David Hepworth on the First World War centenary, spoken-word Motown and Roger Taylor's rock fixation
The one thing we can guarantee about 2014 is that it will be packed with programmes pegged to the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war. There are worse places to start than with *Landmark: The Strange Death Of Liberal England* (Thursday, 10pm, R3) in which Philip Dodd encircles a table with heavyweights Roy Foster, Shirley Williams, Bea Campbell and Nick Cohen to discuss the legacy of George Dangerfield's classic 1934 history. His opening question, a fair one, is: "Why does the first world war have such a grip on our imagination?"
You'll be better equipped to compose an answer if you've listened to a programme a few days earlier presented by the none-more-avuncular Roy Hudd. *Archive On 4: The Long, Long Trail *(Saturday, 8pm, R4) is rooted in the war but it's also part of a season celebrating the legacy of long-serving BBC radio producer Charles Chilton, who died a year ago at the age of 95. Chilton never met his father, who died in the conflict, and he grew up amid poverty. His greatest radio achievement was a 1961 programme called The Long, Long Trail, which had the idea, in those days forehead-smitingly revolutionary, of telling the stories of the poor bloody infantry through the sentimental, salacious and sardonic songs with which they entertained themselves. There are scores of examples. My personal favourite is Fred Karno's Army, which is sung to the tune of The Church's One Foundation and likens the nation's frontline fighting force to a well-known circus of the time.
This being 1961, the songs in Chilton's show are rather fruitily recreated by the kind of cardie-wearing session singers who used to cluster round the microphones of the Light Programme. Although the links don't pretend that Passchendaele was a picnic, neither does the 1961 programme give the impression that 1914-18 was the key catastrophe of our time. That perspective was to come later, with the 1964 launch of the documentary series The Great War, and before that with the 1963 success of Oh What A Lovely War!, which was directly inspired by The Long, Long Trail. This made the name of its director Joan Littlewood, which, as Chilton's widow points out, is pretty rich because she originally wanted to do it without the songs. It's shows like Oh! What A Lovely War, its blood relatives such as Blackadder Goes Forth, and the sound of cheerful songs sung in cheerless voices that help explain the first world war's enduring grip on our imagination.
Claims are made for Chilton as the father of the music documentary, which takes us to *Motown: Speaking In The Streets *(Thursday, 11.30am, R4). Alvin Hall looks at the story of Black Forum, a spoken-word label that Berry Gordy set up in 1970 to publish the works of orators and writers such as Martin Luther King Jr and Stokely Carmichael. It closed in 1973, by which time Gordy had made the happy discovery that you could really sell radical sentiments – provided you had a nice tune to go along with them.
People take the word "rock" so literally these days that *Taylor Made* (Saturday, 3.05pm, R2) – in which Queen drummer Roger Taylor plays his favourite records – starts with The Rocker by Thin Lizzy, a record so devoid of charm one might almost suspect it had been put there after somebody typed the word "rocker" into a search engine. Reported by guardian.co.uk 3 days ago.
The one thing we can guarantee about 2014 is that it will be packed with programmes pegged to the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war. There are worse places to start than with *Landmark: The Strange Death Of Liberal England* (Thursday, 10pm, R3) in which Philip Dodd encircles a table with heavyweights Roy Foster, Shirley Williams, Bea Campbell and Nick Cohen to discuss the legacy of George Dangerfield's classic 1934 history. His opening question, a fair one, is: "Why does the first world war have such a grip on our imagination?"
You'll be better equipped to compose an answer if you've listened to a programme a few days earlier presented by the none-more-avuncular Roy Hudd. *Archive On 4: The Long, Long Trail *(Saturday, 8pm, R4) is rooted in the war but it's also part of a season celebrating the legacy of long-serving BBC radio producer Charles Chilton, who died a year ago at the age of 95. Chilton never met his father, who died in the conflict, and he grew up amid poverty. His greatest radio achievement was a 1961 programme called The Long, Long Trail, which had the idea, in those days forehead-smitingly revolutionary, of telling the stories of the poor bloody infantry through the sentimental, salacious and sardonic songs with which they entertained themselves. There are scores of examples. My personal favourite is Fred Karno's Army, which is sung to the tune of The Church's One Foundation and likens the nation's frontline fighting force to a well-known circus of the time.
This being 1961, the songs in Chilton's show are rather fruitily recreated by the kind of cardie-wearing session singers who used to cluster round the microphones of the Light Programme. Although the links don't pretend that Passchendaele was a picnic, neither does the 1961 programme give the impression that 1914-18 was the key catastrophe of our time. That perspective was to come later, with the 1964 launch of the documentary series The Great War, and before that with the 1963 success of Oh What A Lovely War!, which was directly inspired by The Long, Long Trail. This made the name of its director Joan Littlewood, which, as Chilton's widow points out, is pretty rich because she originally wanted to do it without the songs. It's shows like Oh! What A Lovely War, its blood relatives such as Blackadder Goes Forth, and the sound of cheerful songs sung in cheerless voices that help explain the first world war's enduring grip on our imagination.
Claims are made for Chilton as the father of the music documentary, which takes us to *Motown: Speaking In The Streets *(Thursday, 11.30am, R4). Alvin Hall looks at the story of Black Forum, a spoken-word label that Berry Gordy set up in 1970 to publish the works of orators and writers such as Martin Luther King Jr and Stokely Carmichael. It closed in 1973, by which time Gordy had made the happy discovery that you could really sell radical sentiments – provided you had a nice tune to go along with them.
People take the word "rock" so literally these days that *Taylor Made* (Saturday, 3.05pm, R2) – in which Queen drummer Roger Taylor plays his favourite records – starts with The Rocker by Thin Lizzy, a record so devoid of charm one might almost suspect it had been put there after somebody typed the word "rocker" into a search engine. Reported by guardian.co.uk 3 days ago.