 minutes
Saturday 7 June 2003 at 8 p.m.
Working late into the night in a convent, unpaid and ignoring the disapproval of the Reverend Mother, Sister Barbara Vernon created rabbit designs for children's tableware in the 1930s as a favour for her father, the managing director of Royal Doulton. Still going strong, Bunnykins plates have been a lucrative and recession-proof earner for the company. Sheila Keegan tells the story, talks to the original creator in an exclusive interview and mingles with the international crowds at a convention - in an attempt to fathom the appeal.
Presenter: Sheila Keegan
Producer: Nigel Acheson
GETTING SHIRTY BBC Radio 4, 1 x 28 minutes
Wednesday 11 June 2003 at 11. a.m.
Shirts these days can have value: Pele's recently sold for a small fortune. But in the past folk have paid with their lives for wearing the wrong coloured shirt. We know about the black and brown ones but what about the green and blue? The shirt as political movement.
Presenter: Julian Putkowski
Producer: Matt Thompson
BYE BYE LULLABY BBC Radio 4, 1 x 28 minutes
Monday 16 June 2003 at 8 p.m.
Is the lullaby a dying art? Mothers, grandmothers and daughters from several different cultures sing their children to sleep, and lament a disappearing tradition.
'Immensely calming ... it isn't usually complimentary to suggest that a programme might make the listener nod off' - Steve Morrissey, Evening Standard
'A poignant documentary' - Stephanie Billen, Observer
'This fascinating programme hears some mesmeric and quite beautiful lullabies from around the world' - The Times
Extracts played on Radio 4's Pick of the Week
Producers: Kim Normanton & Nigel Acheson
NOCTURNE BBC Radio 4, 1 x 28 minutes
Monday 23 June 2003 at 8.30pm.
Chris Yates, fisherman, writer and broadcaster, has been an observer of the night from an early age. In this programme he sets out on foot, at nightfall and without a torch, into the Wiltshire countryside at a time of year when the night is at its loudest - midsummer.
There is a universal fear of the night. But once that fear can be overcome, the night offers something that most of us lose to some degree at the end of childhood: a sense of wonder.
Presenter: Chris Yates
Producer: Dan Shepherd
'A delightful and compelling piece of sound-collage' - The Independent
'It's not just the pictures that are better on radio - the darkness is too.' - Lucy Mangan, The Guardian
'A lovely audio documentary that catches the mysteries and beauties of a night in the English countryside.' - Susan Jeffreys, Daily Mail
SHANGHAI JAZZ BBC Radio 4, 1 x 28 minutes
Monday 7 July 2003 at 8.30 p.m.
Shanghai's turbulent last half-century as reflected in the story of THE OLD JAZZ BAND, the resident band of a the city's legendary Peace Hotel. In the days of the Cultural Revolution, saxophones and clarinets had to be hidden away. But now the band plays on through the economic boom, belting out western standards with an oriental twist.
'Such a perfect radio story' - Susan Jeffreys, Daily Mail
Presenter: Kathy Flower
Producer: Nigel Acheson
BOOK OF THE WEEK:
THE MIRACULOUS FEVER TREE by Fiammetta Rocco BBC Radio 4, 5 x 14 minutes
Monday to Friday 7th - 11th July at 9.45 a.m.
REPEATED at 12.30am
Malaria is one of the world's most deadly diseases. There was no cure until the discovery in Peru of a remarkable tree and its bitter tasting bark. How quinine transformed medicine and the history of empire.
Reader: Hilary Neville
Abridged by Libby Spurrier
Producer: Matt Thompson
LANCE CORPORAL BARONOWSKI'S VIETNAM BBC Radio 4, 1 x 57 minutes
Saturday 2 August 2003 at 8 p.m.
SONY GOLD AWARD WINNER 2004 - FEATURE AWARD
BBC NOMINATION FOR THE PRIX ITALIA 2004
During 1965 and 1966, a young US Marine in Vietnam made an extraordinary collection of tape recordings as he fought in front line fox holes, during 'probes' and in more relaxed conditions back at camp. The tapes reveal the intensity and absurdity of the experience of young American soldiers in Vietnam.
These recordings were his rehearsal for a life in radio, except that LCpl Mike Baronowski was killed in an unremarkable incident while on patrol on 19th November 1966. Exchanged with cassettes from his family back home, Lance Corporal Baronowski's tapes bring newly to life a time and event with which America has still not come to terms - and which resonates alarmingly with events now.
'A compelling portrait of the Vietnam War'
- Terry Ramsey, Evening Standard
'A gripping image of the Vietnam war and of the remarkable man who recorded them...chilling.'
- Radio Times
Producer: Alan Hall
BOOK OF THE WEEK:
THE COURTESAN'S REVENGE by Frances Wilson BBC Radio 4, 5 x 14 minutes
Monday 18 August - Friday 22 August at 9.45am
REPEATED at 12.30am
Alice Arnold reads from a new biography of Harriette Wilson, Courtesan Extrordinaire, who slept her way through fashionable London Society in the early 1800s and then wrote a book a about it, prompting the Duke of Wellington to coin the phrase: 'Publish - and be damned.'
