With the summer holidays drawing to a close, 4 Extra marks the putting away of bucket and spades and the re-emergence of pencil cases, sharpeners and the sound of the school bell – with a two week season of programmes that explore that near universal of experiences: school days.

Rooting around in the BBC’s basement you find that school life has been a constant source of inspiration in the history of BBC Radio. Back to School with 4 Extra features classic comedies like a 1955 episode of Hancock’s Half Hour – in which the ‘the lad himself’ - Tony Hancock – takes a turn as teacher in a school full of ‘juvenile delinquents’. The episode - The Blackboard Jungle (starring Hancock, Kenneth Williams and Sid James) - was writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson’s take on the controversial American movie of the same name that year. It was a pressure cooker story of inter-racial school life that featured the then incendiary song ‘Rock around the Clock’, and a breakout performance by the young Sidney Poitier. Nearly 30 years later, in 1984, award winning Caribbean-British writer Caryl Phillips penned his first radio play, The Wasted Years, exploring the pressures of identity faced by Solly, the 16 year old son of Caribbean immigrants, as he prepares to leave school for an uncertain future. Tony Armatrading stars as Solly, alongside Carmen Monroe and Rudolph Walker (EastEnders).

Alongside a five part adaption of RF Delderfield's classic school drama set between the two world wars, To Serve Them All My Days, we have BAFTA winning Sarah Lancashire returning to 1930s Yorkshire as headmistress Sarah Burton, in a radio version of Winifred Holtby’s (1898-1935) most famous novel South Riding. Published posthumously in 1936, it's a rich and memorable evocation of the characters of Yorkshire's South Riding, their lives, loves and sorrow and a fitting summation of Holtby’s life as noted feminist, pacifist, journalist and writer.

In much more boisterous mood, Helen Mirren, Joanna Lumley and Lisa Dillon star in three classic ‘jolly hockey-sticks’ tales, from writers Angela Brazil and Enid Blyton, Good Show Clarissa. While from 1957, John Gielgud stars in The Browning Version, striking a reflective mood in his first performance in a play by Terrence Rattigan. Playing a schoolmaster, it’s a story of personal betrayal, education and regret.

Beyond fictional school walls we get to explore the real school reports of Dame Edna Everage, Wendy Cope, Alan Coren, Terence Stamp, Stephen Fry and Kenneth Williams, as Robert Booth asks what they would have done differently in school in the series Could Do Better. Celebrated Crime writer Val McDermid reveals her passion for South Shields novelist, Elinor Brent-Dye’s boarding school novels in The Chalet School. Though often overlooked today, these novels inspired her to go to university and eventually to become a writer herself.

Always with the ability to surprise, the BBC radio archive often gives us the chance to open up an audio time capsule….in this case from a bygone age of education: “One day last autumn [1947] a BBC van arrived at the tiny village school of Bolventor, in the middle of Bodmin Moor….engineers proceeded to hang up microphones in front of the various desks and out in the porch….the microphones and cables were left until the children had become accustomed to their presence and took no notice of them….” So explained the Radio Times in 1948, introducing an experimental programme decades before the vagaries of ‘reality TV’. The School on the Moor is a remarkable audio document: presented by the headmaster himself, this small school and former pupils magically tell their own story in 1947.

And, not heard since 1962, a truly disturbing school drama - from a BBC master of radio drama writing and production, Giles Cooper – admits us to a classroom where a new teacher has the distinct impression that his class has had something to do with the unfortunate demise of his predecessor in: Unman, Wittering and Zigo.

As we all know, school holidays are but a short lived dream….unlike the famous rock song….schools are never out forever…..

Programmes featured include
Unman, Wittering and Zigo  (Sat 26 Aug, 4.00pm–5.20pm) 

Desert Island Discs Revisited: Sir Ken Robinson  (Sun 27 Aug, 10.15 – 11.00am)
Conversation From the Engine Room (Sun 27 Aug, 4.00pm–5.00pm)
The Clitheroe Kid – One Hundred Not Out (Sun 27 Aug, 8.00pm – 8.30pm)
The Wasted Years  (Sun 27 Aug, 8.30pm – 10.00pm)

Good Show Clarissa  (Mon 28 Aug – Wed 30 Aug, 2.45pm -3.00pm)
To Serve Them All My Days  (Mon 28 Aug – Fri 1 Sep, 11.15am–12.00pm)

Could Do Better  (Mon 28 Aug – Fri 1 Sep, 2.15pm -2.30pm)
South Riding  (Mon 28 Aug – Fri 1 Sep, 2.30pm -2.45pm)

