BBC
Letters: In defence of Radio 3
Vote of no confidence Sir: Rod Liddle is too harsh on those calling for another general election (‘I hope you…
The BBC vs Gregg Wallace
The last time I took my wife to watch Millwall play a home game, a gentleman a few rows in…
Avoids the breathless hype of so many podcasts: Finding Mr Fox reviewed
We are all surely familiar with those stories of naive young Brits who travel abroad and are persuaded by a…
How did Wolf Hall escape the attentions of the BBC’s diversity commissars?
Wolf Hall is one of the few remaining jewels in the BBC’s tarnished crown. Presumably that’s why it was allowed…
I listened to a solid week of Woman’s Hour…
I was a weird kid, and though I harboured the usual innocent girlish ambitions of being a drug fiend and…
Radio 4’s Lord Lucan series is rescued by a brilliant narrator
It was 50 years ago this week, on 7 November 1974, that Lord Lucan fled what was destined to become…
Do you like the century you’re in?
Years ago Lord Patten of Barnes – Chris – was our guest for my Great Lives programme on BBC Radio…
The mystery of Huw Edwards’s missing phone
The best thing about being a playwright? The satisfaction of creativity. The worst? Press-night parties attended by friends, industry people…
The BBC Singers Centenary Concert was toe-curling
When does a new opera enter the repertoire? Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert has only had a couple of UK productions…
The fascinating mechanics of striking a deal
If you wish to know how to become a master negotiator, a formidable body of books will now offer to…
Manacorda’s thrills and spills at Prom 72
At a Hollywood party in the 1940s, the garrulous socialite Elsa Maxwell spotted Arnold Schoenberg, then teaching music at UCLA,…
More Airplane! than Speed: Nightsleeper reviewed
Earlier this year, ITV brought us Red Eye, a six-part drama set mainly on an overnight plane from London to…
Is it time to cancel Strictly?
The BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing returned this weekend, but rather than being met with the usual fanfare there is a…
The BBC’s strange silence
In the long and illustrious history of race chancing, there must have been many more egregious examples than that of…
How Berlin nearly broke Bowie
This week’s Archive on 4 is a treat for David Bowie fans. Francis Whately, the producer behind several of the…
A familiar OE-led balls-up: Rory Stewart’s The Long History of Ignorance reviewed
In my next life I intend to have my brain removed in order to become a telly executive. You know:…
Who will stand up for France’s aristocrats?
When it was recently announced that 40,000 people, the great majority civilians, have been killed in the Gaza conflict, I…
Am I slightly psychopathic to be so obsessed with gangster TV?
Most of my favourite TV shows seem to involve gangsters in one way or another: The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Top…
Milkshake me!
Nine days of campaigning to go and I haven’t been milkshaked yet. I’ve hung out near McDonald’s in the hope…
Rushdie on how the best magical realism transcends fantasy
Ask the man in the street to quote a line from one of Salman Rushdie’s novels, and he might struggle.…
A helpful suggestion for Taylor Swift’s boyfriends
Sir Mark Rowley should not resign. We must try to break our habit of getting rid of each Metropolitan Police…
