Artworks

I learnt at an early age what it is to be angry - angry and helpless.' In Look Back in Anger, a youthful Jimmy Porter rages against church, country and the docility of those he loves.

People working in theatre now - amid war, injustice and increasing authoritarianism - reflect on anger as a motivation for the 'art of words', its creative limitations and the eroding effect of the passing years.

With playwrights Dawn King and Georgia Bruce, director Atri Banerjee and Cress Brown of Cutting the Tightrope.

Produced by Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

Anger as a motivation for art - its potency and limitations.

People working in theatre take a cue from Look Back in Anger to consider how anger can be a motivation for art.

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You may have experienced a strange feeling in a car park over the last few years, where you hear a sound that resembles a choir of angels. Have no fear, your time isn't up (yet). It's one of a range of sounds that car manufacturers are required by law to add to electric vehicles (EVs) to warn pedestrians and other road users that a car is approaching.

And with the drive to electric gathering momentum, it's a sound we'll be hearing a lot more of in the future. Comedian John Robins takes a drive in an EV, and talks to some of the composers and musicians involved in designing the sounds that are changing the world around us. Will new cars on the market echo the old internal combustion engines we're familiar with, or will our sonic landscape change forever?

Contributors:

Jean-Michel Jarre, composer, musician

Renzo Vitale, composer, musician, creative director for sound design at BMW Group

John Kallen, composer, musician, co-founder & Creative Lead of Audio UX

Jay Kapadia, musician, creative sound director for General Motors

Roisin Kiberd, writer on technology, author of The Disconnect and creative writing lecturer at the University of Galway, Ireland

Producer: Fiona Clampin

Executive Producer: Leonie Thomas

Sound mix: Mike Woolley

An Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 4

John Robins discovers who is designing the sounds of electric vehicles... and why.

With composers now designing sounds for electric vehicles, comedian John Robins asks if our streets will be filled with harmony or cacophony.

Hop in the car and let John Robins take you on a road trip to understand the role composers are playing in shaping the sounds of electric vehicles.

You may have experienced a strange feeling in a car park over the last few years, where you hear a sound that resembles a choir of angels. Have no fear, your time isn't up (yet). It's one of a range of sounds that manufacturers are required by law to add to electric vehicles (EVs) to warn road users that a car is approaching.

And with the drive to electric gathering momentum, it's a sound we're hearing more and more. Comedian John Robins takes a drive in an EV for the first time, and talks to some of the composers and musicians involved in designing the sounds that are changing the world around us. Will new cars on the market echo the old combustion engines we're familiar with, or will our sonic landscape change forever?

John speaks to composer Jean-Michel Jarre, creative director for sound design at BMW Group Renzo Vitale, John Kallen - the co-founder and creative lead of Audio UX, creative sound director for General Motors Jay Kapadia, and writer Roisin Kiberd.

John Robins discovers who is composing the sound of electric vehicles - and why.

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When a group of female students at Oxford Poly formed a band called Beaker in the early 1990s, they had a lot of fun and were successful enough to attract a record label and appear on Steve Lamacq's Radio One Sound City programme. This was a golden era when bands such as Radiohead and Supergrass emerged from Oxford's independent music scene.

But then careers and parenthood intervened. Now, in their mid-50s, Beaker has re-formed. So what are the realities for a band their age - truly a Band of Mothers?

Beaty Rubens has been following Beaker for the last six months, attending Sunday rehearsals, Friday night gigs and summer festivals, and talking with drummer Clare Howard-Saunders, vocalists Sam Battle and Emma Hunter, bass-player T.J Ward, and Hayley Wright.

Pretty much exactly the average age of the Radio 4 audience, this 'Band of Mothers' has much to consider. There's been a bit of a change of the lineup since their student days but they are still Beaker. Three are now schoolteachers, one a university administrator and one a seamstress, all have children and other family responsibilities and, over the years, all maintained their love of music .

As they release a new single - a number penned by Sam about the shocking experience of Gisele Pelicot - how might they position themselves, how welcoming might the music industry be to an all-female band their age, and what kind of success are they actually after?

With music from Beaker and a new interview with Steve Lamacq (who, it turns out, has kept two early Beaker releases in his personal CD collection for all these decades), this is a programme about friendship, second chances, and the pure pleasure of collective music-making.

Producer/Presenter: Beaty Rubens

A Just Radio Ltd production for BBC Radio 4

Can an all-female Oxfordshire band in their mid-50s recreate their student success?

Imaginative documentaries about culture and the arts from BBC Radio 4.

In the 1990s, an all-female band called Beaker enjoyed some success. Now re-formed, what are the realities for five 50-ish women juggling jobs, parenthood, gigs, and maybe more?

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In 1981, four teenagers from Basildon released ‘Just Can't Get Enough' - a bright, synth-pop single that announced the arrival of Depeche Mode. Over the next four decades, that same band would evolve into something far darker, stranger, and more monumental. This documentary explores how Depeche Mode became one of the most beloved bands in the world - everywhere before the country they came from.

They've sold over 100 million records, filled stadiums from Mexico City to Moscow, and become a source of near-religious devotion for fans around the world. And yet, back home in Britain, they've often been misunderstood - too weird, too pop, too synthetic, too uncool.

Writer, critic and musician Sasha Frere-Jones leads a journey through class, coolness, eyeliner, bondage, synthesizers and the Cold War. Along the way, he meets the fans who followed the band across continents, critics and the artists who owe them so much.

Featuring exclusive interviews and extraordinary archive from behind the Iron Curtain to Los Angeles riot scenes, this is the untold story of how Depeche Mode conquered the world - by accident, by design, and by sheer persistence.

Contributors:

Gary Numan, musician

Daniel Miller, founder of Mute Records

Alexis Petridis, music critic

Jeremy Deller, artist and filmmaker

Suzie Stapleton, musician

Paul Gidley, Depeche Mode fan

Presenter: Sasha Frere-Jones

Producer: Richard Power

Executive Producer: Kellie While

A huge thank you to Jacqueline Edenbrow, Jeremy Deller and Nick Abrahams for use of the clips from the 2006 film My Hobby is Depeche Mode.

'Our Hobby is Depeche Mode'

Directed by Jeremy Deller and Nick Abrahams

Produced by Jacqui Edenbrow

Courtesy of Mute Records

A Pomona Audio production for BBC Radio 4

Sasha Frere-Jones leads us on the unlikely journey of Depeche Mode's world domination.

Sasha Frere-Jones leads us on the unlikely journey of Depeche Mode's world domination through class, coolness, eyeliner, bondage, synthesizers and Britain's cultural insularity.

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From Mark E Smith to Patti Smith, from Bob Dylan to Dry Cleaning - why are many of the most captivating performers, in what we might loosely call 'rock' music, singers who don't actually sing?

We wouldn't tolerate drummers who can't keep time or guitarists who can't strum a chord. Yet when it comes to vocalists, many of the most successful don't 'sing' a note. Why?  And where did this technique come from?

It's linked to - but different from - the recitative (i.e. spoken word) of an opera, and the Germans have two words for it - sprechgesang or sprechstimme. Arnold Schoenberg is said to have defined sprechgesang in his 1912 opera, Pierrot Lunaire, but we can also look further back to the talking blues and folk music.

Recently, bands like Yard Act, Sleaford Mods, Self Esteem, Dry Cleaning, Black Country New Road, Kae Tempest, Big Special and Idles have used this technique to rage about social ills - as well as punk pop artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish and Wet Leg. But what separates good sprechgesang from bad? Why do some non traditional vocalists resonate with audiences while others fail? Is it rap?

Former music journalist Adrian Goldberg learns from his hero Robert Lloyd of The Nightingales and Florence Shaw of Dry Cleaning how to sprechgesang, he channels the avant-garde spirit of Schoenberg with soprano Claire Booth, asks rapper and saxophonist Soweto Kinch about the power of freestyle, and dares to ask the music historian Elijah Wald if Bob Dylan was just a bad singer. Finally, Adrian meets fellow Brummie Joe Hicklin from Big Special, who uses the direct and authentic nature of speech despite the fact he can sing very well.

Can Adrian take what he's learnt and fulfil his dream of becoming a rock star? He might not be a singer but he can shout!

Produced by Helen Lennard and John Cranmer

Why do many great singers speak their songs? Adrian Goldberg on the power of sprechgesang.