Double Science 1/6  (Tue 29 Aug, 7.00am -7.30am) 
Off the Page: The Making of You  (Wed 30 Aug, 6.30pm – 7.00pm)
Comedy Club: The Museum of Everything  (Thu 31 Aug, 10.30pm– 11.00pm)

The Chalet School  (Fri 1 Sep, 13.30am – 2.00pm)

Hancock’s Half Hour – The Blackboard Jungle - (Sat 2 Sep, 12.00am-12.30am)

The Burkiss Way (Sat 2 Sep, 12.30am-1.00pm)

Could Do Better  (Mon 4 Sep, 2.15pm – 2.30pm)

South Riding 6-10/15 (Mon 4 Sep – Fri 8 Sep, 2.30am – 2.45am)

Radio 4 Extra joins in the BBC’s Gay Britannia season marking the 50th anniversary of The Sexual Offences Act 1967 – which partially decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men over 21 in England and Wales. Join BBC journalist Ben Hunte as he curates our season and interviews some of his LGBT heroes... 

BBC Radio 2’s Paul O’Grady talks the secret gay slang of Polari ahead of The Bona History of Julian and Sandy (29 July) plus that bold edition of Round The Horne featuring Bona Law (30 July).

Ben Hunte meets Stephanie Hirst (29 July) discussing the BBC broadcaster’s gender reassignment – and talks to lesbian publisher, Linda Riley – ahead of the first of two episodes of EM Forster’s tale of early 20th-century gay love, Maurice (30 July).

HIV activist Greg Owen chats to Ben – ahead of Andy Kirby’s two-part 1980s drama about a hospital’s first ever AIDS patient, starring Michael Cashman: Compromised Immunity (31 July).

Inspirational gay journalist Dean Eastmond tells Ben about his brave battle with cancer – ahead of Armistead Maupin’s acclaimed tale of the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, San Francisco – set in the free and easy era of 1976: Tales of the City (31 July).

The Comedy Club welcomes Stephen K Amos telling Ben about the perils of coming out – ahead of the edition of What Does the K Stand For?  where he tries to tell his family... (2 Aug) plus more chat with Paul O’Grady (3 Aug).

Get the confetti ready – as Ben meets BBC Three’s “Queer Britain” host Riyadh Khalaf – ahead of Ian and Adam’s 2006 Ambridge civil partnership in The Archers' Gay Wedding (4 Aug).

Week 2 of Gay Britannia kicks off with Ben’s chat with Stonewall’s CEO, Ruth Hunt – ahead of Patrice Chaplin’s Edwardian drama charting Meriel’s growing obsession with a local girl – chosen by a 4 Extra listener and starring Deborah Makepeace: The Tinker's Daughter (5 Aug).

Ben talks to Paul O’Grady about the impact of his alter ego Lily Savage (5 Aug) – and later PinkNews chief, Benjamin Cohen – ahead of the comedy featuring the only gay in the village: Little Britain (5 Aug) starring Matt Lucas and David Walliams.

Ben meets LGBT YouTuber, Calum McSwiggan – ahead of Nicholas McInerny's autobiographical tale of a husband coming out as gay after 19 years. Julia Ford and Greg Wise star in How To Have A Perfect Marriage (7 Aug).

Peter Tatchell chats to Ben about his role in gay activism – ahead of Phil Willmot’s drama about a 17-year-old and the lead-up to the 1994 age of consent protest by gay action group, Outrage, starring David Curtiz, Stealing the Scene (9 Aug).

And don’t miss the Comedy Club when Gina Yashere tells Ben about life as a lesbian comic – ahead of our special compilation of the best out and proud BBC Radio comedy from the past five years, Happy That Way (10 Aug).

You can find features and details of all the Gay Britannia programmes across BBC Radio networks, with links to TV programmes, here.  

Editor's note:  Much-loved actress Miriam Margolyes looks back over her radio lives, choosing some of her favourite performances from the BBC Radio Archive in Miriam Margolyes’ Adventures in Radio.

 

On a sunny Friday morning, Miriam Margolyes was waiting patiently for me in BBC Broadcasting House Reception. Smiling broadly she mentions briefly that she's just been having a natter with the film director, Ken Loach. Now this might seem a classic celebrity name dropping situation. But as I found with Miriam, quite wonderfully, what you see and hear is what you get. You see, Miriam had known Ken Loach for years, because he had lodged in her parents’ house when they were young. And surprisingly that is now quite a long time ago. Miriam turned 75 in May this year.

