David Hepworth on the politics of architecture, French presidents, mimics, and a whole stack of Smiley
A friend was studying architecture at an establishment on the Euston Road, which is about as busy a thoroughfare as you'll find in London. In his final year the whole class were charged with coming up with a radical reworking of every element of the environment immediately surrounding the college. They were encouraged to have the most blue-sky ideas. They planned to get all the local faith groups to share the one worship centre – that's how blue-sky their thinking was. However, the one thing they weren't allowed to "re-imagine", the thing that was taken as a given, was the six lanes of heavy traffic hurtling past their classroom windows day and night until doomsday.
The message was that while leisure spaces were all well and good, cars had priority. In* The Politics Of Architecture *(Tuesday, 9am, R4) Jonathan Glancey examines how the people responsible for the built environment are weaning themselves off some of those old ideas. Distinguished architects such as Terry Farrell describe how the main thing that once governed the layout of housing developments was the turning circle of a refuse collection vehicle. The stress in architecture nowadays is as likely to be on the spaces between the buildings as on the buildings themselves, and the overriding aim is to create a sense of place. A lot of it's in the language, which is where the politics comes in. A street is for people, a road is for cars. The street is what matters because, as Farrell says, in most cases it outlives the buildings along it.
Philip Short's biography of *Mitterrand* (weekdays, 9.45am, R4) is certainly an interesting account of one of postwar France's key political figures, though Henry Goodman's reading, in which he mimics the voice and character of everyone from Helmut Kohl to François' teenage girlfriend, veers at times towards 'Allo 'Allo. Mitterrand was difficult to read, what with his two families and unpredictable political allies. He liked Thatcher, even when she exasperated him. She spoke French better than he spoke English, but with a strong accent. "If you close your eyes it could be Jane Birkin," he said.
Should you feel a debilitating cold coming on, there's no better week for it to arrive. Radio 4 Extra is beginning their repeat of all 19 parts of *The Complete Smiley*, starting with Call For The Dead (Saturday, 6am, R4 Extra). Subsequent episodes in Smiley's career, from The Looking Glass War to The Secret Pilgrim, follow each morning at not quite such unsocial hours. Simon Russell Beale plays our frogular spymaster with actors of the calibre of Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron and Geoffrey Palmer as sundry executives of the Circus plus a star-studded chorus of pavement artists, inquisitors, scalp-hunters and mothers. None of the screen adaptations have got more out of the mordant music of John Le Carré than this brilliant version, which was first broadcast in 2009.
*The Secret World (*Thursday, 6.30pm, R4) is another attempt to make radio impressionists click with the times. The problem is that while some public personalities have voices that beg to be parodied, others don't. William Hague is always funny. Alex Salmond not so much. There's also a new series of *That Mitchell And Webb Sound* (Tuesday, 6.30pm, R4), where the best sketch is about how you shouldn't beat a joke into the ground. They prove this point by beating a joke into the ground. Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.
A friend was studying architecture at an establishment on the Euston Road, which is about as busy a thoroughfare as you'll find in London. In his final year the whole class were charged with coming up with a radical reworking of every element of the environment immediately surrounding the college. They were encouraged to have the most blue-sky ideas. They planned to get all the local faith groups to share the one worship centre – that's how blue-sky their thinking was. However, the one thing they weren't allowed to "re-imagine", the thing that was taken as a given, was the six lanes of heavy traffic hurtling past their classroom windows day and night until doomsday.
The message was that while leisure spaces were all well and good, cars had priority. In* The Politics Of Architecture *(Tuesday, 9am, R4) Jonathan Glancey examines how the people responsible for the built environment are weaning themselves off some of those old ideas. Distinguished architects such as Terry Farrell describe how the main thing that once governed the layout of housing developments was the turning circle of a refuse collection vehicle. The stress in architecture nowadays is as likely to be on the spaces between the buildings as on the buildings themselves, and the overriding aim is to create a sense of place. A lot of it's in the language, which is where the politics comes in. A street is for people, a road is for cars. The street is what matters because, as Farrell says, in most cases it outlives the buildings along it.
Philip Short's biography of *Mitterrand* (weekdays, 9.45am, R4) is certainly an interesting account of one of postwar France's key political figures, though Henry Goodman's reading, in which he mimics the voice and character of everyone from Helmut Kohl to François' teenage girlfriend, veers at times towards 'Allo 'Allo. Mitterrand was difficult to read, what with his two families and unpredictable political allies. He liked Thatcher, even when she exasperated him. She spoke French better than he spoke English, but with a strong accent. "If you close your eyes it could be Jane Birkin," he said.
Should you feel a debilitating cold coming on, there's no better week for it to arrive. Radio 4 Extra is beginning their repeat of all 19 parts of *The Complete Smiley*, starting with Call For The Dead (Saturday, 6am, R4 Extra). Subsequent episodes in Smiley's career, from The Looking Glass War to The Secret Pilgrim, follow each morning at not quite such unsocial hours. Simon Russell Beale plays our frogular spymaster with actors of the calibre of Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron and Geoffrey Palmer as sundry executives of the Circus plus a star-studded chorus of pavement artists, inquisitors, scalp-hunters and mothers. None of the screen adaptations have got more out of the mordant music of John Le Carré than this brilliant version, which was first broadcast in 2009.
*The Secret World (*Thursday, 6.30pm, R4) is another attempt to make radio impressionists click with the times. The problem is that while some public personalities have voices that beg to be parodied, others don't. William Hague is always funny. Alex Salmond not so much. There's also a new series of *That Mitchell And Webb Sound* (Tuesday, 6.30pm, R4), where the best sketch is about how you shouldn't beat a joke into the ground. They prove this point by beating a joke into the ground. Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.