PICK OF TODAY’S RADIO

ICON, 11.30AM, RADIO 4

DURING one of the many breaks in the filming of the epic disaster that was Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor (pictured) and Richard Burton were caught in a series of intimate photographs. They were on a yacht moored in the Bay of Naples and were clearly more than just good friends. This was in 1962; at the time, Elizabeth

was married to Eddie Fisher and Richard to Sybil Williams. The first of this new, six-part series — which explores our concept of fame through different facets of Taylor’s extraordinary life — argues that these pictures, which have a certain Peeping Tom quality, marked the birth of modern celebrity.

‘SHE looked as fresh as a figurehead/That’s just been painted new.’ Limehouse Reach tells of a sailor who fell in love with a Limehouse girl; it doesn’t end happily. The bass Brindley Sherratt includes the old ditty among a selection of songs from the British Isles in the RADIO 3 LUNCHTIME CONCERT (1PM). Gerald Finzi’s setting of Shakespeare’s poem Fear No More The Heat Of The Sun, which can be a great comfort to those who mourn, is also on the bill.