I’ve always thought of Miriam Margolyes as an irresistible force of nature – scaring her nephew Edmund Blackadder as the puritanical Lady Whiteadder. Her recent sofa surfing riot of an appearance on BBC TV’s Graham Norton Show indicates she has no sign of stopping. She seems forever just to be ‘Miriam’, forever young, or as she rather self-deprecatingly tells Arthur Smith in Sentimental Journey, on Radio 4 in 1999, she's always been the same, she hasn’t changed, she’s always been able to play 'an old bag'. Her journey to discover her family’s roots in Belarus in Sentimental Journey, is her first programme choice in her Adventures in Radio.

It never occurred to me to ask someone else to interview Miriam, it felt right to let Miriam run the whole show. There’s a risk of hubris in inviting a performer to talk about themselves – with legendary tales of artists that selected all their own songs on Desert Island Discs - but even though she’s won a BAFTA, Miriam’s on record as ranking her own stage acting career to be a disaster (Front Row, Radio 4, 2011), with many regrets. But when it comes to radio, as she tells us on Radio 4 Extra, it’s the place she 'loves', where she’s been 'the bravest' in her career choices, the place she 'feels most at home'.

Miriam feels being asked to revisit her radio career is a 'wicked indulgence', but she’s always been quite partial to a little of that... For my part, I wanted to invite her to cast her sharp intelligence over her own performances, and examine what makes radio magical.  For Miriam, on radio, “you can be anyone, age or size is no barrier”.   And lo and behold in the BBC archive we found Miriam performing back in 1964, then only 23 (a struggling actress, selling encyclopaedias door to door after graduating from Cambridge University), playing an elderly women. She plays the ‘Old Gal’, in one of her very first BBC radio appearances in BBC Third Programme adaptation of FC Ball’s A Breath of Fresh Air.

Looking over her 50 years on BBC radio and counting, Miriam recalls meeting and working with some of the 'great ladies of radio', including Marjorie Westbury, who played Steve, the effortlessly elegant partner to amateur detective Paul Temple on BBC Radio in the 50s and 60s.  She remembers working with a host of comedy greats, from Ted Ray to Ken Dodd and Kenneth Williams. We get to hear her risk taking as she stars in Olwen Wymark’s The Child (Radio 4, 1979) which explores mental health issues. We also get to hear, for the first time since 1993, Miriam’s award winning reading of Sue Townsend’s sparkling satire about the House of Windsor finding itself rather down on its luck, in The Queen and I (BBC Radio 4, 1992). And her memorable battle of wits with Timothy West, in Anthony Horowtiz’s [Foyle’s War] tense two-hander, The Picnic, set in Soviet Russia in 1981.

Before she came into Broadcasting House, I visited Miriam during her post-operative rehabilitation at her south London home, to talk about what she would like to feature. She was a delightful host. She asked me whilst I was there, out of the blue, even a little defensively, ‘Am I how you expected?’

“No” I said, happily, “you are far more interesting than even you let on, Miriam”.

 

Peter McHugh is the producer of Miriam Margolyes’ Adventures in Radio.

Miriam Margolyes’ Adventures in Radio on this Saturday at 0900 & 1900 on Radio 4 Extra and on BBC iPlayer for 30 days

 

If you love musical theatre you'll be delighted to know that Radio 4 Extra is set to start a five-week Summer run of classic musicals. We've been given access to Radio 2’s extensive – and impressive – back-catalogue of exclusively-recorded works from the mid-'90s including Sweeney Todd, Guys and Dolls, Carousel, Jesus Christ Superstar and Kismet. 

Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Saturday 16 July 2016 at 09.00am

The season starts with Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Starring Denis Quilley and Julia McKenzie, this is an exclusive recording of the Royal National Theatre's hit production of Stephen Sondheim's musical thriller.

It's the tale of a half-mad barber who returns home after escaping from an unjust imprisonment, to take vengeance on the corrupt judge who sentenced him, ravished his wife and now plans to marry his daughter. However, Sweeney doesn't limit himself to one victim: he takes revenge against the whole world for his family's suffering by slitting the throats of his customers, and dispatching them from the barber's chair down a chute to the cellar, where the corpses are made into delicious meat pies by his enterprising accomplice, Mrs Lovett. Sondheim’s 1979 thrilling musical was based on an original book by Hugh Wheeler and subsequent play by Christopher Bond; it's one of Sondheim's most complex scores, with over 40 numbers including A Little Priest, My Friends, Epiphany, Worst Pies in London and Pretty Women. 

In London, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" received Olivier Awards for Best Musical Revival, Best Actress in a Musical [Julia McKenzie], as well as nominations for Best Director and two for Best Supporting Performance in a Musical.  

