David Hepworth on Armageddon past and present, ladies who lunch, and the warming qualities of polka
*Saturday Drama: Winter Exercise* (Saturday, 2.30pm, R4) reconstructs a series of meetings that took place daily in Whitehall over a fortnight in 1981. Here, British civil servants acted out how their political masters might have responded to a direct military threat from the Warsaw Pact countries. The script, based on recently released papers, spells out the details of the growing tension, and the ministerial measures that would in theory have been taken in response. The action pauses from time to time to allow David Aaronovitch to quiz a bunch of modern experts about what was going on in the minds of the men from the ministries at the time. As one of them observes, there was a huge generational divide: between the younger generation who protested about the threat of nuclear war but didn't really think it might happen; and the people who remembered Hiroshima, preferred to maintain an icy silence and were all too convinced it could. Of course, gaming a situation like this one only takes you so far. As one of our academics breezily remarks: "They might just have thought, 'Let's have 200 years of slavery rather than total destruction.'" That's the most original thought you'll hear on the radio this week.
Students of more up-to-date forms of Armageddon are directed to *Lines In The Sand* (Tuesday, 8pm, R4) in which Mark Doyle looks at the various violent Islamist threats coming from out of the Saharan desert and wonders whether they might be connected. They're certainly more mobile and better equipped than any previous dealers in death. "You only need a handful of people who believe in that extreme interpretation of the Koran and you've got a problem," says one expert, not very reassuringly.
In *Let There Be Dark* (weekdays, 10.45pm, R3) technology writer Rupert Goodwins reflects, if we can be permitted that metaphor, on what going suddenly blind taught him about the true nature of sight. He paraphrases Tolstoy: all perfect sight is alike; all imperfect sight is imperfect in its own way. He describes the brain as a synthesizer which supplies information when the eye doesn't. "The visual system is breaking down my eyesight into a set of jigsaw pieces that my consciousness is reassembling; but the missing pieces aren't blank." Which makes you wonder why people bother with mind-expanding drugs.
I don't like to think that Radio 4 can go too long without showcasing the diaries of a grand lady of the past who used "lunch" as a verb. Therefore I am pleased to report the arrival of the wartime correspondence between Lady Diana Cooper and her son John Julius Norwich under the title of her favoured salutation, *Darling Monster* (weekdays, 9.45am, R4). When the Sunday Pictorial was asking its readers to fill in a coupon to vote on the fate of her husband – a government minister – she went out and bought as many copies as she could get her hands on: "At St Pancras I found 240 copies." The Guardian circulation department have been informed.
Thanks to the Tune-In Radio app, I have recently made the acquaintance of *The Polka Jammer Network*, which appears to emanate from somewhere cold and windswept adjacent to the Great Lakes. Their schedule goes like this: Joni's Jamming Polkas, Polish-Style Polka Music, Richie Gomulka Polka Show, Polkas 101 and Matt's Polka Party. The cheeriness of the squeezebox that they pour into everything from country hits to Christmas favourites is much like being given a hearty slap on the back by an ice hockey player. Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.
*Saturday Drama: Winter Exercise* (Saturday, 2.30pm, R4) reconstructs a series of meetings that took place daily in Whitehall over a fortnight in 1981. Here, British civil servants acted out how their political masters might have responded to a direct military threat from the Warsaw Pact countries. The script, based on recently released papers, spells out the details of the growing tension, and the ministerial measures that would in theory have been taken in response. The action pauses from time to time to allow David Aaronovitch to quiz a bunch of modern experts about what was going on in the minds of the men from the ministries at the time. As one of them observes, there was a huge generational divide: between the younger generation who protested about the threat of nuclear war but didn't really think it might happen; and the people who remembered Hiroshima, preferred to maintain an icy silence and were all too convinced it could. Of course, gaming a situation like this one only takes you so far. As one of our academics breezily remarks: "They might just have thought, 'Let's have 200 years of slavery rather than total destruction.'" That's the most original thought you'll hear on the radio this week.
Students of more up-to-date forms of Armageddon are directed to *Lines In The Sand* (Tuesday, 8pm, R4) in which Mark Doyle looks at the various violent Islamist threats coming from out of the Saharan desert and wonders whether they might be connected. They're certainly more mobile and better equipped than any previous dealers in death. "You only need a handful of people who believe in that extreme interpretation of the Koran and you've got a problem," says one expert, not very reassuringly.
In *Let There Be Dark* (weekdays, 10.45pm, R3) technology writer Rupert Goodwins reflects, if we can be permitted that metaphor, on what going suddenly blind taught him about the true nature of sight. He paraphrases Tolstoy: all perfect sight is alike; all imperfect sight is imperfect in its own way. He describes the brain as a synthesizer which supplies information when the eye doesn't. "The visual system is breaking down my eyesight into a set of jigsaw pieces that my consciousness is reassembling; but the missing pieces aren't blank." Which makes you wonder why people bother with mind-expanding drugs.
I don't like to think that Radio 4 can go too long without showcasing the diaries of a grand lady of the past who used "lunch" as a verb. Therefore I am pleased to report the arrival of the wartime correspondence between Lady Diana Cooper and her son John Julius Norwich under the title of her favoured salutation, *Darling Monster* (weekdays, 9.45am, R4). When the Sunday Pictorial was asking its readers to fill in a coupon to vote on the fate of her husband – a government minister – she went out and bought as many copies as she could get her hands on: "At St Pancras I found 240 copies." The Guardian circulation department have been informed.
Thanks to the Tune-In Radio app, I have recently made the acquaintance of *The Polka Jammer Network*, which appears to emanate from somewhere cold and windswept adjacent to the Great Lakes. Their schedule goes like this: Joni's Jamming Polkas, Polish-Style Polka Music, Richie Gomulka Polka Show, Polkas 101 and Matt's Polka Party. The cheeriness of the squeezebox that they pour into everything from country hits to Christmas favourites is much like being given a hearty slap on the back by an ice hockey player. Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.