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31/07/2017
BBC Radio 4

    The Radio 4 Blog

    Featured Post

    Islands on 4 Extra

    Roam the globe in 4 Extra’s 2-week season showcasing the enduring fascination of islands.

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    • BBC Radio 4 Extra marks the 200th anniversary of the death (18 July 1817) of one of the most celebrated writers of all time, Jane Austen - with a selection of radio dramas and an entertaining feature.

      Thanks to her witty character portrayals and depictions of 19th century English society, Austen’s work has stood the test of time with legions of fans worldwide.

      Amanda Root

      Amanda Root stars as young Fanny Price in Mansfield Park (from 12 July). Austen’s unlikely heroine is plucked from her impoverished family and brought up by wealthy relatives, but the hopes of this poor relation are soon dashed. Yet as she grows up, Fanny proves to be an indispensable member of the household. This three-part 1987 dramatisation co-stars Michael Williams and Robert Glenister as Fanny’s cousins with Hannah Gordon as Jane Austen.

      Sense and Sensibility (from 17 July) is Austen's tale about two sisters who learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they’re to find happiness in a society where money governs...

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    • BBC Radio 4 Extra showcases the enduring fascination of islands. In a two-week season we're roaming the globe, crossing centuries and investigating the real and the invented as we consider the special place of islands in our imaginations.

      From idyll to prison, birthplace to workplace, refuge to colony, through corncrakes, campsites, witchcraft and ukuleles, Radio 4 Extra presents the mystery and magic of the island.

      Drama highlights include RL Stevenson’s classic adventure Treasure Island (Sat, July 1st), starring Peter Jeffrey and Hugh Paddick, while Michael Denison and Moira Lister star in Noel Coward’s witty satire South Sea Bubble (Sat, June 24th).

      In Three Chickens (Thur, June 29th), Anton Lesser encounters sorcery on a magic island in Brazil. Troubled lovers gaze from the Pembrokeshire coast to Skomer (Wed, June 28th), while identical twins on a remote Scottish island confront a secret in The Rocks Below (Fri, July 7th).

      Adjoa Andoh reads Jean Rhys’s award-winning novel Wide...

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    • The 1960s domestic sitcom 'Life with the Lyons' features in 4 Extra's family season.

      Family… Whether you have heaps of squealing children, an arms-length relationship with an ex-partner, siblings, step-parents, grandparents or a huge tabby cat; families come in all shapes and sizes.

      Radio 4 Extra invites you to celebrate the ‘Family’ in all its different guises showcasing famous radio comedy and iconic drama from the BBC archives including including TS Eliot’s drama Family Reunion not broadcast since original TX in 1965.

      Here’s the family related delights that Radio 4 Extra has lined up for you:

      Noel Coward’s inter-war play This Happy Breed starring John Moffatt. The story of the working class Gibbons family coping with life between the wars and stars Rosemary Leach. This Happy Breed was also produced as a highly successful film in 1944 by David Lean. 

      A family drama cataloguing the lives and loves across three generations in the The Cazalet Chronicles. Elizabeth Jane Howard’s family saga brought her success in her 70s. She was a writer who transferred and recycled...

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    • Tagged with:

      Radio 4 Extra joins in the BBC’s Gay Britannia season marking the 50th anniversary of The Sexual Offences Act 1967 – which partially decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men over 21 in England and Wales. Join BBC journalist Ben Hunte as he curates our season and interviews some of his LGBT heroes... 

      BBC Radio 2’s Paul O’Grady talks the secret gay slang of Polari ahead of The...

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    • BBC Radio 4 Extra raises the curtain on a season showcasing our honoured actors – those distinguished artists recognised as dames and knights.

      Over three weeks, we’ll be celebrating a selection of these performers with a variety of programmes (many of them new to our network) including drama, documentary, interview and talk.

      Our glittering cast list ranges from the first actor to be...

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    • Jim Naughtie presents Bookclub on BBC Radio 4

      We heard a ghost story from our author on this month’s Bookclub. Barbara Trapido was talking about her novel The Travelling Hornplayer, which begins with the following sentence: ‘Early on the morning of my interview, I woke up and saw my dead sister.’ Not a bad opening line for a story about two interlocking dysfunctional families, but in the course of the discussion with our readers, Barbara revealed an unusual experience of her own.

      She was at a literary event in Manchester when something mysterious happened in her hotel. ‘I woke up in the morning and a young girl passed through the...

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    • Jim Naughtie presents Bookclub on BBC Radio 4

      Happy New Year! Listening to John Lanchester talking about his novel Capital - the programme is repeated on Thursday afternoon as usual - I was reminded of the force of a question he raised during our discussion with readers. How many of us live in a street where there is still someone around who was born there? It used to be common in London, even a single generation ago I’d guess, but changes in the capital have made that kind of community a rarity, and a thing of the past. In John’s account of life in one fictional London street - Pepys Road - just before the financial crash of 2007-8,...

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    • Producer, Radio 4 Extra

      Tagged with:

      Whether you fancy some Ho! Ho! Ho! or a merry melodrama or two, BBC Radio 4 Extra has got it all for you this season:

      Mole Cooks His Goose
      Sue Townsend’s festive tale sees Adrian Mole in charge of Christmas dinner.   Thursday 22nd December at 2pm 

      The Adventure of The Christmas Pudding
      Hercule Poirot investigates in Agatha Christie’s festive whodunit. Friday 23rd December at 11.15am 

      King Lear on Boxing Day
      A recreation of the momentous 1606 opening night of Shakespeare’s play. Christmas Eve at 4pm 

      The Meow Show With Ed Reardon And Elgar
      3 hours of purr-fect archive from Ed and his co-host...

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    • Jim Naughtie presents Bookclub on BBC Radio 4

      Jay McInerney’s book about a week of hedonism in New York in the early eighties is like a garish postcard from a vanished world. Bright Lights, Big City made the career of a writer who was then in his mid-twenties because, as he told this month’s group of Bookclub readers, it caught the city at a moment of social and cultural drama. It had virtually gone bankrupt, there was a heroin epidemic as obvious to everyone in Manhattan as violence on the streets, and the middle classes were indulging in cocaine without a thought about addiction. There was madness in the air. The AIDS crisis was...

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    • Producer, Radio 4

      The 90th Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin in-the-Fields launched on Sunday 4 December. To find out more and donate visit the Radio 4 Christmas Appeal or call 0800 082 82 84. Thank you for all your support over the years.  

      St Martin-in-the-Fields, a landmark church in the heart of London. Picture: Craig Barker

      The neoclassical Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields at the corner of Trafalgar Square has a long history as a place of refuge. During the First World War...

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