Front Row: Stephen Sondheim in Conversation

Saturday 16 July, 11.35am

To accompany Sweeney Todd, you can listen to a Front Row interview with Stephen Sondheim and Mark Lawson recorded at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in October 2010, when the composer was celebrating his 80th birthday. First broadcast on Radio 4 in 2010.

 

Don't miss these programmes on following Saturdays on Radio 4 Extra:

Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls [Sat 23rd July 9.00 – 11.30]

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel [Sat 30th July 9.00 – 11.50]

Rice and Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar [Sat 6th August 9.00 – 10.40am]

Wright and Forrest’s Kismet [ Sat 13th August 9.00 – 11.30am]

It’s such a strange feeling walking down a street that you have known in your imagination all of your life. Fleet Street in London is like that. Somewhere that instantly conjures images of newspaper inked pages, and the sounds of printing presses and typewriters in smoky rooms.

As I walked along with crime writer Mark Billingham, even with all the newspapers now gone, the street’s architecture is still quite magical. Along one side there are cobbled alleyways threading down to the ancient Inns of Courts. In other places the buildings loom over you as you approach the Royal Courts of Justice. Mark says that in the 1920s the street was a crime nexus. It was the British Empire’s beating heart of criminal gossip that fed the journalism, and bestselling thriller writing career, of the star of this Saturday’s 4 Extra archive showcase: Edgar Wallace: The Man Who Wrote Too Much?

Edgar Wallace's (1875-1932) life seems the stuff of fiction. Adopted by a Billingsgate fish porter in London, and largely self-educated, he was the newspaper boy who became one of the most famous writers in the world. He sold millions of books, but he was plagued by debts. He left Britain for the United States in 1931, only to die in Hollywood in 1932, aged 56, after writing the original story for King Kong. His body was returned by ocean liner in honour, only to be reunited with an ocean of outstanding bills.

Mark wanted to investigate why a crime writer, whose publisher declared him the 'King of Thrillers', a celebrity superstar whose books sold in their millions, seems to be fading from memory today. Even during his own prolific lifetime Wallace experienced literary snobbery, despite his incredible success. Mark’s search was a London journey. The city was Wallace’s criminal muse. On its streets Mark tracked down some experts that could help with the Wallace mystery, like biographer Neil Clark (Stranger Than Fiction: The Life of Edgar Wallace, The History Press).  There’s no Edgar Wallace museum, so Mark and Neil met at the next best thing, the Edgar Wallace pub, just of Fleet Street.

From the BBC archive we hear some of Wallace best creations, including sleuthing in The Mind of Mr JG Reeder (Radio 7 2007), and comedy in the racing tips of Educated Evans (Radio 4 1996) starring Roy Hudd. We also hear from Edgar’s daughter Penelope Wallace (who sadly died in 1997), talking about her father’s storytelling abilities. And at the British Library’s Sound Archive Mark meets Dr Stacy Gillis, teacher of detective fiction at Newcastle University, who is fascinated by Wallace’s ability to promote himself. Remarkably we can hear Wallace doing just that, in 1928 recording, reading his story The Man in the Ditch.

The final part of Mark’s odyssey sees him arrive at Portland Place, very close to BBC Broadcasting House, where Wallace brought his family, and servants, to live for a time. The house is now part of the Chinese Embassy. On the pavement outside is where Mark met Professor David Glover, from Southampton University author of Wallace’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. When we arrived David was clutching something precious too him, a still brilliantly yellow 1927 edition of an Edgar Wallace classic novel. David Glover’s thoughts on Wallace’s career, and the fate of most popular fiction writers, serve as prelude to the final archive treat: a 1951 BBC radio version of one of Wallace’s biggest successes, a tale of murder and vigilante revenge, The Ringer (1926).

At one point Mark Billingham asks one of our Wallace experts: “with my heart thumping, is this the fate of the popular thriller author, to largely fade from view and memory?” For a moment I thought Edgar Wallace was in the room with us.

Peter McHugh is the producer of Radio 4 Extra’s Edgar Wallace: The Man Who Wrote Too Much?

• Listen to Edgar Wallace: The Man Who Wrote Too Much? at 0900 and 1900 Saturday 14th March 2015 and BBC iPlayer Radio and on the Radio 4 extra web site.

• Archive Featured: Sweet Tea and Cigarettes (Sweet Talk Production for BBC Radio 4, 2004), The Mind of Mr JG Reeder (Radio 7, 2007), To Keep the Memory Green (Radio 4, 1989), Educated Evans (Radio 4, 1996) and The Ringer (BBC Radio Light Programme, 1951).

