I like Trevor Nelson’s Rhythm Nation (Saturdays, 8pm, Radio 2), which is aimed at the people whose Saturday nights used to be spent burning up the floor of the Southgate Royalty and who now struggle to be still awake when Match Of The Day comes on. At the heart of his mix are records by Curtis Mayfield, the Undisputed Truth and Eddie Kendricks, but he’s broad enough to also include the best contemporary stuff.
Cinema maven Mark Kermode is the presenter of a special Friday Night Is Music Night (Friday 10 February, 8pm, Radio 2) dedicated to the greatest living composer of film music, John Williams, on the occasion of his 85th birthday. This concert was recorded live in Watford, a cab ride away from Britain’s most famous film studios, and features the BBC Concert Orchestra and London Voices, conducted by Stephen Bell, giving us the themes from Jaws, Star Wars, Harry Potter and many others. Provide your own choc ice.
Kate Clanchy’s dramatisation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s story A Little Princess (Sunday 5 February, 3pm, Radio 4) is precisely the kind of Victorian gothic tale for which the presiding deity of radio earmarked dark, dank winter afternoons. It’s the story of an already privileged, precocious young girl sent home from India to be educated at an establishment in the old country. Rebecca Front is predictably excellent as the cold-hearted head of said establishment. Archie Panjabi, best-known from the Good Wife, plays the princess.
If you were to attend closely to the 500-plus editions of In Our Time (Thursday 9 February, 9am, Radio 4) on the BBC website you’d be better educated than most people with university degrees. To celebrate the programme’s 750th episode, Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Northamptonshire farm labourer-turned-poet John Clare.
One of bibliophile Nicholas Royle’s excuses for having hung on to library books long after their due date is that this is a book lover’s vice. In Late Returns (Thursday 9 February, 11.30am, Radio 4) he takes books back to the places he first got them – Manchester, Paris and London – and throws himself on the mercy of the authorities. More from the world of books in the affecting Losing Margaret (Tuesday 7 February, 11.30am, Radio 4), where Hunter Davies talks to Roger Bolton about his 60-year marriage to novelist Margaret Forster and how life has changed in the two years since her death.
As political magazines move into podcasting, we are learning that most journalists can’t run a show. One exception is Isobel Hardman, who makes an excellent job of The Spectator Podcast. It’s amazing what a cavalcade of eccentrics you can get away with if they’re under the care of a competent chair. In times like these, when the president of the United States is determined to make the media into the story, it pays to listen to WNYC’s On The Media podcast with its nuanced coverage of how the press interacts with power.
