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FRIDAY 22 AUGUST
Presented by John Wilson
Audio of today's items
will be available on Tuesday 26 August
IMBER
John Wilson reports from the village of Imber on Salisbury Plain. Evacuated sixty years ago, the village has been used ever since for military practice. Artangel will transform the location for three nights over the August Bank Holiday in a series of events that culminates with the performance of a new work by composer Giya Kancheli.
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BBC Wiltshire has a video and gallery of Thursday's events...
TOM HOLLAND
Tom Holland speaks to Front Row about his retelling of the last century of the Roman Empire. With its celebrity chefs, late-night partying and a strike-first foreign policy, was the Republic really that far from the empires of today?
Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland is published 28 August, Little, Brown, ISBN 0316861308
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GERRY
Front Row reviews Gerry, Gus van Sant's tale of two young men (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) lost in the desert.
Gerry is released in cinemas today
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JOAN BAEZ
Joan Baez talks to Front Row on the release of her first album in six years. Dark Chords on a Big Guitar features contributions from songwriters including Steve Earle, Ryan Adams, and David Rawlings.
Dark Chords on a Big Guitar is released by Sanctuary, catalogue number SANCD218
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SEPTEMBER NOVELS COMPETITION
Each day this week five passages from different books have been read out on air. You have to guess who the five authors are by their writing style. Find out how to enter here...
5th Reading
But I go to Hollywood but I go to hospital, but you are first but you are last, but he is tall but she is small, but you stay up but you go down, but we are rich but we are poor, but they find peace but they find…
Xan Meo went to Hollywood. And, minutes later, with urgent speed, and accompanied by choric howls of electrified distress, Xan Meo went to hospital. Male violence did it.
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4th Reading
The King of Capri had been out to a party. It was just the kind of party that Kings like best. All his friends were there, and somebody had cooked his favourite food. There was royal jelly, crown of lamb, queen of puddings, buns with pearly icing, and chocolate soldiers.
The King ate much as he could but not as much as he would have liked. He had a bun in one hand, jelly in the other but, try as he might, he couldn't get all the jelly and all the bun into his mouth at once.
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3rd Reading
There is first of all the problem of the opening, namely, how to get us from where we are, which is, as yet, nowhere, to the far bank. It is a simple bridging problem, a problem of knocking together a bridge. People solve problems every day. They solve them, and having solved them push on.
Let us assume that, however it may have been done, it is done. Let us take it that the bridge is built and crossed, that we can put it out of our mind. We have left behind the territory in which we were. We are in the far territory, where we want to be.
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2nd Reading
The day she walked the streets of Silk, a chafing wind kept the temperature low and the sun was helpless to move outside thermometers more than a few degrees above freezing. Tiles of ice had formed at the shoreline and, inland, the thrown-together houses on Monarch Street whined like puppies. Ice slick gleamed, then disappeared in the early evening shadow, causing the sidewalks she marched along to undermine even an agile tread, let alone one with a faint limp. She should have bent her head and closed her eyes to slits in that weather, but being a stranger, she stared wide-eyed at each house searching for the address that matched the one in the advertisement: One Monarch Street.
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1st Reading
Every woman he dares to sleep with bears his child. So now it is Mouetta's turn. Whispering and smudging his ear with her lipstick, her breath a little sour from the garlic in her lunch, she confirms her first, his sixth pregnancy. His sixth at least. She's 'passed the urine test,' she says - an unintended play on words, which she acknowledges in the matinée darkness with half an optimistic smile. The doctor thinks she's twelve or thirteen weeks. A baby due by May. It's early days.
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RELATED LINKS
BBC Wiltshire - Imber photo gallery
Artangel
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