RADIO CHOICE

THE martial arts expert and film star Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1940; within a few months, his family left for Hong Kong. The baby was named Lee Jun-fan by his mother; it means ‘return again’, and his mother was convinced that Lee (pictured) would return one day to San Francisco. The penultimate instalment of CHINESE CHARACTERS (RADIO 4, 1.45PM) hears how young Lee grew up to be China’s first global superstar.

HUNGARY, 1963. A man is murdered, and investigator Bertalan Lazar has to track down his killer. But none of his colleagues has any enthusiasm for the case. There’s a reason for this — the dead man was a former member of the despised secret police, and a lot of people are happy he’s dead. Leo Bill plays Lazar in Philip Palmer’s detective drama

KEEPING THE WOLF OUT (RADIO 4, 2.15PM).

THERE’S an old belief that swans sing only once in their lives, and that song is sung at the moment they die. It’s the belief that lies behind the term ‘swan song’ and it has also inspired many poems and musical works, including Orlando Gibbons’s madrigal The Silver Swan.

THE ESSAY: MY LIFE IN MUSIC (RADIO 3,

10.45PM) has the oboe player George Caird sharing his thoughts on a work that ends with the words ‘O death, come close mine eyes; More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.’