The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
On My Wavelength
Toasting the 80th birthday of Bob Dylan with all the deference you’d expect from Radio 4 is a selection of programmes including Dinner with Dylan (Saturday, Radio 4, 3pm), a play by Jon Canter based on a true story, about a certain group of hardcore Bob Dylan fans. Richard Curtis, Kerry Shale, Lucas Hare and Eileen Atkins all play themselves. And Bob Dylan: Verbatim (Saturday, Radio 4, 8pm) brings together archive recordings of interviews, studio out-takes, music and miscellany to tell the story of Dylan’s life and creative work in his own words.
Extracts from Gillian Clarke’s new translation of the Brythonic poet Aneirin’s medieval elegiac work, Y Gododdin, are woven through Between the Ears: Rhythms of Remembering (Sunday, Radio 3, 6.45pm) in an immersive musical soundscape and contextual study of the piece.
Michel Foucault is a controversial figure in political discourse, particularly since the philosopher and his postmodern theories “that put societal power structures and labels ahead of individuals and their endeavours” were mentioned in a December speech by Liz Truss, the Minister for Women and Equalities. In Analysis: What the Foucault (Monday, Radio 4, 8.30pm), writer and academic Shahidha Bari discusses whether Foucault’s ideas pose a threat to social and cultural life, and explores his influence alongside more troubling aspects of Foucault’s work.
Armando Iannucci investigates why time seems to speed up as we get older in Why Time Flies (And How to Slow it Down) (Tuesday, Radio 4, 11am). Neuroscientist David Eagleman discusses experiments that recreate life-threatening scenarios where time seems to stand still; mathematician Kit Yates explains how each moment that passes becomes a smaller fraction of our entire life as we age; and psychologist Ruth Ogden posits that as we age, we have fewer new experiences, and make fewer vivid new memories, all of which makes time seem to pass more quickly.
Mary McAleese, the former President of Ireland, reads from her memoirs for Book of the Week: Here’s the Story (Monday to Friday, Radio 4FM, 9.45am). After reflecting on her childhood in Belfast and recalling the lead-up to her campaign to run for high office, she describes the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh’s historic and deeply symbolic visit to the Republic of Ireland in 2011. The music is An Droichead, composed and performed by Liam O’Flynn for her inauguration.
In Piccadilly (Monday to Friday, Radio 4, 1.45pm), journalist Krupa Padhy tells a personal story about a group of five men pictured in an old photograph from 1965, leaning against railings in Piccadilly Circus, London. In the image, the men are all in their twenties; one of them is Padhy’s father, who had just arrived in London from Tanzania, and the other men had come from Yemen and Malawi. The five friends’s lives and friendships tell a story of British society and immigration.
And Descendants (Friday, Radio 4, 11am) is a new series in which Yrsa Daley-Ward, the poet, model and winner of the PEN Ackerley Prize, examines the long historical shadow of slavery, and charts the connections that the slave trade enforced between lives across the world. In the wake of the tearing down of the statue of slaver Edward Colston in Bristol last summer, the series crystallises a new chapter in the British understanding of slavery.