In Our Time
Why In Our Time remains the best thing on radio
In Our Time is the best thing on Radio 4, possibly the best thing on the radio full stop. It…
My love affair with Hannah Arendt
The three of us — me, Catriona and her daughter Skye — were having a wash and brush-up before going…
Why do writers enjoy walking so much?
Writers like walking. When people ask us why, we say it’s what writers do. ‘Just popping out to buy a…
Are the Dead Ringers audience told to laugh?
Nine on a Thursday morning is University Hour for those of us who don’t commute to an office every day.…
How many words were coined by Thomas Browne?
‘How many words will you use today, first used by Thomas Browne in the 17th century?’ asked a trailer on…
The marketisation of BBC radio is a recipe for creative disaster
There’s been a lot of fuss and many column inches written about levels of pay at the BBC, as revealed…
Benjamin Zephaniah once found the leg of a man in the back of a Ford Cortina
‘For me rhyming was normal,’ said Benjamin Zephaniah, reading from his autobiography on Radio 4. Back in the 1960s, on…
Why I love The Bottom Line
Evan Davis’s series on business life, The Bottom Line (made in conjunction with the Open University), has become one of…
The pleasures and perils of podcast listening
No phrase is better calculated to tense the neck muscles of a regular podcast listener than ‘We have something special…
Melvyn Bragg's notebook: I found hell on Regent Street
John Lloyd, producer of Blackadder, Spitting Image, QI etc, has boldly picked up where he left off at Cambridge more…