Sprechgesang or ‘talk-singing' is the sound of modern pop and rock - but why? Adrian Goldberg joins the dots from Schoenberg to Sleaford Mods to prove that songs are best spoken.

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Drama has exited stage left from many school timetables in recent years. The number of pupils in England sitting Drama GCSE and A-Level has halved since 2010. So why does it matter and should we care? The actor Christopher Eccleston investigates the demise of drama and asks whether it can be rekindled in the wake of a government curriculum review that insisted it should be given equal status to humanities and language. Christopher shares his own personal experience of drama lessons at school which he says transformed his life. He drops in on drama classes at Towers School in Ashford in Kent to hear the experiences of pupils and speaks to theatre practitioners from the National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Youth Theatre. He also speaks to STEM UK about the importance of striking a balance between learning about STEM subjects and the arts.

Produced in Bristol for BBC Audio by Robin Markwell

This programme features a short clip of Antigone performed at the National Theatre by Christopher Eccleston and Jodie Whittaker in 2012

The actor Christopher Eccleston investigates the decline in drama education in schools.

The actor Christopher Eccleston investigates the decline in drama education in schools in England.

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Meet Edward Elgar - composer of Land of Hope and Glory, moustachioed symbol of Empire, and not obviously the kind of man Adrian Chiles would feel a deep connection with. But spend a little time with Elgar - really listen to him - and a very different character starts to emerge.

In Finding Elgar, Adrian Chiles heads out into the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire - where both he and Elgar spent their formative life - and sets out to rescue Sir Edward from the clutches of empire and stuffy concert halls. Along the way, he finds a surprising kinship with the composer - both Midlands-born, both Catholic, both prone to mood swings and bursts of enthusiasm, Adrian starts to see Elgar not as the voice of the establishment, but as a man constantly on the edge of it.

Adrian takes us from London concert halls to the hearing Elgar's music played on the Malvern Hills, via his father's music shop, his cottage birthplace and the church organ loft where the composer learned his craft. We follow Adrian as he traces Elgar's journey from self-taught son of a piano tuner to national treasure - and asks how a composer with so much doubt, mischief and melancholy ended up as the soundtrack of British establishment.

Along the way, he meets musicians, scholars and fellow fans who all help to build a picture of the man behind the moustache. A man full of contradiction, tenderness and a love of silly games (including one involving beards).

Contributors include Ian Venables, a composer and fellow Worcester resident; the music writer Jude Rogers; flautist Catherine Handley; and academic and oboist Uchenna Ngwe. Adrian also meets Adrian Brown, the founder of the Elgar Sinfonia, and goes into the hills with Shulah Oliver, a professional violinist from Elgar country. Tom Allenby reads excerpts from Elgar's letters and W.H. Reed's biography.

Producer: Katie Hill

Executive Producer: Steven Rajam

An Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 4

Adrian Chiles uncovers the fun, fraught and frankly surprising early life of Edward Elgar.

Adrian Chiles digs into Elgar's music, his Midlands roots and his Catholic guilt - and finds a kindred spirit with a cracking sense of humour.

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Can a sound effect change the world?

Since the dawn of the electrical age, we've lived alongside the sound of distortion. It's the hiss of

TV static, the harsh crackle of a speaker pushed too loud. However, what happens when this glitch,

a signifier of the broken and the wrong, becomes part of popular music?

Fuzz flung open the door for rule breakers and rebels. It was a sonic weapon that could stimulate

powerful emotions, whip audiences into a frenzy and spark rebellion.

Starting on a highway in 1950s America, music journalist John Robb will follow fuzz through time,

calling on philosophy and science to uncover the secrets of this sound. He will stop off at the

magical moments of accident and destruction that allowed the sound to evolve and spread.

Including a rare demonstration from rock and roll icon Dave Davies on how he crafted the iconic

guitar distortion on You Really Got Me.

Interviews with Jerry Phillips, Toby Young, Dave Davies, Mathilde Massenet, Greg Bryant, Ant

Macari and Matthew Worley

Actors voices provided by Paul Colgate (So Sinatra), Phia Saban and Rob Campbell

Presenter: John Robb

Producer and Sound Designer: Seb Masters

Production Assistant: Tom Waterworth

Production Coordinator: Mica Nepomuceno

John Robb explores how the sound of fuzz changed the world.

The crackle of static or a speaker pushed too loud. Distortion is a symbol of the broken. What happens when glitch becomes music? John Robb explores how fuzz changed the world.

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Hip-hop taught Nkem Ifejika everything - how to dress, how to speak, how to be a black man. Now he has a dilemma - as his young son develops his musical preferences, how does Nkem navigate aspects of the genre that he thinks haven't aged well.

Nkem's son wants to go to a Kendrick Lamar concert. Before he decides if he'll allow that or not, Nkem has some homework to do.

He sets out to get advice from other hip-hop heads, his family, friends and experts.

Nkem's introduction to hip-hop came from his “naughty uncle ? Ken who smuggled him MTV videos and tapes from America. From the outset, listening to hip-hop was something that seemed naughty and rebellious. Nkem and actor Babou Ceesay recall the thrill of discovering Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle while at school in West Africa and sparking their interest in everything the music conjured. As fathers now to young children, do they want their kids to feel that same excitement?

Dr Abenaa Owusu-Bempah from LSE's School of Law tells Nkem she's deeply concerned with the way the music is being used by prosecutors to build criminal cases. It's starting to stifle artists' freedom of expression.

American Sociologist Tricia Rose says Nkem's right to take this seriously. It takes effort to critique something you love when it falls short. They discuss the representation of women in the music.

Comedian and broadcaster Romesh Ranganathan created a kid-friendly hip-hop playlist. But just because there's no swearing doesn't mean that the issues raised in some of the tracks are easy to swallow. He tells Nkem to be realistic. Hip-hop reflects life. Don't shy away from it.

Thanks to Romesh Ranganathan, Tricia Rose, Babou Ceesay, Dr Abenaa Owusu-Bempah, Pete Paphides and everyone in the queue for JPEG MAFIA, The Roots, De La Soul and The Pharcyde.

Presented by Nkem Ifejika

Produced by Alexandra Quinn

Executive Producer Rami Tzabar

Nkem Ifejika owes everything to hip-hop. But how should he share that with his son?

Hip-hop taught Nkem Ifejika everything - how to dress, speak and be a black man. Now he has a dilemma - should he shield aspects of the genre from his young son?

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One of Hollywood's most iconic musicals, The Sound of Music starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer was released in the UK sixty years ago this week. It won 5 Oscars. It made its child actors the most famous in the world but what are they doing now? Garry Richardson has tracked them down.

The cast members reveal what they have been doing since 1965. Nicholas Hammond who played Friedrich Von Trapp is still acting today, but the career paths of the others have been very different – from landscape gardening to geology.

Julie Andrews filmed Mary Poppins just before The Sound of Music and Angela Cartwright, who played nine-year-old Brigitta von Trapp, remembers how that became a talking point during breaks on set. Kym Karath was the youngest of the child stars and reflects on how instant fame led to unwanted attention from some of the public.

Little did they all know how much was riding on the film! Struggling financially, 20th Century Fox had gambled everything producing this story of the young governess whose courage led the Von Trapp family across the Alps.

Songwriter and lyricist Sir Richard Stilgoe, who is best known for The Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Starlight Express explores the art of songwriting explaining how Rodgers and Hammerstein worked together.

Presenter: Garry Richardson

Producer: Catrin Manel

Editor: Matt Willis

Garry Richardson tracks down the child stars from the 1965 film The Sound of Music.

One of Hollywood's most iconic musicals, The Sound of Music was released in the UK 60 years ago. What became of its child stars? Garry Richardson has tracked them down.

New arts documentary for BBC Radio 4.

AKA The Sound Of Music At 60

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In 1924 Iris Barry wrote the infamous words: “Going to the pictures is nothing to be ashamed of. ?

We think of cinema as being the defining artform of the 20th century, but at its inception film was considered anything but art. It was a cheap form of mass entertainment circulating through flea pit cinemas and music halls. Yet one woman dedicated her life to changing that perception.

Silent film historian Pamela Hutchinson explores the extraordinary life of Iris Barry – the pioneering 1920s critic, curator and film preservationist who made the case for cinema to be taken seriously.

Through sheer force of will, a razor-sharp wit and the magnetism of her writing, Iris Barry managed to catapult herself from provincial obscurity into the upper echelons of high society – on both sides of the Atlantic – and in the process forever changed the course of cinematic history, while leading a life worthy of the most improbable of film plots.

