David Hepworthis intrigued by pedal-powered debate and Radio 4's season of kitchen-sink drama
Thursday is Energy Day on Radio 5 Live. This means heated debates throughout the day. The high spot promises to be Richard Bacon's show (Thursday, 2pm, 5 Live) which is apparently going to be powered by guests and listeners pedalling on exercise bikes. Actually, the press announcement says those guests will be "peddling" on exercise bikes, which is the truest word likely to be mistyped by any PR this week.
In the first week of British Conservatism: The Grand Tour (weekdays, 1.45pm, R4), Anne McElvoy traces the roots of the small "C" version of the political inclination of that name, all the way from Edmund Burke's fear of the French Revolution through Robert Peel's Tamworth Manifesto and Benjamin Disraeli's Young England to the only recently disbanded 19th-century women's organisation The Primrose League. It's the history of a strain of thought, rather than a variety of politics. What comes through is that the conservative impulse in the national character, irrespective of left or right, is as hard at work in Sussex today as it was in Manchester in 1840. It was only when things were being swept away that conserving suddenly became a hot issue. Nobody decided the traditions of Merrie England were worth celebrating until they'd been paved over by the spread of the industrial cities of the north. Which is why I grew up in a northern industrial town into which the authorities had latterly inserted a footling village green, complete with maypole.
Our Libraries: The Next Chapter (Wednesday, 11am, R4) is the first of a two-part investigation by Michael Rosen, looking at how libraries up and down the country are responding to the implications of Barnet council's "graph of doom", in which the rising cost of social care eats into the money that formerly went into other services. He visits the library at Peterchurch in rural Herefordshire where volunteers run a small lending service romantically housed in the bell tower and talks to planners who argue that it may be necessary to close two old libraries to open one new one. They even reckon that – since most people in the country travel to do their weekly supermarket shop – relatively recent innovations like the mobile library may have had their day. One can only hope that the second part explains how people's information and entertainment-harvesting activities have changed in the last 20 years, and how the library service proposes to meet them.
Radio 4's British New Wave Season is a timely opportunity to run some gripping stories from the 60s before they go all the way and become costume drama. There's clearly some jiggery as well as some pokery in the name of relevance. Johnny Vegas directs a feature length "re-versioning" of David Storey's rugby league drama This Sporting Life (Saturday, 2.30pm, R4) starring James Purefoy and Emily Watson. Shirley Anne Field, who played the love interest in the 1960 feature Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, now plays the role taken in the film by Hylda Baker (Sunday, 3pm, R4). Further context is provided by Archive On Four: Beyond The Kitchen Sink (Saturday, 8pm, R4) and John Osborne: The Author Of Himself (Monday, 2.15pm, R4), a dramatisation of Osborne's meeting and collaboration with Look Back In Anger's discoverer George Devine. "The Royal Court are putting on your play," says Osborne's mother, for whom the kitchen sink was more than a signifier. "Will they still take you at the Christmas post?" Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 day ago.
Thursday is Energy Day on Radio 5 Live. This means heated debates throughout the day. The high spot promises to be Richard Bacon's show (Thursday, 2pm, 5 Live) which is apparently going to be powered by guests and listeners pedalling on exercise bikes. Actually, the press announcement says those guests will be "peddling" on exercise bikes, which is the truest word likely to be mistyped by any PR this week.
In the first week of British Conservatism: The Grand Tour (weekdays, 1.45pm, R4), Anne McElvoy traces the roots of the small "C" version of the political inclination of that name, all the way from Edmund Burke's fear of the French Revolution through Robert Peel's Tamworth Manifesto and Benjamin Disraeli's Young England to the only recently disbanded 19th-century women's organisation The Primrose League. It's the history of a strain of thought, rather than a variety of politics. What comes through is that the conservative impulse in the national character, irrespective of left or right, is as hard at work in Sussex today as it was in Manchester in 1840. It was only when things were being swept away that conserving suddenly became a hot issue. Nobody decided the traditions of Merrie England were worth celebrating until they'd been paved over by the spread of the industrial cities of the north. Which is why I grew up in a northern industrial town into which the authorities had latterly inserted a footling village green, complete with maypole.
Our Libraries: The Next Chapter (Wednesday, 11am, R4) is the first of a two-part investigation by Michael Rosen, looking at how libraries up and down the country are responding to the implications of Barnet council's "graph of doom", in which the rising cost of social care eats into the money that formerly went into other services. He visits the library at Peterchurch in rural Herefordshire where volunteers run a small lending service romantically housed in the bell tower and talks to planners who argue that it may be necessary to close two old libraries to open one new one. They even reckon that – since most people in the country travel to do their weekly supermarket shop – relatively recent innovations like the mobile library may have had their day. One can only hope that the second part explains how people's information and entertainment-harvesting activities have changed in the last 20 years, and how the library service proposes to meet them.
Radio 4's British New Wave Season is a timely opportunity to run some gripping stories from the 60s before they go all the way and become costume drama. There's clearly some jiggery as well as some pokery in the name of relevance. Johnny Vegas directs a feature length "re-versioning" of David Storey's rugby league drama This Sporting Life (Saturday, 2.30pm, R4) starring James Purefoy and Emily Watson. Shirley Anne Field, who played the love interest in the 1960 feature Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, now plays the role taken in the film by Hylda Baker (Sunday, 3pm, R4). Further context is provided by Archive On Four: Beyond The Kitchen Sink (Saturday, 8pm, R4) and John Osborne: The Author Of Himself (Monday, 2.15pm, R4), a dramatisation of Osborne's meeting and collaboration with Look Back In Anger's discoverer George Devine. "The Royal Court are putting on your play," says Osborne's mother, for whom the kitchen sink was more than a signifier. "Will they still take you at the Christmas post?" Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 day ago.