With Suzanne Heathcote as Harriette Wilson
Abridged by Libby Spurrier
Producer: Nigel Acheson
DIVING INTO HISTORY (Series II) BBC Radio 4, 3 x 28 minutes
Saturdays from 20 September to 4 October 2003 at 3.30 p.m.
Wired for sound, John Nightingale dons his diving gear and explores three more shipwrecks from different periods of history.
1. The Wreck of the Thistlegorm
2. Trainers Galore!
3. The Death of the Duchess
Presenter: John Nightingale
Producer: Tim Malyon
BOOK OF THE WEEK:
THE CURIOUS LIFE OF ROBERT HOOKE by Lisa Jardine BBC Radio 4, 5 x 14 minutes
Monday 29 September - Friday 3 October at 9.45am
REPEATED at 12.30am
Robert Hooke - inventor, engineer, architect and maverick scientist - collaborated with Christopher Wren on the rebuilding of London after the great fire. Hooke was a major figure in the seventeeth century intellectual and scientific revolution, so why is his name so little known?
Read by Richard Mitchley
Adapted and Abridged by by Libby Spurrier
Producer: Nigel Acheson
NOTHING'S GONNA CHANGE MY WORLD BBC Radio 4, 3 x 28 minutes
Saturdays from 11 to 25 October 2003 at 10.30 a.m.
40 years since their first no.1, do the Beatles today have any real relevance beyond the repackaged box sets and the thinly-veiled Oasis tributes? Virtually every citizen of the earth has grown old with the Beatles - or grown up in the long shadow cast by the band. A few writers have questioned how much impact the group had on social and musical landscapes, though the general silence of critical voices is deafening. So are the Fab Four as fabulous as we're led to believe and, if not, why does no one say so?
'One trenchant Mersey voice condemned "shoddy work, cobbled together", unfavourably comparing listening to the lads' oeuvre with "drinking alligator piss at source."
- Martin Hoyle, Financial Times
Presenter: Phill Jupitus
Producers: Alan Hall and Dan Shepherd
CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER BBC Radio 3, 1 x 90 minutes
Sunday 16 November at 8.00 p.m.
A radio interpretation of a classic of doppelganger fiction, told with real interviews, documentary-style improvisation, first-person confession and acted dialogue.
Long before Stevenson's Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde came the intensely psychotic Confessions of a Justified Sinner, written by the shepherd-savant James Hogg. It chronicles a series of apparently unrelated and savage murders in Edinburgh.
The book is told from different points of view. It begins with the 'editor's account', written in a mandarin-legalistic matter-of-fact tone, not without a Scottish wry humour. Then the tale is told in the first person by a certain Robert Wringhim, the second son of a laird but brought up by his mother's favourite Minister, a strict religious creep. Robert's confession charts his descent into the deluded justifications of an out-and-out religious fanatic.
Adapted for radio by Matt Thompson
Cast:
Robert Wringhim - Sandy Grierson
Gil Martin - Alan Steele
Detective Inspector Hogg - James Bryce
The witness - Fiona Henderson
The Reverends Wringhim and Blanchard - Michael Elder
Miss Gillies and the 'vision' - Estrid Barton
The solicitor - Alexander McCall Smith
Robert Holloway - Robert Holloway
Drums - Alasdair Brown
Music: Joe Acheson
Producer: Matt Thompson
HOW TO BE A BRIT BBC Radio 4, 1 x 28 minutes
Monday 17 November at 8 p.m.
There is much discussion now about what it is to be a Brit. Should there be citizenship classes? In the past, guides have been written to show people how to be a Brit - both here and when abroad. How do they stand up to the test of time? An insight into what it means to be British, with a light touch.
Producer: Matt Thompson
STEEL PAN ALLEY BBC Radio 4, 1 x 28 minutes
Saturday 6th December 2003 at 3.30 p.m.
Steel Drums were first brought to Britain from Trinidad 52 years ago by the 'Trinidadian All-Steel Percussion Orchestra.' Sterling Betancourt was a member of that band and the only one who settled here. He went on to introduce the instrument not only to Britain, but also to Switzerland, where there are now over two hundred steel bands. In this programme Sterling hammers out the steel drum story, how it brought him to live in Britain, and how it got him an MBE.
Extracts played on Radio 4's Pick of the Week
Recordings collected by Kim Normanton
Producer: Dan Shepherd
ACTING ON INSTINCT BBC Radio 4, 28 minutes
Wednesday 10 December 2003 at 9.00 p.m.
Can human intuition be measured? Chris Yates explores the if, how and why of the sixth sense, with contributions from neuro-scientists Susan Greenfield and Steven Rose.
Presenter: Chris Yates
Producer: Dan Shepherd
2003 radio programmes
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