Radio 3
Disappointingly conventional and linear: BBC radio's modernism season reviewed
This week marks the beginning of modernism season on BBC Radio 3 and 4, which means it’s time for some…
The Sunday Feature is one of the most consistently interesting things on Radio 3
The story is likely apocryphal — and so disgraceful I almost hesitate to tell it — but it goes like…
Seldom less than gripping: Banged Up podcast reviewed
Prison-based podcast Banged Up, now in its second series, is far more uplifting — and less soapy — than its…
Is the hottest new podcast, The Apology Line, worth sticking with?
With the arts world still largely in hibernation, the launch of a big podcast is as close as we get…
Boldly going where hundreds have gone before: Brave New Planet podcast reviewed
Since technology is developing at such light-speed pace, why does it feel so strangely slow? There is a sense that…
A beautiful radio adaptation: Radio 4’s The Housing Lark reviewed
Nineteen fifty-six: the Suez crisis, the first Tesco, Jim Laker takes 19 wickets in a match. But also: Trinidadian pianist…
The most important book on black Britishness has one flaw: its author was white
Can people of one race really understand the experience of another? asks Colin Grant
The musical event of the year: Wigmore Hall BBC Radio 3 Special Broadcasts reviewed
Remember when 2020 was going to be Beethoven year? There were going to be cycles and festivals, recordings and reappraisals;…
I've lost patience with podcasts and their presenters
‘To be recognised and accepted by a peregrine,’ wrote J.A. Baker in 1967, ‘you must wear the same clothes, travel…
Letters: The ban on public worship has enabled more of us to experience spiritual riches
Divine works Sir: Luke Coppen writes that livestreamed services ‘lack the vital communal dimension of worship’ and ‘are, at times,…
Why do Radio 3 presenters adopt the tone stupid adults use when addressing children?
Anyone who has listened regularly to Radio 3 over the decades — not to mention the Third Programme, which Radio…
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…
The joy of Radio 3’s Building a Library
So, you’ve fallen in love with a piece of classical music and you want to buy a recording. The problems…
How podcasts have transformed radio
As if on cue, Lemn Sissay’s new series for Radio 4 tackles all those questions we would rather ignore in…
The pleasures and perils of talking about art on the radio
‘I like not knowing why I like it,’ declared Fiona Shaw, the actress, about Georgia O’Keeffe’s extraordinary blast of colour,…
The Polish electronic music revolution of the 1950s
It was created in November 1957, a year before the BBC’s fabled Radiophonic Workshop, and was far more influential in…
Can giving voice to the horrors of the past re-traumatise?
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
There was something really creepy about listening to the ten-minute countryside podcast released last weekend by Radio 4 supposedly transporting…
What drives Emily Maitlis?
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
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
It’s not often you hear the voice of a 104-year-old on the radio. You’re even less likely to hear one…
Why was Something Understood cut?
It was never given the choicest slot in the schedule, airing first thing on Sunday morning with a repeat at…
Is the increasing secularisation of funerals a good thing?
‘You’re thinking these girls all wrong,’ Miss Mai tells Enid in Winsome Pinnock’s play Leave Taking, adapted from the recent…
Scala Radio is a real threat to Radio 2
It’s not surprising given the way that electronic communication has taken over so much of our daily business, minimising human…
Why wasn’t Poetry Please in the Radio Times’s top 30 greatest radio shows of all time?
With the upsurge of listeners to Classic FM (now boasted to be 5.6 million listeners each week) and the imminent…
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