Radio choice Charlotte Runcie

Book of the Week: Churchill’s Passions

RADIO 4FM, 9.45AM

There have been many biographies of Winston Churchill, but historian Andrew Roberts has performed the admirable feat of finding new source material to work with, including the hitherto untapped private diaries of King George VI. Roberts’ new biography, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, explores the statesman’s triumphs – and his faults. All week, Roberts reads five essays that examine the impact of Churchill’s neardeath experiences, his father’s influence and his gift for forging friendships. The Art of Now: Women Who Walk

RADIO 4, 4.00PM

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This meditation on peripatetic art is pleasingly unpedestrian. Actor and comedian Doon Mackichan (Smack the Pony; The Day Today) presents, and meets female artists whose work is created through walking. She refers to Robert Macfarlane and Samuel Taylor Coleridge as male writers of the walk, then neatly contrasts their approaches with those taken by women, from artist and poet Lucy Furlong and naturalist Alison Fure to psychogeographer Morag Rose and the “Loiterers Resistance Movement”.