Radio choice Charlotte Runcie

Out of Tredegar RADIO 4, 11.00AM

Joining in with ongoing celebrations marking the 70th birthday of the NHS, this programme explores the roots of national health provision in the inspiration that Aneurin Bevan drew from the model of social care in Tredegar in Blaenau Gwent, South Wales. The story of Bevan’s personal role in the foundation of one of the country’s greatest institutions has been well covered, but here it gains new insight, emotional resonance and an epic quality, told with considerable passion and in fine voice by the Welsh actor Michael Sheen.

Things Can Only Get Worse

RADIO 4, 11.30AM

Last year’s bemused political memoir by John O’farrell, Things Can Only Get Worse?, comes to radio as a four-part series charting the political turmoil of the last 20 years, from the perspective of a Labour supporter. The story starts in 2007, with the dizzying high of Labour’s landslide victory under Tony Blair, and concludes with the snap election of 2017. It’s full of political confessions, anecdotes and despairing, sly jokes about all of the political upheaval that we’ve endured for two decades.