PICK OF TODAY’S RADIO

PHARAOHS OF THE SUN, 9.45AM, 12.30AM, RADIO 4

THE statues of the kings and queens (such as Nefertiti, pictured) of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt showed them as powerful demi-gods but, in real life, most of them were a sorry-looking bunch. Too much inter-marriage produced generations of undersized, buck-toothed, short-lived rulers, who passed on various lifethreatening inherited diseases to their offspring. All this week, Deborah Findlay reads from Guy de la Bédoyère’s account of a gold-hungry dynasty who ground down their subjects and ruined neighbouring countries through their insatiable thirst for wealth.

OMAR, a teacher who’s also a bit of an amateur sleuth, goes to the rescue of one of his former pupils, who faces execution for the murder of a Palestinian guerrilla. Peter Polycarpou and Sirine Saba star in this gripping dramatisation of Matt Rees’s crime thriller

THE BETHLEHEM MURDERS (10AM, 3PM, RADIO 4 EXTRA), set in the West Bank city, where a Christian family find themselves in grave danger, on all fronts.