"To educate, inform and entertain"

Today has been Radio 4's 40th birthday. Stephen Fry has described it as the last good reason for continuing to live in Britain. The playwright Philip Norman thinks of it as the British media's last great repository of culture. When John Birt was shaking up BBC radio during his tenure as Director General, millions rallied round, growling "Don't touch Radio 4!" When it won "UK Radio Station of the Year" recently (for the second or third time) it was described as one of Britain's most civilising influences, to which John Humphrys, when collecting the award, responded "No, it is the most civilising influence in Britain today." As usual with Humphrys, it's hard to argue with that.

I could point to any number of excellent programmes, but one of the best Radio 4 moments I can personally recall took place on the Today programme in the early 1990s when Brian Redhead was interviewing the Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson, an exchange that became an edifying piece of BBC history in itself. Lawson was squirming under the interviewing pressure from Redhead and lost his composure, accusing Redhead outright of left wing bias. Without skipping a beat Redhead replied, "Do you think we should have a one minute silence now in this interview, one for you to apologise for daring to suggest that you know how I vote and secondly perhaps in memory of monetarism which you have now discarded." Electrifying stuff, and a perfect example of how Today consistently punches above its weight.

I have Radio 4 on most of the day when at home, and stream it to my laptop when abroad. I couldn't ask for more from talk radio.

September 2007: 10 best photos

grace
Solo 9 Building, W. 57th St., New York. ( 21 SEP )

( + 9... )

2007 books

84) Junot Díaz, Drown, 1996
With his new novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao there's a buzz about Junot Díaz at the moment, and I finally pulled this off my shelves after I'd read that a) he reckons Samuel R. Delany is the greatest living writer, and b) he writes stories that drop SF references (and for what it's worth, he's also now professor of Creative Writing at MIT and fiction editor of the Boston Review). Drown is an impressive themed collection of shorts on growing up in the Dominican Republic followed by life as a New York immigrant, and the high expectations I had were largely met; most of the stories are narrated by Yunior and focus on individuals in his family at the expense of himself, and I suspect there's a heavy autobiographical thread running through them. The writing is for the most part crystal clear and sophisticated, observant and considerably streetwise; to Díaz language is everything and he consciously uses it to illuminate character and impart detail and a sense of place with brilliant effect. Highly recommended.