Programme Information

Aled Jones says Good Morning Sunday to author Gervase Phinn.

A teacher for 14 years and now a freelance lecturer, broadcaster and writer as well as a consultant for the Open University, Gervase has written five autobiographical books along with collections of plays and poems.

He received a Speaker of the Year award in 2004 from the Association of Speakers' Clubs, and in 2005 was given the highest academic award that the Sheffield Hallam University can bestow, Doctor of the University. In 2006 he became President of the School Library Association.

This week's faith guest is former nun Deborah Hollamby, who will also provide the Moment Of Reflection.

Presenter/Aled Jones, Producer/Hilary Robinson for the BBC

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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Johnnie Walker talks to Elkie Brooks, as he continues to celebrate the Seventies by playing classic tracks from both sides of the Atlantic alongside archive sessions.

Elkie remembers her Seventies when, following the dissolution of Vinegar Joe, she enjoyed success as a solo artist with hits including Pearl's A Singer.

Presenter/Johnnie Walker, Producer/Natasha Costa Correa for Wise Buddah

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Florence Nightingale was a woman whose faith motivated her life's work. Known as the "Lady with the Lamp", she transformed nursing services and training. To commemorate her death 100 years ago this week, Brian D'Arcy reflects on her life and her contribution to the health of the nation.

The Altnagelvin Hospital Choir from Londonderry is this week's featured choir and hymns include Praise My Soul The King Of Heaven; Brother, Sister Let Me Serve You; and Jesus Calls Us O'er The Tumult. The musical director is Jim Goodman and the organist is Ian Young.

Presenter/Brian D'Arcy, Producer/Janet McLarty for the BBC

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

Best-selling author Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier, best-selling author of Girl With A Pearl Earring, discusses a range of music from Schubert and Brahms to Bernstein and Talking Heads with Michael Berkeley.

Girl With A Pearl Earring, inspired by Vermeer's enigmatic painting, has sold four million copies worldwide and was made into a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johanssen. Tracy's latest book, Remarkable Creatures, tells the story of two early 19th-century female fossil-hunters whose discoveries pre-dated Darwin and upset the establishment status quo.

Tracy Chevalier grew up in Washington DC and was educated at Oberlin College, Ohio, and then at the University of East Anglia. She has lived in London for more than 20 years. She played the clarinet as a child, and her music choices begin with two extracts from symphonies featuring a clarinet solo Schubert's Unfinished and Dvořák's New World, as well as Brahms's Second Clarinet Sonata.

Presenter/Michael Berkeley, Producer/Chris Marshall

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

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BBC PROMS 2010
Prom 31

Sunday 8 August

7.30-10.00pm BBC RADIO 3

• www.bbc.co.uk/proms
• Press pack

Conductor laureate of the BBC Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis

Sir Andrew Davis returns to the BBC Proms as conductor laureate of the BBC Symphony Orchestra with a typically wide-ranging programme of music whose pairings reflect musical homages.

"Mozart always smiled; his music also smiled," said Messiaen of Mozart, which explains the title of his Mozart tribute Un sourire, which prefaces one of Mozart's ebullient piano concertos, No. 17 in G major, with Louis Lortie as soloist.

The second half of the concert couples one of Brahms's greatest works, his Symphony No. 4, with a tribute from one of his English admirers, Hubert Parry's Elegy For Brahms.

This Prom will be repeated on Friday 13 August at 2pm.

Presenter/Martin Handley, Producer/David Gallagher

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Award-winning author AL Kennedy recalls the summer she spent working with her grandmother, a furniture polisher. A formidable person, she nonetheless knew how to make wood gleam.

An exacting, furious woman who loved the particularities of wood, AL Kennedy's grandmother was a meticulous, experienced French polisher, who knew how to apply thin alchemical layers of varnishes and lacquers to make surfaces gleam with a deep, inner shine.

AL Kennedy describes the characteristic "cheap whip and spring of young pine, or the dry and intelligent complications of restored mahogany, the sharp density of beech, the melancholy heat in oak", all qualities that were familiar to her grandmother.

In this moving testimony to her grandmother's hard-won craft and exacting skill, AL Kennedy honours the work of a generation of artisan craftsmen and women.

Presenter/AL Kennedy, Producer/Mark Smalley

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

Lord David Cobbold, founder of the Knebworth rock festivals, joins Kirsty Young to choose his Desert Island Discs.