The final episode of global hit show Serial is imminent and I’m excited to confirm that we will be bringing the final episode to Radio 4 Extra on the same day it is published worldwide on Thursday 18 December at 9pm.

There is still time for those of you who have not heard the global phenomena that Serial has become, to catch up with the story. This US podcast series has showcased the power of spoken word and great storytelling, and if you love speech radio and have not heard it, these are some of the reasons why you should.

Think TV box set season length ‘who-done-it’ - but for radio. Except it is not ‘who-done-it?’ but an ‘are-we-sure-he–did-it’? And if not him, whom?

You hear recorded police interviews, cross examination from the court house, witnesses and bystanders to the story trying to remember something that happened fifteen years ago.

The storyteller is not a jaded misunderstood detective or young policeman keen to prove themselves. It is a journalist who shares her research, her notes, her faltering doubts, her bewilderment and her exasperation with us. We hear her workings, her thinking aloud - this becomes part of the narrative too.

And then consider that everything you are going to hear is real.

Then try and resist getting hooked.

We know Radio 4 Extra listeners love detective stories. They know exceptional speech radio and storytelling when they hear it. So what a splendid combination to bring to the network. Our station celebrates the best of speech radio and has been broadcasting Serial’s only radio transmission.

Tipped off by Twitter in the early autumn I was not sure I wanted to listen to Serial. Having just done jury service, I had been immersed in the small details of legal cases and other people’s broken lives, defendants and victim. As jurors, we were rightly advised not to play detective, not to try to be a Sherlock Holmes. But in Serial we are given full permission to do just that. Discuss the case. Speculate. There are over-excited internet forums. Podcasts about the podcast.

This is also more than just a podcast. The series has provoked fascinating debate about the nature of journalism, new forms of storytelling and issues of privacy, all of which are topics that interest many of our discerning Radio 4 Extra listeners.

 

Caroline Raphael is commissioner for BBC Radio 4 Extra

 

Listen to Serial on Radio 4 Extra

Go to the Serial download

When you make a programme it’s always good to get as much publicity as possible. To get the message out to as many listeners as you can, that something good is going to happen. It can be tricky, in big media organisations, to negotiate the ever choppy waters of ‘publicity priorities ’. So when I arrived at 4 Extra one morning I was surprised when a colleague asked me if I’d seen BBC Breakfast? Just what have you been up to? they wondered. I was suddenly drawn with the same fascination some people describe when they look over a cliff edge…

It turned out that Stephen Fry been on the famous red sofa that morning. That the interview had become a bit of a news story, creating its own social media tide. And that I was somehow - however unwittingly - involved. Stephen had revealed he’d been to BBC Broadcasting House in London that weekend, to curate some of his favourite radio comedy programmes for Radio 4 Extra. And after having a lovely time, he’d headed back home.

Once there he decided to take a nap. A nap that turned into a slumber, which then caused him to sleep right through tea – not just any tea mind, but Tea With Al Pacino. I’ve deployed capitals because it could make a lovely title for a short story.

PA’s, celebrity minders, all and sundry were put into full scale panic mode after the missing ‘national treasure’ - (or should that be ‘naughty national treasure’ given Stephen’s candour in the latest volume of his autobiography) left the Oscar winning actor twiddling his thumbs - but I like to think he was slowly stirring his tea, with true Godfather method menace - that afternoon.

I’m pretty certain that we hadn’t worn him out that much as he departed our studio, before snoozing got the better of him. But one thing I am sure of is that Stephen Fry loves, no, Stephen Fry adores radio. In this Saturday’s Comedy Controller he explains that radio comedy is, “part of the way I speak, part of the way I think, part of the way I react…a full part of my writing and comedy style owes everything to listening to the tones of funny people”.

Twice before I’ve spoken with him for 4 Extra about matters radio. In 2012 he joined in our 45th Anniversary celebration of all things Just A Minute.

And last Christmas he took part in our Christmas Day radio tribute to Richard Briers. As a fellow ‘Wodetonian’, he picked one of Richard’s classic BBC radio performances as Bertie Wooster in PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster

When we suggested that he choose six of his favourite radio comedies he responded instantly – that however stuffed his diary was (and I can assure you it is) – he would love to be a 4 Extra Comedy Controller. Stephen’s choices take in: childhood memories at home (The Men From The Ministry, 1972); a treasured friendship with the writer Douglas Adams (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, 1978); the chance to be on the radio himself in Saturday Night Fry (1988); moving onwards to the acute media satire of On the Hour (1992); it acknowledges great radio comedy institutions in the shape of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue (2003), that Stephen says, really could “only be British”; and arrives at the playful radio mischief and misdirection of Down The Line (2007).