Featuring Richard Brody of the New Yorker, Bryony Dixon curator for silent film for the British Film Institute, Arts Editor for The Spectator Igor Toronyi-Lalic, journalist and academic Henry K. Miller, and Iris Barry biographer Robert Sitton.

Presented by Pamela Hutchinson

Produced by James King and Ashley Pollak

Consultant: Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Sound Mix by Tom O'Sullivan

Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar

A TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 4

Delve into the world of Iris Barry - pioneering film critic, curator and preservationist.

Film historian Pamela Hutchinson explores the extraordinary life of Iris Barry – the pioneering 1920s critic, curator and film preservationist who changed the way we view cinema.

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Lyse Doucet, the BBC's Chief International Correspondent and regular visitor to Afghanistan, talks to female Afghan poets about the landay: a 22 syllable Pashtun verse form they create, perform and share to speak of love, sex, war and hardship. Translator and editor Eliza Griswold describes her discovery of this oral tradition, which led to a project to collect and publish some of these anonymous poems.

Landays read by Shala Nyx

Translated interview read by Yasmin Mwanza

Made with the assistance of journalist and translator Zarghuna Kargar

Produced by Emma Harding, BBC Audio Wales

Lyse Doucet explores the verse form which Afghan women share to speak of love and hardship

Lyse Doucet talks to female Afghan poets about the landay: a 22-syllable Pashtun verse form they create, perform and share to speak of love, sex, war and hardship.

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Known as one of Wales' greatest 20th-century poets, RS Thomas is often characterised as a difficult, even cantankerous figure. 25 years since his death, fellow poet and friend Gwyneth Lewis uncovers a hidden, private side to his life and work - as she explores the tension and tenderness within his marriage to the painter Mildred Elsie Eldridge.

RS Thomas wrote dozens of poems to his first wife, from early reflections on their courtship to moving elegies following her death. Yet his marriage, like much of his life, was complex and unusual – defined as much by silence and distance as by affection.

When they met, Mildred Eldridge was the star - an established and award-winning painter - while RS Thomas was still finding his poetic voice. Gwyneth Lewis follows the journey of their life together and considers why their career trajectories diverged so sharply - his path as a poet ascended to ever greater heights, hers as an artist dwindled.

With access to Mildred Eldridge's unpublished journals, we hear her voice in the marriage for the first time – a perspective largely absent until now. Gwyneth considers what this remarkable relationship tells us not only about art but, more importantly, about love.

Presenter: Gwyneth Lewis

Producer: Huw Meredydd

Executive Producer: Steven Rajam

Mildred Eldridge's journal is narrated by Sharon Morgan

An Astud production for BBC Radio 4

Poems by RS Thomas included in the programme:

A Marriage - Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 (Bloodaxe Books, 2004)

Pilgrimages – Collected Poems 1945-1990 (Orion Books, 1993)

The Way of It – Collected Poems 1945-1990 (Orion Books, 1993)

He and She – Collected Poems 1945-1990 (Orion Books, 1993)

Anniversary - Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 (Bloodaxe Books, 2004)

Gwyneth Lewis explores the unusual marriage of poet RS Thomas and artist Mildred Eldridge.

Often portrayed as a hostile and difficult figure, RS Thomas was also a poet of deep sensitivity. Gwyneth Lewis explores his unusual marriage to the painter Mildred Elsie Eldridge.

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Playwright April de Angelis tells the dramatic story of pioneering women's theatre company Monstrous Regiment, 50 years on from its creation.

In the 1970's, the newly founded Women's Liberation Movement rocked the world. But British theatre was still a largely male preserve. Actresses found themselves in left-leaning fringe productions auditioning for minor roles as sidekicks to male protagonists. Sick and tired of being marginalised, a group of actresses led by Gillian Hanna, Chris Bowler and Mary McCusker decided to form their own company to focus on the lives of women and promote roles for women in all areas of theatre, on and off stage.

Monstrous Regiment was born, named ironically after John Knox's vituperative description of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots.

Across two decades of extraordinary social and political upheaval, this group of women changed theatre history, fuelled by ambition, passion and ideology.

Presented by April De Angelis

Sound mix by Steve Bond

Production Coordinator - Anna de Wolff Evans

Executive Producer - Sara Davies

Produced, recorded and edited by Nicolas Jackson

With special thanks to Monstrous Regiment, Mary McCusker, Russell Keat, Helen Glavin, Lily Susan Todd, Roger Allam, Bryony Lavery, Susan Croft, Gerda Stevenson, Rosa Slade, Adrian Berry, Jackson's Lane and Unfinished Histories.

Songs courtesy of Monstrous Regiment and Helen Glavin.

For more information about Monstrous Regiment visit https://monstrousregiment.co.uk/

An Afonica production for BBC Radio 4

The dramatic story of the pioneering theatre company that dared to put women centre stage.

The dramatic story of the pioneering women's theatre company that dared to challenge the male-dominated performing arts scene of the 1970s and 80s.

With special thanks to Monstrous Regiment, Mary McCusker, Russell Keat, Helen Glavin, Lily Susan Todd, Roger Allam, Bryony Lavery, Susan Croft, Gerda Stevenson, Rosa Clay Slade, Adrian Berry, Jackson's Lane and Unfinished Histories.

Audio clips of Margaret Thatcher courtesy of BBC Radio programmes: Woman's Hour; The New Elisabethans; Call Yourself a Feminist.

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In 1939 a young English artist Patricia Fell-Clarke met Ayana Angadi, an Indian journalist and lecturer living in London. Despite heavy family pressure they married and in 1946 Mr and Mrs Angadi set up The Asian Music Circle, a cultural organisation which aimed 'to create in the West a better understanding of the peoples and cultures of the Orient through their music and dance'. Their reach and influence was considerable. With world renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin joining as president in 1953, through the 1950s and 60s, they built an International organisation with over fifteen thousand members. It was the Asian Music Circle who brought Ravi Shankar to play his first performance in 'the West', who brought Ustad Vilayat Khan to Aldeburgh Festival in 1958, and who brought India's most admired singer of the 20th Century, MS Subbulakshmi, to Edinburgh International Festival in 1963. They also booked Indian classical musicians for recording sessions with Peter Sellers and The Beatles, and in the Angadi's suburban living room BKS Iyengar gave Britain's first public yoga class. It was there, in their home that George Harrison met Ravi Shankar.

This is the story of a couple, a family, and a home that altered the evolution of British culture.

Featuring Chandrika Casali (née Angadi), Susheila Nasta, Emeritus Professor at Queen Mary University and The Open University, musicians Buddhadev Kansara and Arun Ghosh, and yoga teacher Korinna Pilafidis-Williams.

Presenter - Sindhu Vee

Sound - Rhys Morris

Production co-ordinator - Eleri McAuliffe

Producer John Norton

A BBC Audio Wales Production

Sindhu Vee joins the dots between the UK's first yoga class, a family home and The Beatles

Mr and Mrs Angadi ran The Asian Music Circle from their suburban family home. In the living room, BKS Iyengar gave Britain's first yoga class and George Harrison met Ravi Shankar.

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More than 230 years after its publication, we hear school-age readers grapple with Songs of Innocence, William Blake's classic collection of poems and illustrations. Given that education, purity and childish imagination are fundamental to Blake's masterpiece, who better to digest and reimagine that seminal work today?

Presenter Raymond Antrobus is a British poet and educator who has won the Ted Hughes Award and Rathbones Folio Prize for his work. He was raised on the language of William Blake by his mother Rosemary, a keen member of The Blake Society.

Host: Raymond Antrobus

Producer: Talia Randall

Executive Producer: Jack Howson

Mix Engineer: Arlie Adlington

Sound Recordist: Alice Boyd

Interpreter: Pettra St Hilaire

With thanks to creative writing charity First Story, Heron Hall Academy in Enfield, and Laurence Ashcroft.

A Peanut & Crumb production for BBC Radio 4

School-age readers grapple with William Blake's Songs of Innocence.

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Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was performed for the first time in Vienna on the 7th of May, 1824. There's a sense in which that premiere, in the Theater am Kärntnertor at the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was the moment when two distinct reception histories began: that of an epic orchestral piece which ends with a choral setting of An die Freude, a work that has become a cornerstone of the so-called canon of Western Classical music; and the history of a simple theme, the Ode to Joy, a catchy tune, eminently whistleable, that has since had a life of its own, travelling far and wide across over two hundred years to the present day.

