PICK OF TODAY’S RADIO

FRONT ROW, 7.15PM, RADIO 4

IN A special edition of the arts magazine, Samira Ahmed celebrates the life and work of the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was born 150 years ago next month. There are live performances from violinist Jennifer Pike, baritone Roderick Williams, composer and pianist Neil Brand as

Samira explores Vaughan Williams’s distinctive musical voice, with many of his most famous works — such as The Lark Ascending and Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis — conjuring up images of the glorious British landscape. His also wrote the motet O Taste and See specially for the Coronation of Elizabeth II (pictured).

A GERMAN Soldier who was about to shoot a British prisoner asked if he was cold. The prisoner, who was the climber W.H. Murray, said he was ‘cold as a mountain top’, so the German put his gun away. Both men recognised that they were fellow mountaineers. COLD AS A MOUNTAIN TOP

(9.30PM, RADIO 4) joins the author Robert Macfarlane as he ascends the iconic Buachaille Etive Mor in the Scottish Highlands, and tells Murray’s remarkable story.