Today’s radio

FUNERAL PUNKS

1.30PM, 11.05PM,

BBC WORLD SERVICE The Toxteth Day of the Dead is a recent ritual, but one that is growing in popularity. The bereaved are invited to join a procession through the streets of Toxteth in a unique celebration of the lives of loved ones. Kim Tserkezie hears from mourners and undertakers about new and sometimes anarchic funeral rites.

EDITH SITWELL IN SCARBOROUGH

2.15PM, RADIO 4

‘The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation.’ Edith Sitwell, the subject of this bizarre but enjoyable drama, used to stride

Hugh Dennis (4.30pm, Radio 4) around in turbans and flowing robes. Her parents made her wear a metal corset to straighten her spine, and a truss to straighten her nose; they also tried to make her wear normal clothes. It was not a happy childhood as we hear when Glenda Jackson takes on the role of the elderly Edith, wreaking revenge on her long-dead parents.

A GOOD READ

4.30PM, RADIO 4

A series of murders in seven east London churches has Detective Hawksmoor on the trail of a killer who leaves no trace, and may have come from a previous century. Hugh Dennis, whose father was a London vicar, picks Peter Ackroyd’s 1985 novel Hawksmoor as one of his favourite reads, and explains why it sends chills down his spine.

RADIO 3 IN CONCERT

7.30PM, RADIO 3

The Peter Collins organ, previously at Southampton University and now at St Bartholomew’s, Orford, has had its pipework washed and voiced, and its casework restored. The virtuoso organist Catherine Ennis shows off what it can do with a concert that opens with Bach’s Toccata And Fugue. SJ