Political leaders (from centre, the left and the right), grassroots protest movements, institutions, nations, car brands, comedians, broadcasters - all have found something in the Ode to Joy that has come to serve their aims or projects. Detached from its original context (as the finale of a symphony), Beethoven's melody carries its various meanings and associations (freedom, brotherhood, sophistication, power, heroic struggle) into the new contexts in which it's heard. The resulting emotions - inspiration, euphoria, amusement, horror - might well depend on your point of view.

This radiophonic exploration brings together fragments and scenes from the BBC archives with new reflections from Professors Esteban Buch, Robert Fink, Lydia Goehr, Peter Höyng and Naomi Waltham-Smith together with orchestral and opera conductor Naomi Woo.

Produced by Phil Smith

Sound mix by Mike Woolley

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3

How politicians, protestors, advertisers and comedians have made use of an iconic melody.

Beethoven's Ode to Joy is over 200 years old. How have politicians, protesters, advertisers and comedians made use of one of classical music's most iconic melodies?

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Famed producer Giles Martin wades into the murky waters of A.I.'s rise in music, investigating the economic risks, creative rewards, and existential fallout of the powerful new technology. Featuring stories of inspiration and warning from Holly Herndon, St Vincent, David Arnold, and Baroness Beeban Kidron.

Produced by Frank Palmer

A Cup & Nuzzle production for BBC Radio 4

Famed producer Giles Martin wades into the murky waters of AI in music.

Famed producer Giles Martin wades into the murky waters of AI's rise in music, investigating the economic risks, creative rewards, and existential fallout of the new technology.

[LISTEN NOW]

Based in California, Omid works with a team spread across the globe to find and save Afghan music, radio recordings, films, and TV shows from the past, seeking to preserve the identities and voices of those who have been displaced by war.

Fragments of a once-vibrant cultural heritage that the Taliban seeks to erase, these recordings are not just old tapes - they represent the memories, stories, and sounds of the Afghan people. Their significance goes beyond their musical and historical value - they are a lifeline to a lost world, a bridge between the past and future, and a testament to the resilience of Afghan culture.

Tamana Ayazi, Afghan journalist and Emmy-award-winning filmmaker (In Her Hands, Netflix), joins Omid and his team in their latest rescue mission, to secretly transfer two major collections of Afghan cassettes from Samangan and Kandahar, at opposite ends of the country, via perilous routes into Quetta Pakistan, and finally to Omid in the United States.

Will the tapes - and the people who carry them - make it safely across Afghan security checkpoints and pass through US customs?

Presenter and Director: Tamana Ayazi

Producers: Tamana Ayazi and Meera Kumar

Executive Producer: Charlotte Melén

Sound Design and Mixing: Jeff Emtman

Contributors: Omid, Quetta Mama, Lahore Mama

Quetta Mama's voice: Shuja Noori

An Almost Tangible production for Radio 4

Includes short music excerpts from:

Fawad Ramez - Na Rahat Az Falak

Farid Samim Zolfakayat and Rafti Tu - ـ?رید صـ...یـ... - زلـ?كايت و رـ?ته تو

Rohullah Roheen - Hala Ke Baharam

Wahid Saberi - Dil Tangam

Zahir Howaida - Emshab (اـ...شب)

Nashenas - Zi Pur Lwaru Ghrunu Laila

Yulduz Usmonova - Эрон Халқ Қўшиғи (“Iran People's Song ?)

Farhad Darya (Freedy Rivers) - Baaz Amada

Unknown Artist - DĀ? də bĀ?torĀ?no kor (Taliban anthem of Afghanistan)

Khosh Naseeb janan - Pashto must Nazam

Ahmad Zahir - Gole Sangam

Ahmad Zahir - Shaadi Kunaid Ay Dostaan

Ahmad Zahir - Tanha Shudam Tanha

Ustad Mahwash - Dokhtare Kochi Astom

Afghan-American archivist Omid races to save rare Afghan cassettes from the Taliban.

Tamana Ayazi, Afghan journalist and film-maker, joins Omid on his latest rescue mission, saving two rare collections of Afghan music cassettes before the Taliban destroy them.

Based in California, Omid works with a team spread across the globe to find and save Afghan music, radio recordings, films, and TV shows from the past, seeking to preserve the identities and voices of those who have been displaced by war. Fragments of a once-vibrant cultural heritage that the Taliban seeks to erase, these recordings are not just old tapes; they represent the memories, stories, and sounds of the Afghan people. Their significance goes beyond their musical and historical value; they are a lifeline to a lost world, a bridge between the past and future, and a testament to the resilience of Afghan culture.

Tamana Ayazi, Afghan journalist and Emmy-award-winning filmmaker (In Her Hands, Netflix), joins Omid and his team in their latest rescue mission: to secretly transfer two major collections of Afghan cassettes from Samangan and Kandahar (at opposite ends of the country), via perilous routes into Quetta Pakistan, and finally to Omid in the United States. Will the tapes (and the people who carry them) make it safely across Afghan security checkpoints and pass through US customs?

Omid, Afghan-American archivist, races to preserve rare Afghan cassettes from the Taliban.

[LISTEN NOW]

Prisoner orchestras were an ever-present accompaniment to the horrors of Auschwitz - from enslavement marching tunes to cryptic compositions. Young conductor and composer Leo Geyer has - for more than 7 years - collaborated with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum to study the orchestras and decode their arrangements.

He also discovered ripped and burned remnants of scores - 210 pieces of music, all incomplete - which he has painstakingly worked on to understand and restore. In 2025, Leo and his company Constella will perform an 80-minute Opera-Ballet of those salvaged compositional fragments, in tribute to the murdered musicians of Auschwitz.

By telling the story of Leo Geyer's engagement with the history and the manuscripts, this programme asks what more we can learn and understand about the experience and legacy of the Holocaust by listening to the music.

Presenter: Leo Geyer

Producer: Eva Krysiak

Executive Producer: Jack Howson

A Peanut & Crumb production for BBC Radio 4

Leo Geyer has been studying and decoding the orchestral music of Auschwitz.

Orchestral music was an ever-present accompaniment to the horrors of Auschwitz. Leo Geyer has spent more than seven years studying the orchestras and decoding their arrangements.

[LISTEN NOW]

Forget nursery school, round ended scissors and glue sticks – collage is sophisticated, political, complicated and underrated.

So much modern music, audio and film making involves taking bits from everywhere, splicing them up, reassembling and layering them to create new meaning.  Art historian, critic and writer Ruth Millington uncovers the history of collage. Where did it begin and why did it become the essential creative medium for outsiders and revolutionaries?

Ever since Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque began to stick bits of found materials into their painting, collage has allowed artists to access bold new ideas. Dada artists used collage and photomontage to criticise German culture after the First World War. The surrealists used collage to access their inner minds. The pop artists, like Peter Blake, used the juxtaposition of images, from commercials to literature, to challenge ideas on the avant-garde.

From The Beatles and Rolling Stones album covers to radical feminist artists like Linder and Chila Singh Burman, collage has been used to make new ideas recognisable and to play with meaning and context. John Stezaker has used collage to find a third space, a way of reclaiming the image in a world which is saturated by visual displays.

Today, digital artists like Cold War Steve create collages on social media that reflect the work of the early Dada artists Hannah Höch and John Heartfield. We see collages on our social feeds, hear sound montages and samples in hip-hop and pop and watch videos which cut together art, film, photos and text. Collage is now everywhere we look, but it still has disruptive powers. Ruth takes her scissors, scalpel and glue to find out why collage matters.

Presented by Ruth Millington

Produced by Melvin Rickarby and Helen Lennard

The revolutionary history of collage. How cut and paste shaped 20th-century culture.

Collage involves cutting and sticking to create something new. Ruth Millington finds this radical technique at the beginnings of new cultural movements from cubism to digital arts.

