A multi tempo show for you today… In ‘allegro’, maverick music programmer, curator, and Head of Classical Music at the Southbank Centre Toks Dada is on a mission to change the face of classical music. We’ll give ‘andante’ to Joseph Cavalli-Price, a pianist and hugely accomplished tenor who embodies the profound power that music can have playing for patients in hospices. Could ‘plucking’ treasures from muddy riverbeds be ‘pizzicato’ or have we overstretched the music vocabulary? Veteran Mudlark L...
Jul 13, 2024•1 hr 1 min
The author Joanne Harris, who describes herself as ‘test-driver of experimental dream machines who sometimes writes a bit’, grew up living above her grandparents sweetshop and celebrates the 25th anniversary of Chocolat this year. The multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter Jack Garratt shot to fame in 2016 and became one of the UK’s brightest new music stars, toured the world, before taking a step back from public life to protect his mental health. And the mighty comedic classicist Natalie Hay...
Jul 06, 2024•1 hr
Rob Rinder…barrister, broadcaster, occasional orchestra conductor, lover of Amazing Hotels, currently on our TVs travelling through Italy with Rylan - and now bestselling author with his latest novel The Suspect. Beer sommelier and one of the best brewers in the UK, Jaega Wise reveals how she went from pop star to hop star to judging at this years BBC Food and Farming Awards. And Martin Sixsmith, former BBC foreign correspondent, adviser to both the Labour government under Tony Blair and Armando...
Jun 29, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Writer Sebastian Faulks, recently described as ‘a state of the species novelist’, famous for his historical stories, he’s now taking us into the future exploring what it means to be human in new book The Seventh Son. The cautious traveller Sarah Brooks, reveals how her life was changed after a vodka fuelled evening in a dining car on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Punch-lines on the touchline...comedian and football podcaster Maisie Adam has torn herself away from the Euros coverage to join us and ...
Jun 22, 2024•1 hr 3 min
The Journalist and presenter Ashley John-Baptiste, who’s written a very moving memoir about growing up in care. The Lahore born poet Imtiaz Dharker will be appearing on the programme. We’ll be talking about what’s made her identify as a Scottish, Pakistani, Calvinist, Muslim who’s been adopted by India and Wales. Plus, landscape and garden designer Miria Harris who has used her own experience of a medical emergency to design a garden to help others with their recovery. All that plus the Inherita...
Jun 19, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Fashion designer, entrepreneur and Great British Sewing Bee judge Patrick Grant has put his money where his seams are with his company Community Clothing and new book 'Less' urging us to stop buying so much rubbish and appreciate fewer, better things. We’re taking cheesy to another level with Razan Alsous who came to the UK as a refugee from Syria having lost almost everything. She has since settled in Yorkshire and is now an award-winning maker of squeaky cheese. And Frank Gardner, who twenty y...
Jun 01, 2024•59 min
We’re kicking off the festival season in style, and in the sun, with three very different books… but who’s authors have more in common than you may think. This week’s events haven’t stopped Mishal Husain making her way to us this weekend – for what will surely be the only down time she’ll have over the next 6 weeks. Mishal’s new memoir charts her families experiences through partition and the events which have allowed her to become one of the UK’s most trusted journalists. Stephen and Anita Mang...
May 25, 2024•57 min
The bestselling, prolific screenwriter and author of the Hawthorne series Anthony Horowitz… whose creative achievements may be further admired and perhaps understood when he reveals what he’s overcome with the relationship with his father. Possessed with a similar drive, Capt. Preet Chandi is with us, now the fastest woman to cross Antarctica she shares the passion that drives her to keep breaking world records! And BAFTA winning actor Kimberley Nixon, famous for her roles in Fresh Meat and Cran...
May 18, 2024•1 hr
Mary Beard unearths some of the fascinating little-known stories that helped build the Roman Empire in her new series of Being Roman, and reveals how a cake is responsible for making her Britain’s best-known classicist. From the senate and the people of Rome to the Sherlock Holmes of Tudor England – star of the new Shardlake series, Arthur Hughes joins us. Born with a rare condition affecting his right arm, Arthur was the first disabled actor to swap his kingdom for a horse and portray Richard I...
May 11, 2024•1 hr 3 min
The Titan of Tartan Noir, crime writer Val McDermid, who grew up playing in the ruins of Macduff's castle, shines a new light on Lady Macbeth in her new book, and tells us show she became addicted to video games. Nicola Nuttall has written a beautiful memoir about helping her daughter Laura make the most of her final days living with brain cancer…Laura had an extraordinary bucket list to complete in the last 12 months of her life; from going on Safari and flying a helicopter to meeting Michelle ...