Whatever the choice, they all confirm Stephen’s abiding thought during his Comedy Controllership on 4 Extra: ‘though radio may be a poor relation of television insofar as monetary considerations go….it is a rich one where it matters in terms of depth and intimacy”. In comparison with television, “radio is so much more”.

 

Peter McHugh produces Comedy Controller: Stephen Fry

Listen to Comedy Controller: Stephen Fry

(0900 and 1900 Saturday 6 December 2014 and on BBC iPlayer for 30 days after TX)

 

Why a 90th anniversary programme? It’s more customary to mark rounder numbers, a 100th say. But there is something about a 90th birthday that makes you think today - with a following wind - the person may still be here to tell us their story.  But James Baldwin is not.  He died aged only 63 in 1987. 

James Baldwin was born into relative poverty in Harlem, New York, in 1924.  During his lifetime as a writer he was a trailblazing explorer of race, class and sexuality in America. As his friend Caryl Phillips says in James Baldwin 90th Anniversary: No Complaints on Radio 4 Extra: “he can be seen as the literary voice of the Civil Rights movement” in 60s America. 

I first discovered James Baldwin far away in a West London school library, aged maybe 14.  I’d accidently come across a book. On the cover was the beautifully striking face of the author. It was Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin. 

That was his debut novel, written while he was barely surviving in France, having left the racial charged United States in 1948.  It made an indelible impression upon me. And so did it too on the British writer Caryl Philips. Struggling as a young writer himself in 1980s London, he had an idea to go and meet one of his literary heroes…  

When I noticed that James Baldwin’s 90th birthday would have been this Saturday 2 August, I did some research in the BBC archive. I found that Caryl Phillips’ idea had led to two remarkable things. The first was No Complaints, Caryl Phillips’s BBC radio interview with James Baldwin in his garden in France in 1984.  The second, decades later, was Caryl’s 2004 Radio 4 play, inspired by his mentor and friend, Some Kind of Home: James Baldwin In Paris. 

An internet search will return endless quotes from James Baldwin, his wisdom and acute vision reduced to a sentence or two. But what Caryl Phillips interview with James Baldwin gives us, with the breeze rustling the vines in Baldwin’s French garden, is what I would have wished for this year:  that James Baldwin would still be here to tell us his story, and to speak his sometimes fierce, always revealing, wisdom about problems that have not gone away. 

Listening to Caryl Phillips revisiting his 1984 interview and his own 2004 play is the nearest thing I will ever find to having my wish come true. 

Listening to James Baldwin talking to us from the archive, hearing the cadence of his voice amidst the birdsong of  “a beautiful summer’s afternoon in August 1984”, as Caryl Phillips remembers it, might be the nearest we will ever get to time travel.

Peter McHugh is the Producer of James Baldwin 90th Anniversary: No Complaints

 

Listen to the James Baldwin 90th Anniversary: No Complaints on 4 Extra

When Khaled Hosseini searched for his father’s house in Kabul in 2003, he hadn’t been home to Afghanistan for twenty-seven years. It was only home in his memory. But he found the house, looked inside and remembered again how small it had been when he was growing up. Yet he’d had a comfortable childhood, one that was rather like that of Amir, one of the two principal characters in The Kite Runner, the book that had made him famous. But now the house was decrepit, he told our readers on this month’s Bookclub – as Amir himself described it, ‘the house of fallen splendour.’

The book is still read around the world and has clearly introduced a whole generation to the colourful exotic life of Afghanistan, and its darkness – the violence, the regular steps backwards to a past riven by tribal violence, the arrival of outside armies, who’ve been resented throughout its history. As a book about young boys growing up – who discover in the end that they share much more than they realise – it catches both the sadness and the verve of a country that we’ve all had to get to know, although principally through the medium of crisis and disaster.

We began, of course, with the kites. The motif of innocence is immediately appealing – the multi-coloured kites, some home-made and some elaborate contraptions, that all the children fly and use as rival playthings, like flying conkers. ‘It’s a rite of passage,’ Khaled told us, ‘one of the central memories of my years in Afghanistan and one of the ways I spent every winter in Kabul.’ He began to sketch out the different world that readers of the book have come to know – the ancient divisions of ethnicity and class, reflected in the lives of the friends Amir and Hassan, one from the dominant Pashtun tribe and the other a Hazara, marginalised by the powerful and condemned to live with no advantages.

