Radio 3
Is forgetting a modern disease?
If you were to ask me by the end of the week what I had written about in this column…
The 280-mile walk that made Bach who he was
It was in his organ loft at Arnstadt that I began my acquaintance with Johann Sebastian Bach — with JSB,…
Radio 3 offers a refreshing antidote to the current conversations about Europe
The season of Advent, for most children, means anticipation, gleeful waiting, the counting down of days. But after a certain…
What it feels like to hold a heart
It’s been heart week on Radio 4, celebrating the anniversary of the first ‘successful’ heart transplant in 1967, which was…
Why does James Purnell think radio needs to be ‘reinvented’?
Grade: A A dimbo pop reviewer for one of our national newspapers suggested that on this album, her ninth, Björk…
I never understood the appeal of Ken Dodd
It’s always odd to hear a familiar voice on a different programme, playing an alternative role. They never sound quite…
The ties that bound us
Only Neil MacGregor could do it — take us in a single thread from a blackened copper coin, about the…
Speed limit
Slow radio is popping up everywhere at the moment — programmes that have no outward form but just meander through…
Split decision
Think back to that morning in September 1967 when the Light Programme was split in two, Tony Blackburn launching Radio…
Woman of a thousand voices
‘On air, I could be the most glamorous, gorgeous, tall, black-haired female… Whatever I wanted to be, I could be……
The listening project
As Classic FM celebrated its quarter-century on Wednesday with not a recording but a live broadcast of a concert from…
‘Smile, segue and shut up’
Three weeks before Classic FM launched, I was on the radio in Hong Kong, introducing hits by Rick Astley and…
The joy of the Proms
Summer nights, hot and humid, mean just one thing — it’s Proms season again. Sore feet, sweaty armpits, queuing outside…
Coney Island amusement park used to display premature babies to a paying public
I like Radio 4 — you can have it on in the background burbling away for hours and hours without…
If you want to know how music really works listen to Classic FM not Radio 3
He’s been billed as the new Pied Piper but it’s going to take a while for Tom Service to quite…
How the BBC made the most unlikely TV hit of the swinging Sixties
‘Comedy is like music,’ said Edwin Apps, one of the characters in Wednesday afternoon’s Radio 4 play, All Mouth and…
Could radio save Syria?
Could radio, and in particular a weekly soap, have a role to play in the Syrian crisis? You might think,…
Supporting Assad against the ‘invaders’
Four programmes, four very different kinds of radio, from a classically made drama to weird sonic ramblings, via the best…
Why has classical music been so gender-biased for so long?
Hurrah for Radio 3 and its (long-overdue) efforts to give us music not just performed by women but composed, and…
Serial returns with a story of loyalty, resilience and punishment
The new season of the Serial podcast (produced by the same team who make This American Life) was launched last…
Corbyn’s turn on Today was as graceful and twinkle-toed as Bowie himself
Some might say that Jeremy Corbyn is cloth-eared, tone-deaf, socially inept but on Monday morning, as the death of the…
Glenda Jackson is brilliant in Radio 4’s Zola adaptation - and terrifying
It was a stroke of genius to invite Glenda Jackson to make her return to acting as the star of…
You can’t forget what Will Self says - even if you wish you could
It lasted for just a few seconds but was such a graphic illustration of the statistics behind the bombing campaign…
Was Bach really a ‘tasteless and chaotic composer’?
It’s just not what you expect to hear on Radio 3 but I happened upon Music Matters on Saturday morning…
National Poetry Day's mistake: letting normal people do the reading
Imagine what Brennig Davies must have felt like just before 11 o’clock last Tuesday evening. The 15-year-old was about to…