May 04, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Birmingham’s unofficial global ambassador, Steven Knight, who did as much for flat caps as he did for Brum by creating Peaky Blinders and he’s now taking us back to the West Midlands of the 1980’s with his latest TV series This Town. Catherine Coldstream had a bohemian upbringing in London, lived in Paris and fell in love with "unsuitable propositions in dark polo necks" and then, spent twelve years cloistered, as a Carmelite nun. The social and domestic historian Ruth Goodman, famous for her hi...
Apr 27, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Racing driver Nic Hamilton is the first disabled athlete to compete in the British Touring Car Championship. Born with cerebral palsy and told he would always need to use a wheelchair, he certainly embodies his self-given title of ‘limit defier’ and shares how he proved everyone wrong in his new book 'Now That I Have Your Attention'. Victoria McCloud, the recently retired first trans woman judge in the UK, left because she felt she risked making the judiciary political, but her first interests w...
Apr 20, 2024•1 hr
The broadcaster, marathon runner, and proud parent to her life saving stoma Audrey, Adele Roberts reveals how she overcame cancer wrote a book and danced on ice. Writer and comedian Ben Elton whose new stand-up tour highlights his trademark incisive social commentary by exploring authentic stupidity. David Duke went from sleeping rough and living in hostels to playing football in the Homeless World Cup and founding the Street Soccer Scotland charity helping thousands of other homeless people thr...
Apr 13, 2024•1 hr
The irrepressible Tom Shakespeare shares how the boy nicknamed 'The Blob' at school went on to become a bioethicist, disability rights advocate, and now a debut novelist. Kate Silverton has swapped the newsroom for the therapists couch having retrained as a child counsellor. She has also become a bestselling author and her latest book maintains that there's still no such thing as being naughty. Did you struggle at maths with school? Having been diagnosed with dyslexia and dyscalculia as a child ...
Apr 06, 2024•1 hr 1 min
One of Yorkshire’s finest, the actor famous for Fat Friends, Coronation Street and Emmerdale, Gaynor Faye. She’s making her directorial debut with the stage adaptation of The Syndicate, written by her mother; the late, great Kay Mellor. Tommy Blaize is the voice of Strictly. He’s been singing on the show since the very first episode. But today he reveals the family DNA secret that unlocked the story behind his musical talents. What do you get when you walk the UK’s 19,000-mile coastline, apart f...
Mar 30, 2024•59 min
Rear Admiral Jude Terry, the first woman to hold flag rank in The Royal Navy, keeps us ship shape and shares how a rebellious teenager became the highest ranking female member of the Navy. Ready to send us to the sin bin Sara Cox, not that one, reveals how she "walked through stinging nettles" to become the world's first professional female rugby union referee and inspire a whole generation of officials. And the professionally ‘shattered’ comedian and writer Ashley Blaker, father of six children...
Mar 23, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Entertainer, actor, comedian, author and very clever man, Julian Clary joins us, he makes disdain and innuendo hilarious and he’s back onstage playing Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar. When Christopher Samuel picked up a biro and drew a picture of himself, it changed his life. He’ll tell us how he’s now using art to challenge the perceptions of disability. And having both served time, the award-winning hosts of the ‘Life After Prison’ podcast Zak Addae-Kodua and Jules Rowan tell us how they aim t...
Mar 23, 2024•59 min
Radio 4's Saturday morning show brings you extraordinary stories and remarkable people.
Mar 23, 2024•58 min
Jennie Gow, the journalist and BBC motor racing presenter who is navigating her post-stroke life and plans to be back on air for the Formula 1 this season. Sarah Marsh, the deaf author who has written a debut novel about a deaf woman finding her identity in a hearing world. And sailor Ken Fowler who circumnavigated every island in England and Wales, solo, in a 4m dinghy called Yoda. And don't miss the Inheritance Tracks of the comedian Alex Horne who is on Channel 4’s hit comedy game-show and th...
Mar 02, 2024•1 hr
Chris Anderson, an entrepreneur with a unique background as the son of missionaries and now the head of the TED organization, advocates for the power of Infectious Generosity as the ultimate idea worth spreading. Jane Cholmeley, once a feminist bookseller and now an author, shares her journey of running Europe's largest women's bookstore amidst challenges of homophobia and misogyny. Daisy Goodwin, a prolific television producer, screenwriter, and bestselling novelist, known for bringing iconic s...