Ever since Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque began to stick bits of found materials into their painting, collage has allowed artists to access bold new ideas. Dada artists used collage and photomontage to criticise German culture after the First World War. The surrealists used collage to access their inner minds. The pop artists, like Peter Blake, used the juxtaposition of images, from commercials to literature, to challenge ideas on the avant-garde. From The Beatles and Rolling Stones album covers to radical feminist artists like Linder and Chila Singh Burman, collage has been used to make new ideas recognisable and to play with meaning and context. John Stezaker has used collage to find a third space, a way of reclaiming the image in a world which is saturated by visual displays. Today, digital artists like Cold War Steve create collages on social media that reflect the work of the early Dada artists Hannah Höch and John Heartfield. We see collages on our social feeds, hear sound montages and samples in hip-hop and pop and watch videos which cut together art, film, photos and text. It seems that collage is now everywhere we look but it may still be a tool to shift the status quo. Ruth takes her scissors, scalpel and glue to find out why collage matters.

[LISTEN NOW]

The pairing of joyful Black South African music with Paul Simon's cinematic lyricism is either a high point in cultural exchange, or an outrageous betrayal of the anti-apartheid movement. How should we view Simon's Graceland album now - in a time when cultural boycotts, cultural appropriation, and cancel culture are on the tip of everyone's tongue?

Forty years on, and through a distinctly South African lens, New York Times reporter Lynsey Chutel considers the legacy of one the most popular, controversial, and contested record releases ever. Was Paul Simon arrogant? Ignorant? And did his music really aid the struggle against apartheid?

Contributors:

Stanley De Klerk, Lynsey's uncle

Professor Sean Jacobs, Director of International Affairs at The New School

Bakithi Kumalo, bassist on Graceland

Billy Bragg, singer-songwriter

Dali Tambo, founder of Artists Against Apartheid

Sonti Mndebele, singer on the Graceland tour

Setumo-Thebe Mohlomi, music writer

Presented by Lynsey Chutel

Produced by Seun Matiluko & Jack Howson

Mixed by Louis Blatherwick

With thanks to Tom Bonnett for inspiration, as well as Rose-Anna Hyde, Richard Power and Saskia Cookson for additional research

A Peanut & Crumb production for BBC Radio 4

The legacy of one the most popular and controversial album releases ever - Graceland.

Forty years on, New York Times reporter Lynsey Chutel considers the legacy of one of the most popular, controversial and contested musical releases ever - Graceland.

Presented Lynsey Chutel

With thanks to Tom Bonnett for inspiration, as well as Rose-Anna Hyde and Saskia Cookson for additional research

The legacy of one of the most popular and controversial album releases ever, Graceland.

[LISTEN NOW]

You're sitting on a sweltering Central Line tube carriage wearing a jacket too warm for the day; the podcast on your headphones endlessly buffering. In an attempt to avoid eye contact with the person opposite, your gaze drifts up towards the ceiling. There, between ads for the London Dungeon and a new crypto investment app, is a simple panel - black text on a white background. Eight lines of verse, written by an 8th century Chinese poet.

As Poems on the Underground marks its 40th birthday, this programme is the story of how that poem came to be there and why. We speak to one of the founders of the scheme, Judith Chernaik, about how it got started, and to the poets and passengers who have been part of one of the largest public art interventions of all time.

'When I saw my first Poem on the Underground decades ago, I was so taken with the poem that I missed my stop,' says poet Imtiaz Dharker, one of the panel who selects poems for the scheme. 'It was only years later that I understood the drive behind it: an absolute belief in the necessity of poetry, its power in the places where we live and travel every day.'

Produced by Mair Bosworth

A BBC Audio production for Radio 4

A programme to mark the 40th anniversary of London's Poems on the Underground scheme.

The inside story of one of the world's most successful and enduring public art interventions, Poems on the Underground, as it marks its 40th birthday.

[LISTEN NOW]

A new discovery about the mental health and inner life of one of Britain's most researched monarchs, Queen Victoria - from the unpublished diaries of her doctor. When Matthew Sweet first read these diaries, he couldn't quite believe it. He was seeing a genuinely new, unpublished and unresearched document that revealed the closely guarded mental health struggles of Queen Victoria - a factual account in the personal diaries of Doctor Robert Ferguson, never intended for publication. Once kept locked and in private hands, these volumes are now available in the Royal College of Physicians.

Nowadays we hardly ever discover something new about a well known figure like Queen Victoria. So much has been written about her, so much has been researched – but this is not only a first which changes the way we'll think about Victoria, it is also a factual account from her doctor, kept in his personal diaries – not court gossip, not speculation, not malicious rumour – but factual notes kept for posterity.

Dr Ferguson was Victoria's ‘accoucheur', her obstetrician, and he was called to see her in 1841, as a 22 year old mother of two, just after the birth of her heir. A “pale and haggard ? Albert told him, “the Queen has heard you have paid much attention to mental disease, and she is afraid she is about to lose her mind! She sees visions and hears sounds - she thinks of worms eating her, and is weeping and wretched ?.

Years before modern day psychoanalysis and the couch, Victoria's mental landscape sounds like something from Freud.

Prof Mariusz Misztal of Krakow University is researching these diaries, and confirms Matthew Sweet's belief that nothing like this exists in Victorian studies. Though the diaries are now in the public domain, this story has never been explored before.

In his journey to understand the experiences of the Queen, Matthew Sweet is also joined by Leading Psychoanalyst Susie Orbach (therapist to Princess Diana and author of classic Fat is a Feminist Issue), historian Fern Riddell (author of Victoria's Secret), and Dream Scientist Caroline Horton (Professor of Sleep and Cognition at Lincoln Bishop University). With readings from Dr Ferguson's diaries by Jason Barnett.

Presenter: Matthew Sweet

Producer: Allegra McIlroy

Presented by Matthew Sweet. A new discovery about the mental health of Queen Victoria.

Matthew Sweet discovers new information from the personal diaries of Queen Victoria's doctor which reveals her unconscious mind - and will change the way we understand her.

A new discovery about the inner life and mental health of one of Britain's most researched monarchs, Queen Victoria - from the unpublished diaries of her doctor. When Matthew Sweet first read these diaries, he couldn't quite believe it. He was seeing a genuinely new, unpublished and unresearched document that revealed the closely guarded mental health struggles of Queen Victoria - a factual account in the personal diaries of Doctor Robert Ferguson, never intended for publication. Once kept locked and in private hands, these volumes are now available in the Royal College of Physicians.

Years before modern day psychoanalysis and the couch, Victoria's mental landscape sounds like something from Freud. Though the diaries are now in the public domain, this story has never been explored before.

In his journey to understand the experiences of the Queen, Matthew Sweet is also joined by leading Psychoanalyst Susie Orbach (therapist to Princess Diana and author of classic Fat is a Feminist Issue), Mariusz Misztal (Professor of history at of Krakow University) who is transcribing these diaries, historian Fern Riddell (author of Victoria's Secret), and Dream Scientist Caroline Horton (Professor of Sleep and Cognition at Lincoln Bishop University). With readings from Dr Ferguson's diaries by Jason Barnett.

With thanks to Bethlem Museum of the Mind and the Royal College of Physicians Archive.

Presented by Matthew Sweet. A new discovery about the unconscious mind of Queen Victoria.

Matthew Sweet discovers new information about one of our best known monarchs, long dormant in the private diaries of her doctor, which reveal the unknown inner life of the Queen.

[LISTEN NOW]

Susan Calman celebrates one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented music instruments of all time - the recorder.

For many people, the mere mention of this instrument triggers visceral memories of blasting out Hot Cross Buns in primary school music class - but Susan argues, in the right hands, the recorder isn't squeaky and shrill, but a beautiful and incredibly versatile instrument.

Susan looks back fondly on those early years of recorder playing and leads the charge to champion this often maligned musical underdog. She opens our eyes (and ears) to the exciting world of recorder music - from experimental medieval, to baroque, and contemporary music.

Featuring The Recorder Rescue Orchestra in Bristol led by artist Jo Hellier; musician and composer Laura Cannell; art pop group Mermaid Chunky; electronic composer Gazelle Twin; musician and producer Peter-John Vettese; Sarah Martin from Belle & Sebastian; musician and researcher Fatima Lahham; Ian Wilson, principal recorder professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama; and recorder professor Sarah Jeffery from the Royal College of Music.

Together, they make the case for the recorder as a surprisingly versatile instrument that can be used in all genres of music - and yes it can really rock.

Producer: Victoria Ferran

Executive producer: Susan Marling

A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4

Susan Calman champions one of the most misunderstood musical instruments - the recorder.

[LISTEN NOW]

In late 19th century Hammersmith, two titans of the printing scene, Emery Walker and Thomas Cobden-Sanderson, form a deep friendship. They hang out at the same printing events and socialist meetings, they move into houses four doors apart, they work in the same building, their families go on holidays together.