Lord Cobbold talks to Kirsty about his life and career and describes how he would cope on BBC Radio 4's mythical desert island.

Presenter/Kirsty Young, Producer/Leanne Buckle for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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A Guide to Coastal Birds Ep 1/5

Sunday 8 August

2.45-3.00pm BBC RADIO 4

Brett Westwood presents the first of five entertaining guides to help identify Britain's coastal birds.

With the help of wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson, Brett offers help identifying the birds people are likely to see and hear in Britain's estuaries.

Brett is joined by keen bird watcher Stephen Moss on the Devonshire coast. Together with Chris Watson's recordings, they offer a practical guide to identifying birds like redshank, dunlin, curlew and knot.

This is the first of five programmes to help identify many of the birds found around the British coastline on sandy beaches, rocky shores, sea cliffs, off-shore islands and estuaries. Not only is there advice on how to recognise the birds from their appearance, but also how to identify them from their calls and songs.

This series complements three previous series – A Guide To Garden Birds; A Guide To Woodland Birds; and A Guide To Water Birds. The programmes are for complete novices as well as those eager to learn more about Britain's coastal visitors and residents.

Presenter/Brett Westwood, Producer/Sarah Blunt for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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On Boxing Day, 1900, The Hesperus, the relief ship for The Flannan Isles Lighthouse, arrived to find the three lighthouse keepers, Donal Macarthur, James Ducat and Thomas Marshall, had vanished.

Kenneth Steven probes the mystery of vanished lighthouse keepers and the poem about them.

The relief keeper discovered that the lamp in lighthouse was prepared, the washing up had been done, but the clock stopped, the fires were out and the last entry in the diary was dated 15 December. The three lighthouse keepers had disappeared.

The mystery of their disappearance has fascinated people, including artists, ever since. Wilfrid Gibson wrote an atmospheric poem on the subject, published in 1912, that intrigued the public. Peter Maxwell Davies has written an opera, there's a song by Genesis and an episode of Doctor Who based on the mystery.

The poet Kenneth Steven visits Flannan and relates what he sees there to Wilfrid Gibson's poem. Using the original reports, the telegram giving the first news, a letter written two days later by Joseph Moore and the official report by the lighthouse superintendent, as well as archive recordings and expert opinion, he pieces together what may have happened.

Presenter/Kenneth Steven, Producer/Julian May for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

5 Live Sport

Sunday 8 August

12.00noon-6.00pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

Mark Chapman introduces the latest sports news and live action. From 12.35pm there's live Championship commentary on the match between Cardiff City and Sheffield United. There are also updates from the third day of the second Test between England and Pakistan at Edgbaston and news from the Cincinnati Masters tennis.

At 3pm, there's live commentary of the Community Shield from Wembley as Chelsea take on Manchester United in the traditional curtain raiser to the top flight football season. There's also rugby league updates from the second Carnegie Challenge Cup semi-final between Warrington Warriors and Catalan Dragons

Presenter/Mark Chapman, Producer/Ed King

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

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Award-winning journalist and broadcaster Tim Samuels hosts Men's Hour, accompanied by leading males from the world of entertainment, sport, politics, media and an on-hand shrink as they leave their comfort zones behind.

Men's Hour features familiar people talking about unfamiliar things. Choreographer and star of Pineapple Dance Studio, Louie Spence, joins Tim as a regular weekly guest.

Presenter/Tim Samuels, Producer/Jon Holmes for Tonic Production

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

Test Match Special

Sunday 8 August

10.45am-6.30pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

The Test Match Special commentary team present uninterrupted commentary on the third day of the second Test between England and Pakistan, live from Edgbaston.

Producer/Jen McAllister

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5 Live Baseball

Sunday 8 August

7.00-11.00pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Josh Chetwynd and Nat Coombs present 5 Live Sports Extra's weekly Major League Baseball programme, with a round-up of all the latest news from the week in baseball.

There's live commentary on the National League Central match between Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds.

Producer/Simon Crosse for USP Content

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

Cerys Matthews welcomes author Stephen Calt to the show.