It’s Amir’s journey that is the heart of the book – he leaves for America, where his father Baba discovers that all the status and familiarity that he can use in Kabul counts for nothing when he walks down the streets of San Jose and is just another anonymous foreigner. But father and son make a new relationship away from home and Khaled told us that he wept at Baba’s death. ‘For me personally, the most heart-wrenching and poignant scene was writing Baba’s death. I love him, because he’s just such a flawed and interesting person and I grew really to adore him.’

That emotional power is the obvious reason for the book’s popularity, and its grip on so many young readers. When Hassan is raped – and Amir always feels guilt about what his friend suffered, and his failure to step in to help – we see a good boy (he’s 16 at the time) violated by a force that seems evil, and his innocence taken away.
For western readers, it’s inevitable that the corruption of innocence is a theme. Khaled began the book before the events of 9/11, and the invasion of his country that followed soon afterwards, and finished it after the latest Afghan war was under way. ‘When I was writing the final passages of the book I was writing about events that more or less had happened weeks earlier, so it was very fresh history.’  Amir and Hassan have lived through the Soviet invasion, the rise of the Taliban and its harsh regime, then the western invasion after 9/11. So it’s a world in which the innocence of their kite-fights is blotted out by the rumble of war, and the scars run deep.

At its heart The Kite Runner is a story about love and loyalty, and that’s why it’s a book that will last. It also tells part of the story of our time. I hope you enjoy Bookclub with Khaled Hosseini.

If you’d like to join us at one of our recordings, the next author will be Emma Donoghue, talking about Room, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2010.   All details are on the Bookclub webpage 

Jim

Listen to Bookclub

Radio 4 and 4 Extra Books Newsletter

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‘National treasure’ is more than overused. It should be retired.  But when news of Richard Briers death was announced in February this year, it really did feel like someone we all knew had gone forever.  Stephen Fry, paying tribute to Richard for his radio portrayal of Bertie Wooster, told 4 Extra that when he heard the news he felt personally “diminished”.  That it was a personal loss for Richard’s family and friends, but also a real loss to the nation.  We mourned Richard because everyone felt that they knew him, and that is “rare” indeed. 

Radio 4 Extra’s original idea was to mark Richard’s passing by airing his appearance on Desert Island Discs, together with the other stars of The Good Life.  We might combine them with one or two of the great radio comedies that Richard had made for the BBC, like Doctor in the House and Brothers in Law.  But when I started to explore in the archive something quickly became very apparent. Richard Briers had a quite brilliant, distinctive radio legacy.  That’s where the title for our Christmas Day radio celebration came from. Listening to Richard’s radio performances really did give you a sense of Ever Increasing Wonder through its breadth and range.  

In 1978, at the height of Good Life fever, Radio 4 handed over its Christmas Day morning to Richard.  4 Extra will broadcast the result, Christmas Briers, for the first time in 35 years this Christmas Day morning.  Our Christmas afternoon treat is Richard starring as Rat in The Wind in the Willows.  This will be gift wrapped with the one and only Alan Bennett, talking to 4 Extra about working with Richard on the original National Theatre production in 1990.  His is a very personal and affectionate tribute.

There are two great, revealing radio interviews with Aled Jones (BBC Radio Wales) and Michael Ball (BBC Radio 2). There’s poignant contemporary Radio 4 drama, like 2009’s The Moment You Feel It. Its writer Ed Harris tells us about the thrill of working with Richard as a young radio writer.  Also gathering dust in the archives was the only surviving radio version of the newlywed 1960s comedy Marriage Lines. Co-star Prunella Scales immediately said she would talk to 4 Extra about working with Richard on the series. He was her co-star and a life-long friend.  

Another revelation was his love and admiration of comedy legend Tony Hancock. For the first time since 1984, Radio 4 Extra will air a radio documentary Richard made about him: Briers on Hancock.  And you’ll also be able to hear a truely tour de force performance, as Richard becomes his comedy hero in the radio version of Heathcote Williams play, Hancock’s Last Half Hour.

Most importantly, though, is that I had the help and support of Richard Briers' family, his widow Ann Davies and daughters Kate and Lucy Briers. They had a list of favourite radio performances, and very bravely and graciously agreed to talk to 4 Extra about Richard’s life and work.   It was a moving and - as Ann Davies herself says whenever they think of Richard - a very happy recording experience. 

It was very touching to hear Ann - an actress herself - talking about starring in a radio drama with her real life husband, Richard. We get to hear both of them together in the wonderfully moving Mr Jones Goes Driving (Radio 4, 2010) at noon. 

So whether it’s comedy or drama, literary performance (Richard taking the helm of Radio 4’s With Great Pleasure), radio documentary, or truly tour de force performances, tears, sadness, happiness and laughter are all guaranteed this Christmas Day in the company of the late, great, Richard Briers.