Then in 1900, they set up the ground breaking Doves Press together - whereupon their friendship swiftly implodes, and they spend the rest of the decade fighting over the custody of their in-house typeface, Doves. And then things get even uglier.

Souvenirs explores broken friendship, typefaces, lost words, self-destruction, and the legacies we didn't intend to leave. With type designer Robert Green.

Written and performed by The Allusionist's Helen Zaltzman, with an original score by Martin Austwick (performed by him and Adrienne LaBelle, violin).

Produced by Helen Zaltzman and Martin Austwick.

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

The story of a friendship torn apart by type - as in, the bits of metal that print words.

In 19thC London, two titans of printing, Emery Walker and Thomas Cobden-Sanderson, form a deep friendship, setting up the pioneering Doves Press, before their friendship implodes.

[LISTEN NOW]

This documentary, part of the Celebrating Stoppard season, asks what it was like to be in a room with the playwright Tom Stoppard, who died in November 2025. What was he like to work with, rehearsing one of his plays or preparing a text for publication?

Actors, directors, producers and more share insights into the man at work, giving us a glimpse of how he navigated the great collaboration of production: in development, in rehearsal, in moments of doubt and disapproval.

Famously glamorous in public, generous and charming in private, Stoppard engaged fully with every stage of the process of bringing his work to audiences and readers: revising, debating, listening, sharing. It is the collegiate Stoppard that this programme investigates.

Presented by Emma Fielding with contributions from actors Bill Nighy, Adrian Scarborough and Toby Jones; Stoppard's editor at Faber, Dinah Wood; dramaturg Jack Bradley; producer Sonia Friedman; and director and playwright Patrick Marber.

Sound design by Peter Ringrose

Producers: Jessica Dromgoole and Mary Peate

A Hooley production for BBC Radio 4

Actors, directors and more share insights on working with the playwright Tom Stoppard.

Imaginative documentaries about culture and the arts from BBC Radio 4.

Actors, directors, producers and editors give us a glimpse behind the scenes into working with playwright Tom Stoppard; delivering a new play, in rehearsal and more.

[LISTEN NOW]

Matthew Sweet goes in search of Ray Dolby, the extraordinary inventor whose Dolby Noise Reduction system revolutionised recorded sound, transformed the cinema experience, and whose company, Dolby Laboratories, celebrates its 60th birthday in 2025.

To hear the programme with elements in binaural sound, listen with headphones on BBC Sounds to experience some of it in a 3D soundscape with a sense of space and distance.

Matthew talks to some of the people who knew Dolby best, including his widow Dagmar and two of his earliest employees, sound engineers David Robinson and Ioan Allen (who still works for Dolby Laboratories 60 years on), and to veteran Hollywood sound designer and director Midge Costin about the transformative impact Noise Reduction had on cinema, from its earliest use in the 1970s on Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and George Lucas's Star Wars, to the subsequent development of digital and surround sound. He visits the Dolby studios in Soho, London, to be immersed in Dolby's legacy, the latest cutting-edge technological developments in sound and vision, and gets to grips with the technology that Dolby pioneered. The famous double-D logo was ubiquitous on domestic cassette tapes throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s - but what actually is Noise Reduction, and how does it work? This programme reveals all.

Producer: Graham Rogers

The programme includes short audio clips from:

Brief Encounter (1945) dir. David Lean

Star Wars (1977) dir. George Lucas

Days of Thunder (1990) dir. Tony Scott

Matthew Sweet discovers the life and work of Ray Dolby, inventor of Dolby Noise Reduction.

Matthew Sweet discovers the life, work and legacy of Ray Dolby, whose pioneering innovations in sound revolutionised the way we experience music and movies.

[LISTEN NOW]

Matthew Sweet goes in search of Ray Dolby, the extraordinary inventor whose Dolby Noise Reduction system revolutionised recorded sound, transformed the cinema experience, and whose company, Dolby Laboratories, celebrates its 60th birthday in 2025.

To hear the programme with elements in binaural sound, listen with headphones on BBC Sounds to experience some of it in a 3D soundscape with a sense of space and distance.

Matthew talks to some of the people who knew Dolby best, including his widow Dagmar and two of his earliest employees, sound engineers David Robinson and Ioan Allen (who still works for Dolby Laboratories 60 years on), and to veteran Hollywood sound designer and director Midge Costin about the transformative impact Noise Reduction had on cinema, from its earliest use in the 1970s on Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and George Lucas's Star Wars, to the subsequent development of digital and surround sound. He visits the Dolby studios in Soho, London, to be immersed in Dolby's legacy, the latest cutting-edge technological developments in sound and vision, and gets to grips with the technology that Dolby pioneered. The famous double-D logo was ubiquitous on domestic cassette tapes throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s - but what actually is Noise Reduction, and how does it work? This programme reveals all.

Producer: Graham Rogers

The programme includes short audio clips from:

Brief Encounter (1945) dir. David Lean

Star Wars (1977) dir. George Lucas

Days of Thunder (1990) dir. Tony Scott

Matthew Sweet discovers the life and work of Ray Dolby, inventor of Dolby Noise Reduction.

Matthew Sweet discovers the life, work and legacy of Ray Dolby, whose pioneering innovations in sound revolutionised the way we experience music and movies.

[LISTEN NOW]

Elbow frontman Guy Garvey explores the mystery surrounding Talk Talk, their reclusive leader Mark Hollis, and the album that saw him eschew fame and fortune in favour of something radically new.

Recorded over a brutal nine months, Spirit of Eden was a critical and commercial flop at the time – but is now lauded as a masterpiece. Garvey speaks to the musicians who witnessed its troubled birth, the friends who understood Mark best, and the new generation of artists who have taken inspiration from his dogged pursuit of true creative freedom.

Featuring contributions from legendary producer Nigel Godrich and Phill Brown, as well as Radiohead's Ed O'Brien.

A Cup and Nuzzle production for BBC Radio 4

Guy Garvey explores the mystery surrounding Talk Talk and their frontman Mark Hollis.

Featuring contributions from legendary producers Nigel Godrich and Phil Brown, as well as Radiohead's Ed O'Brien.

[LISTEN NOW]

George Orwell's Animal Farm was published 80 years ago this week. It's often interpreted as a satire of Soviet communism under Stalin. But to mark its anniversary writer and academic Lisa Mullen seeks out a new perspective by asking, what if we read it as a book about farming instead? As Lisa travels from the rich sandy loam of East Anglia to the hill farms of the Cotswolds, George Orwell emerges as a man committed to life as a smallholder, and as a writer deeply involved in the agricultural debates of the 20th century – debates that have shaped the English countryside as it is today.

With contributors Nathan Waddell, Professor of 20th Century Literature at the University of Birmingham and author of A Bright Cold Day: The Wonder of George Orwell; Ian Wilkinson, co-founder and director of FarmED; Melissa Abbot, Growing Officer at the Food Museum, Stowmarket; Dr Ollie Douglas, Curator at the Museum of English Rural life in Reading; Dr Sophie Scott Brown, Fellow of the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews and author of The Radical Fifties: Activist Politics in Cold War Britain

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Why George Orwell's political satire also reveals his commitment to agricultural debates.

Why George Orwell's classic parable about communism also reveals his lesser-known commitment to agricultural debates and the life of smallholders.

[LISTEN NOW]

Helen Mort explores the allure of lighthouses, as one by one their sweeping beams are turned off.

Lighthouse optic lenses are things of beauty, their concentric glass prisms refracting light into a powerful beam that sweeps across the sea. But these lights need to evolve over the next decade to remain fit for purpose – the reliance on mercury in the rotating system is hazardous; the new LED lights can be powered by solar. The rotating, sweeping beam is replaced by a flash, which reports suggest look largely the same to the mariner at sea, but as each lighthouse has its lens mechanism overhauled, the people who live around them notice the difference and many mourn the change.

Some of the romance of lighthouses has already been stripped away in reality – they were automated through the 1980s and 1990s, so there are no manned lighthouses now. Working lighthouses are becoming an endangered species, as they are decommissioned to become tearooms and holiday lets. But they remain iconic structures, and an enduring source of fascination for poets.

