Radio 3
What’s the point of BBC Music?
To Radio 2 to meet Bob Shennan, controller of the BBC’s most popular radio station (the station attracts one third…
If we all got drunk like Jeffrey Bernard, we could save the NHS a lot of money
Just back from a few nights in Sweden to find the perfect programme on Radio 3. It was one of…
Why are we so silent over Hiroshima?
It’s 70 years since the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and yet there has been no rush to…
The Proms is taxpayers’ money well spent: it’s a national asset like fish and chips and the royal baby
Make no mistake: the Proms, whose 2015 season was launched last night, would not, could not, exist without the BBC,…
Radio is the best way to mug up on the classics
If ever I found myself at a pretentious literary party obliged to play David Lodge’s ‘Humiliation’ game and to confess…
Was this Christian pioneer of radio evangelism a fraud?
She was the sequinned star of the airwaves back in the 1920s, the first preacher to realise the potential of…
The National Trust is spoiling beautiful places in the name of people who’ll never visit them
Why do we ruin beautiful places to make them appeal to those who’ll never visit anyway?
Many more Germans were displaced in 1945 than Indians during partition
What Radio 3 needs is a musical version of Neil MacGregor. The director of the British Museum and now a…
Can Radio 3 escape the digital squeeze?
The new controller of Radio 3 has at last been appointed. Alan Davey (not to be confused with the former…
Mary Beard vs Jeremy Paxman
‘Did you find it a good read?’ asked Harrriett Gilbert. An incredibly long drawn-out sigh from Mr Paxman. ‘I think…
Why is Radio 3 still leaderless?
It’s happened almost by stealth but the number of listeners to 6 Music has now overtaken Radio 3, creeping up…
Radio that makes you feel the wind on your cheek
After a walk in Richmond Park beset by rush-hour traffic, the Heathrow flight path and a strange swarm of flying…
Michael Craig-Martin pokes a giant yellow pitchfork at the ordinary
Visitors to Chatsworth House this spring might wonder if they have stumbled through the looking-glass. The estate’s rolling parkland has…
The sound of growing rhubarb
When the BBC proposed to do away with 6 Music a few years ago, the media-savvy fans of the station…
The Spectator's Notes: Quangos - a world of perfect hypocrisy
The accusation that the Tories have been installing their people in public appointments should evoke only a hollow laugh. They…
Radio 3 needs to stay relevant, and world music is just the ticket
When my colleague Charles Moore first began accusing Radio 3 of becoming ‘babyish’, and talking down to us as if…
The Spectator's Notes: French presidents used to have a touch of the monarch. Not any more
When I interviewed Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former president of France, for my biography of Margaret Thatcher, I asked him…
Mugabe envy in Scotland
Who owns Scotland? The people who most commonly ask this question believe that the land has been wrested from ordinary…
Overrated Strauss vs underrated Gluck
This is the first of my more-or-less monthly columns, the idea of which is to report on operatic events other…
You lost Aled Jones and Catherine Bott, Radio Three — but all is forgiven
It’s hard to stay cross with Radio 3 for long. Just when I thought the network had stretched my loyalty…
Sometimes Radio 3 tries to be too clever by half
Why are we still listening to the radio in 2013, to an outdated technology that has hardly changed in manufacture…
70th anniversary of Composer of the Week
Mention of the 70th anniversary of Composer of the Week brings to mind a distinguished list of long-running programmes on…
