...AND THE BEST RADIO
EASTER SUNDAY THE REUNION
RADIO 4, 11AM & FRIDAY 9AM
The series that brings together those involved in a specific event returns as Kirsty Wark meets the team that tracked down the remains of
King Richard III, missing since 1538. She talks to archaeologists, scientists and even a distant relative of the hunchbacked King about finding his bones – under a council car park in Leicester.
LIGHTS UP: DEDICATION RADIO 4, 3PM & MONDAY 2PM
As part of the BBC’s Lights Up season, Nick Dear’s play of intrigue, sex, power and politics offers three solutions to the so-called ‘Lost Years’ of Shakespeare’s life. It focuses particularly his relationship with the gay, cross-dressing Earl of Southampton, to whom he dedicated poems Venus And Adonis and The Rape Of Lucrece, and who may have been the young man addressed in the
Bard’s sonnets.
EASTER MONDAY CHURCHCRAWLS IN SOLITUDE RADIO 3, 10.45PM, MON-FRI
Theologian and writer Diarmaid MacCulloch takes listeners on journeys around five of
Britain’s most atmospheric churches: in Illington in Norfolk; Wetherden and Dunwich in Suffolk; Inglesham in Wiltshire; and Jericho, Oxford. He summons up the personality and history of each church and provides his own personal reflections.
TUESDAY GREAT LIVES RADIO 4, 4.30PM
Director Jonathan Kent once played the suave killer Tom Ripley for a TV show and later became friends with his creator, Patricia Highsmith.
Despite bizarre stories about the author – notably that she carried snails in her handbag – Kent says ‘there was nothing odd about her’. In this first of a new five-part series, there is also archive material with Highsmith herself, as well as Anthony Minghella, who directed the 1999 film version of TheTalented Mr Ripley (starring Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow, below).
THURSDAY JO WHILEY
RADIO 2, 7PM
At 80, he should be putting his feet up, but workaholic Tom Jones has a new album out.
The Welshman talks to Whiley about Surrounded By Time, out on April 23, which includes a diverse set of songs (from Michel Legrand to Bob Dylan and Michael Kiwanuka) of personal importance that have had an impact on him throughout his career.
FRIDAY
RADIO 3 IN CONCERT RADIO 3, 7.30PM
Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra perform a special strings concert with freelance musicians, who have struggled for work in the pandemic. The programme includes two 20th Century classics of the string repertoire, Samuel Barber’s Adagio and Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis.
CROWDSCIENCE: WHY DO WE GOSSIP? WORLD SERVICE, 8.30PM
We may hate to think of ourselves as gossips but, according to scientists, we spend 60 per cent of our conversations on tittle-tattle. But, asks presenter Datshiane Navanayagam, is there such a thing as ‘good’ gossip, and can indulging in idle chit-chat be seen as an advanced social skill rather than a personality defect, especially in the era of social media?