Body positive

This year sees the 50th anniversary of the publication of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Written by and for women, it was – and remains s a hugely inʚuential book, dealing with topics such as sexual health, sexual orientation, birth control and abortion. In a new Archive on 4 documentary, airing on 24 April, journalist Laura Barton revisits this key feminist text as it reaches its half century.

Another anniversary being marked in the latest tranche of Archive on 4 programmes is 60 years since Yuri )agarin became the first man to reach outer space. In Challenge to Apollo (available on BBC Sounds), Kevin Fong looks back at the Soviet space programme. Taking a similar format to the acclaimed BBC 13 Minutes to the Moon podcast, the documentary draws on, among other sources, original mission recordings.

Further emphasising the range of Archive on 4, the programme on 1 May looks back four decades to the IRA’s hunger strikes. On 1 March 1981, at HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland, Bobby Sands refused food. On 5 May, Sands, who had been elected as an MP in an April by-election, died, one of 10 prisoners who starved themselves to death. Journalist and documentary-maker Peter Taylor, long a respected chronicler of the Troubles, examines the protest and its place in Sinn Féin’s subsequent success at the ballot box.

Archive on 4

BBC Radio 4 & BBC Sounds / Airing Saturdays

An early 1970s exhibit booth for Our Bodies, Ourselves. This influential book about women’s health is the subject of a new radio documentary