The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
On My Wavelength
Archive on 4: The Hunger
Strikes (Saturday, Radio 4, 8pm) explores the IRA’s use of hunger strikes, beginning 40 years ago in the H-Blocks of the Maze prison in Northern Ireland. Peter Taylor reported on the story for the BBC as it escalated in 1980, until 1981 when 10 Republican prisoners starved themselves to death.
Taylor uses archive material to present a historical view of the situation and how it became a turning point in the Troubles.
Radio 2 marks the early May Bank Holiday with a special weekend celebrating jazz music. One highlight is Seb Coe: A Day Without Jazz Is Like a Day Without Running (Sunday,
Radio 2, 9pm), in which Seb Coe explores his love of jazz, the soundtrack to his life. Recalling listening to Just a Closer Walk with Thee on his Walkman headphones in the moments before winning the 1,500 metres at the Moscow Olympics, Coe plays his favourite jazz records and shares the stories he associates with each of them.
Nature Table (Monday, Radio 4, 6.30pm), Sue Perkins’s comedy show-and-tell series celebrating the weird and wonderful worlds of flora and fauna, returns this week. Perkins is joined by comedians and natural history experts tasked with sharing something from the natural world that resonates with them, from surprising facts to personal stories. Her first guests include naturalists Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan, and comedian Desiree Burch.
What happened to repairing things? As Mark Miodownik explores in Dare to Repair (Tuesday, Radio 4, 11am), we have become used to the goods we buy being designed not to last, and to throwing them away when they break. Miodownik discovers how we can prolong the life of our goods, and what’s being done to improve the situation globally.
Book of the Week: The King’s Painter: The Life and Times of Hans Holbein (Monday to Friday, Radio 4FM, 9.45am) is Franny Moyle’s illuminating biography, read by Sir Simon Russell Beale. Hans Holbein the Younger, court painter to Henry VIII, was renowned for his skill in bringing subjects to life; the first people to see his portrait of Henry VIII said it was so lifelike they expected it to begin moving its limbs. His painting of the dead Christ was so alarming that, when Fyodor Dostoevsky saw it in 1867, he was profoundly disturbed and had to be dragged away by his wife.
Moyle also focuses on Holbein’s contribution to the history of book design, jewellery, and elaborate weaponry.
In Thinking in Colour (Thursday, Radio 4, 11.30am), Gary Younge explores the history of racial “passing”, a term which originally referred to light-skinned African Americans who decided to live their lives as white people. Younge hears personal stories of how black people “disappeared” in the USA in this way in the Twenties. And he also discovers how it continues in Britain in 2021, with each personal account informing Younge’s study of different experiences of racial identity and belonging.
And in Empty Stages (Friday, Radio 4, 3.45pm), Deborah Findlay performs as Gloria Grayson, 82 years old and due to make her
West End comeback after 20 years. But, in this story written by Lolita Chakrabarti, on the day before press night, the pandemic closes all the theatres. Suddenly staring into the darkness of empty stages, Gloria has time to reflect on her life. Will she ever get her opening night?