See the full list of programmes

 

 

We ended-up performing for the following 27 Summer seasons at countless resorts, venues and festivals throughout the country – even representing all seaside entertainers at the inaugural gala performance of the National Theatre of Variety at Blackpool Grand Theatre & Opera House and being presented to Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on behalf of British street and beach entertainers.

I was a student in the early 1980s when I started my research into seaside entertainment – it was an age when the do-it-yourself Punk ethic and the emergence of what was known as ‘alternative comedy’, created the opportunity for a whole street theatre industry to develop for almost the first time since the Second World War. Yet the history of street or outdoor arts in British popular culture appeared to be virtually unknown. Like so many other popular artforms such as pantomime, street art, pantomimists, fairgrounds and circuses, the seaside traditions of minstrel troupes, concert parties and pierrots were yet another example of so-called ‘illegitimate artforms’ being denied their relevance and even their existence – for there is barely any published material about such a vast entertainment industry employing thousands of artists in hundreds of troupes throughout the country.

However, it is clear from my study of 19th & 20th Century popular culture, that seaside entertainment is a key component of understanding how the popular music of our own times has evolved: The Beatles and The Kinks could not have existed without the countless seaside troupes or artists like Clifford Essex, who took the music hall and drawing room ballad traditions and presented them to an even wider, family-based audience. The same is true of British comedy – sketch shows like ‘The Fast Show’ , or sitcoms like ‘Not Going Out’ could not have existed without the likes of Arthur Askey, Tommy Handley and Max Miller, whose formative years of performance were forged at the British seaside as part of the concert party troupes performing between the wars.

Radio 4 Extra at the British Seaside  delves into the BBC Radio archive to admire and understand the way in which the seaside has contributed to British popular culture today. The seaside is a quintessential part of being British – the coastline defines our national borders and it is to this geographically liminal space (where sea and land meet), that the British character is most apparent: the British sense of fun and mischief has always been a part of the seasides since they became the destination for mass holiday-making in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Yet even before this, from the Regency Age of King George IV's outrageous self-indulgence in Brighton, the seaside has been home to the exotic, the saucy and the experimental in all its cultural forms – architecture, engineering & technology and behaviour…and it still is!

It was at the seaside that the first electricity was used for lighting and for railways. Vertical structures (like Blackpool Tower) and horizontal structures (like Brighton’s West Pier) appeared to defy gravity and were in the vanguard of contemporary Victorian engineering. The most innovative art movements occurred in Poole, Staithes & Newquay and of course the seaside has always tolerated outrageous social behaviour – just as can be seen in Brighton, Blackpool or just about any other seaside resort today.

‘The Pierrotters’ are the last in the venerable tradition of the professional seaside pierrot troupes and we carved a route for the 21st Century outdoor arts scene to emerge. It has been a real treat to look back into the treasure-trove of BBC archives on seaside entertainments and a true delight to be able to revisit some of my old Brighton haunts and meet some of the friends & colleagues with whom I began my career. Mind you, I still work at seasides and festivals with my flea circus and sideshows…so maybe I’ll see you at one of them sometime soon!

Hear Radio 4 Extra at the British Seaside, Saturday 24 August at 9am

 

 

The latest RAJARs are in, this time for April-June 2013. The overall headline number is really good for Radio 4 – we saw a record 11m tuning in to the station each week, that's over 120,000 more than our previous highest audience this time two years ago. However, there is a watch out on how long people listen for, with the average figure down slightly to 11 hours and 22 minutes.  That said, across a typical week a staggering total of 125m hours of Radio 4 are listened to.

Geographically we've seen some interesting patterns, with growing audience numbers in the Midlands, the North of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  And in terms of how many of us tune in to the different types of programmes, we see 9m listen to news on Radio 4 each week, 7m to drama and 6m to comedy.

Looking at sister station Radio 4 Extra, we continue to see healthy numbers tuning in each week. The latest figure of 1.6m is down slightly on January – March, but this is the 9th successive set of figures that have been at or above 1.5m. And in terms of how long we're listening to Radio 4 Extra for, the average figure crept up above 6 hours (6 hours 2 minutes) for the first time in almost two years.

Chris Hutchings is Research Manager for Radio 4, Radio 4 Extra and Radio & Music Interactive at the BBC.

 

• From the BBC Media Centre: RAJAR Q2 2013: Record figures for Radio 4, Radio 2 and Asian Network
• RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research) is jointly owned by the BBC and commercial radio trade body the Radio Centre. Participating listeners are asked to record their radio listening in quarter-hour time blocks for one week.