Feb 24, 2024•58 min
Today - our guests inhabit very different worlds... One exists in kindness, James Timpson, the businessman and philanthropist - whose new book The Happy Index - puts happiness at the top of his business plans. Marianna Spring on the other hand, spends much of her life in a world filled with nastiness and trolls, and asks Why Do You Hate Me? in her new podcast. And Callum Scott Howells inhabits and interprets other people’s lives for our pleasure, currently starring in A View from the Bridge on t...
Feb 17, 2024•59 min
National sweetheart, and very silly boy, Joe Lycett adds some pizazz to proceedings...as he talks art, Queen's Heath and his special brand of public service vigilantism as he sets his sights on the water companies. The writer, producer and creator behind landmark TV series; Queer as Folk, It’s A Sin, Years and Doctor Who, Russell T Davies, looks back on a ground-breaking career. So much has happened in the life of Alison Lapper since that beautiful Mark Quinn sculpture, ‘Alison Lapper Pregnant’,...
Feb 10, 2024•58 min
Bringing his trademark droll humour and a bit of poetry to proceedings…the actor and comedian Tim Key discusses his new collection and reveals the story behind one of the most remarkable acts kindness he received from a stranger. He loves dogs, he loves sport and he’s one of the best in the world at commentating on both…we welcome the voice of a thousand sports Andrew Cotter. Bringing us emotional repair through wool…Samantha Moore, the BAFTA nominated director of Visible Mending talks about the...
Feb 03, 2024•59 min
Tom Odell, the Ivor Novello Award winning musician discusses his new album 'Black Friday' and reveals why freshly baked cakes helped with his piano lessons. Zoë Colville, aka The Chief Shepherdess, went from the madness of hairdressing in a trendy Soho salon in London, to the ‘relative’ tranquillity of tending sheep on a farm in Kent. Boxer Nathan Heaney describes his journey from fighting with grief to being the underdog and now British Middleweight Champion. Plus, we have the Inheritance Track...
Jan 27, 2024•1 hr
Extending our knowledge of Imperial frontiers - journalist, author and Empire educator Sathnam Sanghera’s reveals why tea is the best medium to discuss the British Empire. Crossing the final frontier with Libby Jackson - she boldly explores where none of us are likely to as The Head of Space Exploration at the UK Space Agency. And the record-breaking Darren Edwards keeps crossing endurance frontiers after announcing his next challenge is to become the first disabled adventurer to complete the lo...
Jan 20, 2024•1 hr
Bestselling writer, self-experimenter and host of Just One Thing, Michael Mosley is a man so keen on giving the nation ‘just one thing’ to do to improve our lives, that we’re soon going to run out of hours in the day to incorporate them all. If the very thought of handmade chocolates makes you salivate, prepare to drool, because the master chocolatier behind the new Wonka film, Gabriella Cugno reveals how useful a chocolate teacup actually is. And Julie Felix, Britain’s first professional Black ...
Jan 13, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Ed Byrne, the stand-up comedian, describes how he turned to comedy as a way of coping with the loss of his younger brother in 2023.
Jan 08, 2024•59 min
With 2024 just around the corner, we’re celebrating the lovely achievements of our guests from the year past and some of yours too... Artist Gareth Reid has painted King Charles, Graham Norton, and recently won Portrait Artist of the Decade with his interpretation of Dame Judi Dench. Rogue Jones, the married singer-songwriters Ynyr Ifan and Bethan Mai, won the coveted Welsh Music Prize 2023 for their charming second album Dos Bebés Plus the Inheritance Tracks of this year’s Masterchef Celebrity ...
Dec 30, 2023•58 min
The creative polymath Mark Gatiss; actor, writer, director, producer, funny man and excellent purveyor of Christmas ghost stories - shares his love for the macabre. By car, train, bus and...canoe - .The Hebridean Baker, Coinneach MacLeod, reveals the festive traditions of the Isle of Lewis. And illustrator Lucy Claire who came to fame by honouring the likes of The Queen and Matthew Perry with art drawn from behind - shares her joy for craft and creativity at this time of year. Plus the Inheritan...
Dec 23, 2023•59 min
Steven Moffat, the BAFTA and Emmy award winning TV writer and producer, famous for Doctor Who and Sherlock has made his debut as a playwright with The Unfriend returning to London’s West End. Kelda Wood is the former GB Para-Canoeist, first adaptive-rower to row the Atlantic unsupported, and a charity founder, whose world turned upside down by not one...by two lifechanging incidents. And the animator and illustrator Robin Shaw, the International Emmy Award winning director of The Tiger Who Came ...
Dec 16, 2023•1 hr