In 'The Last Sweeping Beams' Helen meets those who have felt a lifelong pull towards the hypnotic sweep of their lights. For Edward Peppitt, the beam from Dungeness lighthouse passing along his bedroom wall as a child led to an obsession with lighthouses, culminating in a 3,500-mile cycle ride to visit every onshore and offshore lighthouse around England and Wales, despite a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. Helen talks to Emma Stonex, author of 'The Lamplighters', who immersed herself in the lives of lighthouse keepers in researching her book, which revisits the story of the vanishing of three keepers from a Scottish lighthouse in 1900. It's a story also told in Wilfrid Wilson Gibson's poem 'Flannan Isle', and a mystery still unsolved. Poet Glyn Maxwell explores the significance of the lighthouse beam in his mentor Derek Walcott's poem 'The Lighthouse', and writer Joe Moran explains his fascination with the iconic structures: the warning light reaching out to invisible others is a concrete symbol of our common humanity, of the fact that people we may never meet are also our concern.

At the heart of the programme, a new poem by Helen reflects on the lives that used to be spent in lighthouses, and explores the meaning of the sweeping light that has been sent out to sea for centuries.

With location recordings made at Portland Bill Lighthouse, Dorset

Producer: Megan Jones

Sound design: Catherine Robinson

A BBC Audio Wales production for Radio 4

Helen Mort explores the allure of the lighthouse as their sweeping beams are modernised.

Imaginative documentaries about culture and the arts from BBC Radio 4.

Poet Helen Mort explores the place of lighthouses in the cultural imagination, as one by one their sweeping beams are turned off.

[LISTEN NOW]

'Time is such an ever-present force, everything in time is either moving, changing... either coming or it's going...'

In 1977, the sculptor David Nash planted a ring of ash trees near his home in North Wales. Over time, he worked with them until they formed a surreal living sculpture - the Ash Dome - a kind of whirling dance of wood, coiled into a structure and reaching up to the light.

For decades, Nash has collaborated with nature - working primarily with wood as it grows or collapses, cracks and expands. His sculptures, even the ones not rooted in the earth, often feel alive - Three Dandy Scuttlers, like a line of dancing chorus girls or Running Table, as if a deer has been frozen in motion hurtling through the forest.

In the weeks approaching his 80th birthday, we hear Nash walking through the woods near his home in Blaenau Ffestiniog, exploring the ways in which his work has grown from the distinctive landscape of this slate mining town. And we hear time collapse through the BBC archives, interweaving the present day with recordings made between 1986 and 2019 - slipping from forests to sculpture parks, radio studios to David's own home - Capel Rhiw - a converted chapel now peopled with a congregation of vast wooden sculptures.

Time and the Forest features original music composed for the harmonium, cello and clarinet by Jeremy Warmsley. Field recordings of creaking oaks and the inner life of trees from freesound.org recorded by klankbeeld and naturenotesuk amongst others.

Photo credit: Robert Walker

Produced by Eleanor McDowall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

The sculptor David Nash reflects on his decades-long collaboration with nature.

In the weeks approaching his 80th birthday, the sculptor David Nash walks in the woods near his home in Blaenau Ffestiniog, reflecting on a decades-long collaboration with nature.

[LISTEN NOW]

The Poet Laureate Simon Armitage writes about clouds a lot. And high up in Marsden he lives in them too.

But he wants to bring the sky out of the background of his work and into the foreground - to consider why the floating grey blobs that ruin picnics and are the centrepiece of childhood paintings hold such a fascination for artists.

They hold a particular grip on poets, and most of us know exactly what Wordsworth wandered lonely as.

Simon visits the poet's home to browse Wordsworth's notebooks and heads to The National Gallery to explore the meticulous approach of John Constable in The Haywain.

Finally, he sets himself a nerve-wracking challenge, bringing a boyhood ambition full circle.

He's in serious training. He's going to present the weather.

Presented by Simon Armitage

Produced by Kevin Core

The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, gets his head in the clouds.

The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has written about the weather a lot. But in his work, clouds form a backdrop. He's bringing them to the fore and considering their place in art.

[LISTEN NOW]

In July 2025 President Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from UNESCO - the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. It wasn't a surprising decision - he'd done it before in 2017 – and President Reagan before him had done it in 1984, also citing over-politicisation. But as the US withdraws funding in 2026, who steps into the breach? The answer it seems is China which now has 60 world heritage sites and is an enthusiastic applicant for intangible cultural heritage status for its practices and traditions. So why is China interested in influencing UNESCO? Does it matter if the United States no longer wants a seat at the table and what does it mean for the world?

Rana Mitter explores what UNESCO, an organisation founded in Paris in 1946, still has to offer and what its fortunes tell us about the ideas of global heritage and soft power today. He speaks to those who've had direct contact with UNESCO and those who've studied it, including the diplomats Sir Jeremy Greenstock, former UK Ambassador to the UN and Nick Burns, former US Ambassador to China. We also hear from the analyst Dr Yu Jie from the UK think tank Chatham House, the British-Turkish writer Elif Shafak; Enestro Ottone, the Assistant Director-General for Culture at UNESCO; Paul Betts, Professor of History at the University of Oxford; and Erol Morkoç, a spokesperson for Republicans Overseas.

Presenter: Rana Mitter

Producer: Ruth Watts

What does the United Nations cultural body tell us about the value of soft power today?

Rana Mitter looks at what the big cultural battles playing out at Unesco mean for the world - and what the heritage it protects tells us about the world today.

[LISTEN NOW]

The poet Tony Harrison (1937-2025) recorded this complete reading of his controversial poem v. in 2013 and it is repeated to mark his death in September 2025. It is broadcast in this programme alongside a discussion around the poem's significance, also from 2013. This was the first broadcast of v. on British radio. It was recorded in his hometown of Leeds.

Harrison wrote the poem in 1985, after being angered by graffiti sprayed on his parents' grave by football fans.

The writer Blake Morrison introduces us to v. and talks to others who were caught up in the storm of controversy around it. Melvyn Bragg, Simon Armitage and Julie Bindell, as well as then-MP Gerald Howarth, consider its impact.

A filmed version of the poem caused controversy in 1987 when it was announced that it was to be broadcast on Channel 4. The poem, which includes repeated strong and racist language, was denounced by some newspapers as a 'torrent of filth'. A group of MPs signed an Early Day Motion to have the programme pulled from schedules. At that time, Gerald Howarth said that Harrison was 'Probably another bolshie poet wishing to impose his frustrations on the rest of us'. Harrison retorted that Howarth was 'Probably another idiot MP wishing to impose his intellectual limitations on the rest of us'.

Others defended the poet's right to use such language to draw attention to the wanton desecration of his family's grave. It was also seen against the backdrop of the miners' strike and racial intolerance in British cities. Beeston, the poem's setting, was later under focus as the home of Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the 7/7 bombers.

v. by Tony Harrison is published by Bloodaxe Books.

Poetry Production: Graham Frost

Feature Production: Lucy Dichmont

Producer: David Prest

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4

The controversial poem by Tony Harrison, to mark his death.

The controversial poem by Tony Harrison, recorded in 2013 and repeated to mark his death in September 2025. Introduced by Blake Morrison.

[LISTEN NOW]

For decades, art galleries have provided blind visitors with audio descriptions of paintings in their collections. But these descriptions are often only dry, “objective ? accounts of the fabulous artworks they aimed to represent. Now, a new world of imaginative audio description is emerging, and it promises to transform the experience of art galleries for blind and sighted people alike.

Our guide to these new approaches is blind writer Joseph Rizzo Naudi, who takes us on a search for a highly unusual oil painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter, Frans Hals. Join him as this elusive painting is brought to life by a unique group of blind and not-so-blind describers, and experience for yourself a fascinating approach to visual art that depends not so much on what we see, but what we say.

Featuring Georgina Kleege, Professor Emeritus of English, University of California, Berkeley; Hannah Thompson, Professor of French and Critical Disability Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London; Maria Oshodi, writer, theatre director and CEO of Extant; Bart Cornelis, Curator of Dutch and Flemish Paintings 1600-1800, The National Gallery; Elina Cerla; Harshadha Balasubramanian and Katy Tarbard, Gallery Educator The National Gallery.

Writer and presenter: Joseph Rizzo Naudi

Producer: Michael Umney

Executive Producer: Susan Marling

Mixing Engineer: Chris O'Shaugnessy

Original poem written and read by Ella Frears

Standard Art Description written and read by Megan McKie-Smith

John Berger's essay “The Hals Mystery ? appeared in The Threepenny Review (no. 10, Summer 1982)

Joseph Rizzo Naudi is supported by the Techne AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership

With special thanks to Margherita di Ceglie, Anne Fay, Karen Elsea and Alexandra Moskalenko at the National Gallery for their support.

