The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington (Weekdays, 9.45am, Radio 4) is Joanna Moorhead’s account of her father’s cousin, who ran away from a conventional upper-class life in Britain to hang out with artists in Paris in the 30s. She ended up – after adventures and misadventures – in Mexico, where she became something of a national treasure and one of the country’s most prominent artists. Moorhead, who had grown up simply knowing that there was one member of the family who was something of a black sheep, only linked up with Leonora in the last few years of her life, but it was in time to get her story and learn some valuable lessons.
The Stars Of Sgt Pepper (3 June, 9am, Radio 4 Extra) is a good way of filling 13 hours of speech radio. Samira Ahmed presents a mix of dramas, documentaries and comedies featuring some of the famous faces on Peter Blake and Jann Haworth’s montage, which must be the best-known example of pop art in the world. Thus you get Diana Dors on Desert Island Discs, Alan Bennett reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Benny Green’s look at Max Miller, Dylan Thomas reading his poetry and even John Sessions and Robbie Coltrane playing Laurel and Hardy.
Making History (6 June, 3.30pm, Radio 4) returns for a new series this week. The presenters are Tom Holland and Helen Castor and the subjects include the things that lie beneath Heathrow Airport, how Exeter Cathedral’s Domesday Book was restored and the history of political constituencies.
In When Women Wore the Trousers (9 June, 11am, Radio 4), Laura Barton tells the story of Wigan’s Pit Brow Lasses, who caused controversy in the 19th century when they worked in the area’s collieries wearing men’s breeches underneath hitched-up skirts.
Toby Jones plays the titular character in the radio drama The Len Dimension (9 June, 2.15pm, Radio 4) by film-maker Peter Strickland. In this follow-up to The Len Continuum, struggling actor Len finds his life is transformed in unforeseen ways by his tiny but crucial part in a public information film.
Radio 4 programmes such as More Or Less and The Briefing Room have their place in the schedules but – particularly at a time when people are worried about fake news and TV debates offer more heat than light – they may have their future as podcasts. They both perfectly embody the mission to explain. In the former, Tim Harford sets out to go “behind the stats”. To find out, for example, how nurses’ pay stands in relation to the national average; the part played by mathematics in dating; and why airlines over-book flights. In the latter, David Aaronovitch takes a calm look at important issues in the news, such as North Korea, proposed changes to the NHS and whether we should worry about Turkey.