The biographer of blues singer Skip James is back with a new book, Barrelhouse Words, that promises to unlock the language secrets of vintage blues music. From "aggravatin' papa" to "yas-yas-yas", Stephen unravels the nuance and meaning of more 1,000 expressions and place names from the blues records of the Twenties, Thirties and Forties.

Presenter/Cerys Matthews, Producer/Alicia Brown

BBC 6 Music Publicity

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By tracing a history that starts in some of the earliest hip-hop clubs in the UK, Massive Attack's 3D (Robert Del Naja) puts his band into a musical context that stretches from the Clash, though to post punk experimentation, the birth of Brit electro and the hotbed of racial integrated creativity in Bristol that gave birth to some of the country's most pioneering bands.

Speaking to Matt Everitt, 3D also explores Massive Attack's often tumultuous internal relationships, his arrest as part of Operation Ore, the band's outspoken political campaigning and the making of their seminal track Unfinished Sympathy.

Presenter/Matt Everitt, Producer/Henry Lopez-Real

BBC 6 Music Publicity

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Fun Lovin' Criminal Huey Morgan invites one of his new favourite bands, Carolina And The Chocolate Drops, in for a chat.

Carolina And The Chocolate Drops are reclaiming the black string-band tradition with a uniquely modern twist. The band are Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson from North Carolina. They found inspiration from a Black Banjo Gathering, where they received tuition from one of last living performers of the Piedmont string band heyday, 90-year-old Joe Thompson.

Their debut album not only features new compositions and traditional covers but also a surprising, but barn-storming, cover of Blu Cantrell's Hit 'Em Up Style.

Presenter/Huey Morgan, Producer/Becky Maxted for Wise Buddah

BBC 6 Music Publicity

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Bard of Salford John Cooper Clarke takes over the decks while Jarvis Cocker is away, and brings in his own special collection of random thoughts, spoken word and treasured vinyl.

Presenter/John Cooper Clarke, Producer/Alicia Brown

BBC 6 Music Publicity

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Iconic DJ Andrew Weatherall returns for the latest part of his 6 Mix residency. One of Britain's best known DJs from the past two decades, Andrew has worked with artists from Primal Scream to Beth Orton, and is currently in the studio working on the follow up to his solo album A Pox On The Pioneers, due for release this autumn.

Fresh back from DJ-ing at the Big Chill Festival in Herefordshire, Andrew plays an eclectic selection of music, from folk to rockabilly, via dub and minimal techno as well as new work fresh from his Rotters Golf Club studio in East London.

In the final 30 minutes of the show, Andrew throws open the doors to his Sunday night disco, featuring a live 30-minute mix of upfront new dance music alongside some of his tried and tested favourites.

Presenter/Andrew Weatherall, Producer/Rowan Collinson for Somethin' Else

BBC 6 Music Publicity

BBC Asian Network At The London Mela

Sunday 8 August

12.00noon-9.00pm BBC ASIAN NETWORK

• www.bbc.co.uk/asiannetwork
• Feature

The crowd at the London Mela

The BBC Asian Network comes live from the London Mela at Gunnersbury Park, the final stop in the station's Summer Of Melas Season.

Having visited 11 Melas throughout the country since the beginning of June, the station broadcasts live from the event throughout the day. It starts with a live Bhangra Breakdown with Dipps Bhamrah from 12noon-2pm and then features acts from London Mela's Main Stage live throughout the day.

Programmed by the BBC Asian Network, the Main Stage is hosted by the station's Tommy Sandhu, Sonia Deol, Noreen Khan and Murtz, with performances from Gunjan, Rishi Rich, H Dhami, Preeya Kalidas, Mumzy and many more.

The BBC Asian Network Mix Tent is back at the Mela, hosted by Nihal it features sets from a selection of the station's DJ talent.

For the first time, BBC Introducing hosts a stage at the London Mela. The stage, which is present at most of the summer festivals, presents some of the best under-the-radar Asian artists, who have been featured on Bobby Friction's BBC Asian Network show. It also brings some very special guests.

On Monday 9 July between 3pm and 8pm, Noreen Khan and Gagan Grewal present a special programme featuring highlights from the London Mela.

The BBC Asian Network's A Summer Of Melas highlights programme will be available for seven days on BBC TV's Red button from 16 August, and further information, pictures and videos from all the Melas the station has visited this summer can be found at bbc.co.uk/asiannetwork.

BBC Asian Network Publicity