Programme image shows a detail from Frans Hals, Portrait of a Woman with a Fan, about 1640 © The National Gallery, London.

Exploring how blind approaches to art description bring galleries to life for everyone.

An adventure in the art of not seeing. Joseph Rizzo Naudi explores how new, blind approaches to describing art can bring galleries to life for everyone.

[LISTEN NOW]

At the beginning of the Troubles, an author called Joan Lingard decided to write a series of novels for young people about a Catholic boy named Kevin and a Protestant girl called Sadie. Set initially in 1970s Belfast, the stories were some of the first written for young people about the conflict in Northern Ireland. BBC Ireland Correspondent Chris Page first read them as a boy and they've stayed with him ever since. He hears from generations of readers in Northern Ireland about how the novels shaped their understanding of the place they were from.

He starts in Bangor, near where he grew up, with his friend Ann-Marie Foster who first read the novels in the 1970s. Lingard's eldest daughter Kersten England tells him how Joan Lingard's childhood inspired the novels and about how an unlikely visitor shaped their first pages. Writer Jan Carson sits down with Chris in front of Lingard's manuscripts held at the Linen Hall Library in central Belfast to explore Lingard's continued influence on writers in Northern Ireland.

Chris follows in the footsteps of Kevin and Sadie, walking down the towpath by the River Lagan – a place where the characters retreat. He meets Dr Kevin de Ornellas, Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at Ulster University, to discuss Lingard's use of Shakespearean stories. Dr Kevin talks to Chris about what he made of characterisation when he read the novels as a young boy.

For Chris, the novels also gave him the idea that young people could strike out for a better future. He explores how the five novels progress, visiting students at Integrated College Dungannon, who have studied Joan Lingard's novels in class. They tell him what they think Kevin and Sadie would have made of Northern Ireland today.

Presenter: Chris Page

Reader: Aoife Moss

Producer: Camellia Sinclair

Studio Manager: Ilse Lademann

With material from:

Joan Lingard, The Twelfth of July, Hamish Hamilton, 1970

Joan Lingard, Across the Barricades, Hamish Hamilton, 1972

Joan Lingard, Into Exile, Hamish Hamilton, 1973

Joan Lingard, A Proper Place, Hamish Hamilton, 1975

Archive used:

Book Week NI, BBC Radio Ulster, 27 October 2010; Across the Barricades, BBC Radio Ulster, 8 November 1985; Children in Crossfire, BBC TV, 12 March 1974; Treasure Islands, BBC Radio 4, 11 December 1991; Stark Talk, BBC Radio Scotland, 20 October 2011; The Usual Suspects: Joan Lingard, BBC Radio Scotland, 1998; Kevin and Sadie, BBC Radio Ulster, 11 July 2010

Chris Page explores the influence of Joan Lingard's Kevin & Sadie novels on young readers.

Imaginative documentaries about culture and the arts from BBC Radio 4.

Chris Page first read Joan Lingard's Kevin and Sadie novels as a boy. He hears from readers in Northern Ireland about how the stories have shaped their understanding of the past.

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At the beginning of the Troubles, an author called Joan Lingard decided to write a series of novels for young people about a Catholic boy named Kevin and a Protestant girl called Sadie. Set initially in 1970s Belfast, the stories were some of the first written for young people about the conflict in Northern Ireland. BBC Ireland Correspondent Chris Page first read them as a boy and they've stayed with him ever since. He hears from generations of readers in Northern Ireland about how the novels shaped their understanding of the place they were from.

He starts in Bangor, near where he grew up, with his friend Ann-Marie Foster who first read the novels in the 1970s. Lingard's eldest daughter Kersten England tells him how Joan Lingard's childhood inspired the novels and about how an unlikely visitor shaped their first pages. Writer Jan Carson sits down with Chris in front of Lingard's manuscripts held at the Linen Hall Library in central Belfast to explore Lingard's continued influence on writers in Northern Ireland.

Chris follows in the footsteps of Kevin and Sadie, walking down the towpath by the River Lagan – a place where the characters retreat. He meets Dr Kevin de Ornellas, Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at Ulster University, to discuss Lingard's use of Shakespearean stories. Dr Kevin talks to Chris about what he made of characterisation when he read the novels as a young boy.

For Chris, the novels also gave him the idea that young people could strike out for a better future. He explores how the five novels progress, visiting students at Integrated College Dungannon, who have studied Joan Lingard's novels in class. They tell him what they think Kevin and Sadie would have made of Northern Ireland today.

Presenter: Chris Page

Reader: Aoife Moss

Studio Manager: Ilse Lademann

With material from:

Joan Lingard, The Twelfth of July, Hamish Hamilton, 1970

Joan Lingard, Across the Barricades, Hamish Hamilton, 1972

Joan Lingard, Into Exile, Hamish Hamilton, 1973

Joan Lingard, A Proper Place, Hamish Hamilton, 1975

Archive used:

Book Week NI, BBC Radio Ulster, 27 October 2010; Across the Barricades, BBC Radio Ulster, 8 November 1985; Children in Crossfire, BBC TV, 12 March 1974; Treasure Islands, BBC Radio 4, 11 December 1991; Stark Talk, BBC Radio Scotland, 20 October 2011; The Usual Suspects: Joan Lingard, BBC Radio Scotland, 1998; Kevin and Sadie, BBC Radio Ulster, 11 July 2010

Chris Page explores the influence of Joan Lingard's Kevin & Sadie novels on young readers.

Chris Page first read Joan Lingard's Kevin and Sadie novels as a boy. He hears from readers in Northern Ireland about how the stories have shaped their understanding of the past.

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Poet Rowan McCabe meets ordinary people and brings poetry into their homes, or rather their doorsteps. Born and raised on a council estate in Hebburn, South Tyneside, Rowan has appointed himself the world's first Door-to-Door Poet.

He has travelled to the UK's most complicated, divided, and isolated places, knocking on strangers' doors and asking them what is important to them. He then writes a poem about their unique stories, their unexpected passions, and their fears, before performing it on their doorstep, free of charge.

It's sort of like the Avon lady, but with rhymes. Hear a brand new adventure which takes him to Donegal, Ireland in a bid to reconnect with his heritage and his poetry.

Presenter: Rowan McCabe

Producer: Olivia Swift

Executive Producer: Geoff Bird

Mixing Engineer: Eloise Whitmore

Programme image by picturesbybish

A Reform Radio production for BBC Radio 4

Spend the day with the world's first door-knocking poet.

Rowan McCabe is the world's first Door-to-Door Poet. Think the Avon lady, but with rhymes. Talking to strangers on their doorsteps, hear the poems they inspire.

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Fifty years after Keith Jarrett performed the Koln Concert to a sellout crowd, Kevin le Gendre explores the enduring appeal of the biggest selling solo piano record of all time, and unpicks a new musical language born out of adversity.

That night in January 1975 is full of stories - of Keith Jarrett's long journey, no food, poor sleep and arriving at the Cologne Opera House to find a broken piano. The concert was almost cancelled and the legendary recording beloved by millions nearly never happened. Yet could these problems be at the heart of the album's bewitching new sound world?

Multi Grammy award winner, Jacob Collier, sits at the piano to unpick Jarrett's evocative harmonies that have captured millions of hearts far beyond the jazz world. Writer Geoff Dyer applauds Jarrett's gorgeous lyricism and discusses the momentous achievement of improvising live for over an hour, not knowing what the first note would be. British jazz pianists Nikki Yeoh and Django Bates reflect on Jarrett's influence and tell stories of gigs where limitations lead to magic. And pianist Maki Namekawa, who now performs a transcription of The Koln Concert, shares peoples' stories of why they love to listen in some unique circumstances.

And in testament to the album's blockbuster success, we hear from a few of the many guests who have picked the Koln Concert on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.

Presenter: Kevin le Gendre

Producer: Erika Wright

Sound Mixing: Richard Courtice

Production Coordinator: Elisabeth Tuohy

Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar

A TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 4

After 50 years of Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert Kevin le Gendre unpicks its enduring appeal

Fifty years after Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert enthralled a sellout crowd, Kevin le Gendre explores the album's enduring appeal and how a gig nearly cancelled led to a new sound world.

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