BBC Radio 4

The funniest current affairs show since Brass Eye: Into the Grey Zone reviewed

20 February 2021 9:00 am

It was something a friend said to me about The Revenant, Leonardo diCaprio’s bloody-minded and brutal Oscar vehicle: ‘The problem…

Why do writers enjoy walking so much?

7 February 2020 10:00 pm

Writers like walking. When people ask us why, we say it’s what writers do. ‘Just popping out to buy a…

Radio 4's new H.P. Lovecraft adaptation will give you the chills

24 January 2020 10:00 pm

Of all the many things I’ve learned from the radio so far this decade, the most deranging is that the……

How podcasts have transformed radio

21 December 2019 9:00 am

As if on cue, Lemn Sissay’s new series for Radio 4 tackles all those questions we would rather ignore in…

Why I love a bit of death on a Sunday night

9 November 2019 9:00 am

There’s nothing like a nice bit of death on a Sunday evening. Radio 4 originally transmit their obituary programme Last…

Ronald Blythe took us back to an age when a tenant could be turfed out of a tied house simply for being 'rude'

Can giving voice to the horrors of the past re-traumatise?

26 October 2019 9:00 am

It is 50 years since Ronald Blythe published Akenfield, his melancholy portrait of a Suffolk village on the cusp of…

Without Joe Grundy The Archers feels lost

19 October 2019 9:00 am

There was something really creepy about listening to the ten-minute countryside podcast released last weekend by Radio 4 supposedly transporting…

Even Donald Trump is tweeting about Spectator USA

12 October 2019 9:00 am

We’ve just launched the US edition of The Spectator and the reaction so far has been great. Americans can be…

Did Radio 2 really need to give us four days of the Beatles to celebrate Abbey Road?

5 October 2019 9:00 am

This Changeling Self, Radio 4’s lead drama this week, clearly ought to have gone out in August. It’s set —…

Why 80 per cent of young people in this Macedonian town have turned to posting ‘fake news’

7 September 2019 9:00 am

It’s such a relief to turn on the radio and hear the voice of Neil MacGregor. That reasoned authority, his…

The joys of Radio 4’s Word of Mouth

31 August 2019 9:00 am

I first heard Lemn Sissay talking about his childhood experiences on Radio 4 in 2009. At that time he was…

Will you last beyond the madeleine? Radio 4’s In Search of Lost Time reviewed

24 August 2019 9:00 am

The madeleine upon which Proust’s seven-volume epic In Search of Lost Time pivots makes its significant appearance after just 18…

An Afghan voter at a polling station in Herat in 2014. Image: AFP / Aref Karimi / Getty Images

The woman who wrote Afghanistan’s electoral laws lives on a houseboat in Bristol

3 August 2019 9:00 am

By the age of eight Vaira Vike-Freiberga had learnt that life was both ‘very strange and very unfair’. Her baby…

An important story but not for the faint-hearted: Deadliest Day podcast reviewed

13 July 2019 9:00 am

One of the advantages that podcasts have over the scheduled array of programmes is the space that can be given…

Jonathan Dimbleby is right: we need to rise up and defend the BBC

6 July 2019 9:00 am

There’s been a Dimbleby on air since before I was born but last Friday saw the end of that era…

Emily Maitlis (Rex)

What drives Emily Maitlis?

29 June 2019 9:00 am

It can’t be easy to find yourself on the other end of the microphone when you’re a journalist of the…

What Mary Wollstonecraft writes about motherhood is still so relevant

22 June 2019 9:00 am

Walking into Fingal’s Cave, after scrambling across the rocks to reach it from the landing stage where the boat from…

The extraordinary life of 104-year-old dancer Eileen Kramer

8 June 2019 9:00 am

It’s not often you hear the voice of a 104-year-old on the radio. You’re even less likely to hear one…

Tweedy or Trainer: Which kind of Brexiteer are you?

11 May 2019 9:00 am

‘Too tweedy? Goodness gracious me!’ Rory Stewart sounded startled. A contender for the Tory leadership, he was being interviewed by…

Why do we still use the Qwerty keyboard layout and not Dvorak?

4 May 2019 9:00 am

‘Can you fly down this evening?’ she was asked by her boss in the Delhi office of the BBC. ‘Yes,…

Mark Tully, presenter of Something Understood, in New Delhi in 2015. Image: Shivam Saxena/ Hindustan Times/ Getty Images

Why was Something Understood cut?

27 April 2019 9:00 am

It was never given the choicest slot in the schedule, airing first thing on Sunday morning with a repeat at…

The daunting, uplifting prose of The Psalms

20 April 2019 9:00 am

As if in defiance of the BBC’s current obsession with programming designed to entice in that elusive young and modish…

The man who changed the sound of radio

13 April 2019 9:00 am

He is said to ‘have changed the sound of speech radio’, not just by giving voice to those who until…

Art is often best experienced on the radio

6 April 2019 9:00 am

At its best audio can be a much more visual medium than the screen. Making Art with Frances Morris (produced…