Radio choice Charlotte Runcie

Drama: From Marginal to Mainstream

RADIO 4, 2.15PM

It’s always inspiring and thought-provoking to hear voices on radio that we don’t normally get to hear, especially voices in our society that truly need to be amplified. This documentary about the Caryne Chapman Clark theatre project, which was an eight-day theatre skills training programme for women who had been rescued from human trafficking, is important and moving. The project gave 10 women from nine different countries newfound confidence and led to the performance of a play based on their stories.

The Invention of the Netherlands

RADIO 4, 8.00PM

Holland and the Netherlands are the same country, right? Well, embarrassingly, I thought so until this programme, which illuminates the history of the Netherlands as a broader historical kingdom that once stretched into Belgium, Germany and France, with a rich history of trade and a “golden delta” around the Rhine and the Scheldt. Misha Glenny explores how the country came into being, and how it changed over the centuries while always being a place of merchants, inventors, philosophers and outsiders.