Blog posts by year and monthJuly 2010
Posts (14)
Roger Bolton talks to Kirsty Young about Desert Island Discs
Editor's note: this week's item from Feedback, Radio 4's accountability programme, is an interview with Kirsty Young, presenter of one of Radio 4's best-loved programmes: Desert Island Discs. In the days of Roy Plomley the production of Desert Island Discs was a relaxed, some would say civili...
Roger Bolton talks to Steve Herrmann about the redesigned news homepage
Editor's note: this week's item from Feedback, Radio 4's accountability programme, concerns the redesign of one of the BBC's biggest web sites - SB. Most of the comments - OK, complaints - we get on Feedback are about programmes (and of course trails, and grammar and pronunciation and presenter...
Ballads from the Old Bailey
If only we could hear voices from the past: the other couples whispering in our bedroom, the other children shouting up the stairs. As a radio producer I often think about what the past sounded like. That's why I was excited when I realised there is a way of hearing those voices: the records of ...
Roger Bolton on the London Season
If Dr Johnson was right in saying that "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life", then a lot of Feedback listeners are pretty exhausted. The cause is the two week London Season which has just finished on Radio 4. Let me give you a flavour of the reaction of some out of London listener...
Bringing the voices of the Old Bailey to life
The job of the historian is to make the long dead speak again - we take dusty, unpromising documents and breathe life back into the faded hand-writing. It can be a magical craft, akin to necromancy - trying to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Scribbled love letters, desperate diaries, a...
Radio 4 will be in terrific hands
I have known Gwyneth Williams for nearly 15 years - as a marvellous programme maker and editor and Head of Radio Current Affairs. She is full of flair - brimming with ideas of her own while encouraging others to bring their own best ideas to the table. She has an inherent elegance and a steely p...
A new Controller for Radio 4
Over the past two months I've been searching for a new Controller for Radio 4 and Radio 7. This is no simple task; Radio 4 is a unique cultural institution with a passionate audience and incredibly talented staff. Leading it is a huge honour. As I wrote here at the start of the process, Mark Dam...
Hitler's Muslim Legions
Editor's note: Sometimes the decision to commission a programme about events from recent history is a complicated one. Samir Shah lays out the many factors that contributed to one such decision - SB. Fascination with the Second World War and Nazism is one of the abiding characteristics of post ...
London: World City?
Editor's note: Tony Travers is Director of LSE London, a research centre at the London School of Economics and a contributor to Radio 4's London: Another Country. Here, he responds to this morning's #GreatestCity debate with a short essay about London's status as a 'world city' - SB London can ...
The Greatest City Debate
The #GreatestCity debate took place this morning at 0900 and hundreds of you joined in here on the blog, on Twitter and on Facebook. Four World Cities squared up for the big fight. Laurie Taylor chaired, four city lovers made the case for their favourites - London, Mumbai, New York and Istanbul ...
