SUSAN JEFFREYS’ Radio Week

MARC ALMOND’S TORCH SONG TRILOGY

SATURDAY, 9PM, RADIO 2 ★★★★ Marc begins a series celebrating some of the great divas who’ve brought tears to our eyes and mascara down our cheeks with songs of heartache and survival. Dinah Washington, Eartha Kitt and Judy Garland are among the stars that will have you reaching for your hankies. TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES

SUNDAY, 3PM, RADIO 4 ★★★★

Faye Marsay plays Tess in this three-part dramatisation of Thomas Hardy’s tale of seduction, murder, lost love and cruel fate, set in the beauty and harshness of rural life in 19th-century Wessex. EDDI READER’S SCALA SONGBOOK

SUNDAY, 6PM, SCALA RADIO ★★★★ Eddi Reader, the lead vocalist of the band Fairground Attraction, presents a Valentine’s Day selection of folk songs and classical music on the theme of love. GARY DAVIES

MONDAY-FRIDAY, 9.30AM, RADIO 2 ★★★★

Gary Davies looks after Ken Bruce’s show this week and invites Adam Hills, the Australian comedian and host of TV’S The Last Leg, to pick his Tracks Of My Years. LIFE CHANCES

MONDAY-FRIDAY, 1.45PM, RADIO 4 ★★★★

The documentary-maker Athar Ahmad went to a secondary school that had a reputation for being rough. Three of his classmates died brutally. Athar looks at the factors that took him and those classmates down such different routes. VICTORIA WOOD – FROM SOUP TO NUTS

TUESDAY, 6.30PM, RADIO 4 ★★★★ Rebecca Front listens to some cassette tapes made by the late, great Victoria, giving us insights into her painstaking approach to comedy performances. JOHN KEATS: LIFE AND AFTER-LIFE

THURSDAY, 11.30AM, RADIO 4 ★★★★ Thomas Brodie-sangster reads poems and letters by John Keats, the doomed young English Romantic who died of tuberculosis 200 years ago this month.