The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
On My Wavelength
The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, gives a writerly take on the celebrity interview format in The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed (Saturday, Radio 4, 7.15pm), allowing for some heart-to-heart reflections on literary craft as well as life more widely. Tonight he meets probably his most highprofile guest so far: JK Rowling, who discusses how she kept writing after the success of Harry Potter, and shares with Armitage her very first notebooks that she used to collect the original ideas for the first book.
Sunday Feature: Great Scott (Sunday, Radio 3, 6.45pm) marks 250 years since the birth of Walter Scott. Allan Little explores Scott’s long cultural resonance in Scotland and beyond. Scott’s famous rebranding of the Highlands from barren wastelands into enticing vistas of wild, unspoilt landscapes gave rise to Scotland’s tourist industry. But did Scott do his nation a favour, or did he merely popularise a false image of Scotland doomed to end up on a shortbread biscuit tin?
Each afternoon in New Storytellers (Monday to Friday, Radio 4, 1.45pm) there’s a thrilling piece of documentary radio from an exciting new producer. The five winners of the 2021 Charles Parker Prize for Best Student Radio Feature all display impressive imaginative skill and bold storytelling. I was one of the judges, so I know. On Monday, historian George Townsend and producer Hunter Charlton winningly explore the social and cultural history of Parson’s Pleasure, a men-only nude bathing place in Oxford, and on Friday it’s the turn of the gold award-winner, Magdalena Moursy, and her compelling programme on the tragedy and long-term impact of the 1981 New Cross fire in London. Her feature is beautiful: filled with music, humanity and poetry.
As we reel from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s easy to forget the fallout from another disease that swept the nation 20 years ago, this one affecting animals. In Black Hill, Bleak Summer (Tuesday, Radio 4, 8pm), Dave Howard reflects on the foot-and-mouth outbreak, particularly its effects on the Herefordshire hill-farming community where he lived.
It’s only ever a matter of time before winners of the Edinburgh Comedy Award get their own Radio 4 series. Which brings us to Jordan Brookes, who won in 2019 for his unpredictable mix of physical comedy and crowd work, and who now begins Jordan Brookes On... (Wednesday,
Radio 4, 11pm), a four-part series. His first theme is dating, and Brookes provides wisdom from his own eclectic experiences.
How influential were the many mistresses at court in Restoration England? When Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, he had many such women around him. Linda Porter’s wide-ranging history of these women and the varied public perception of them is Book of the Week: Mistresses (Monday to Friday, Radio 4FM, 9.45am), read by Rachael Stirling.
And in The Essay: Japan in Five Lives (Monday to Friday, Radio 3, 10.45pm), Christopher Harding, Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, considers five figures from Japan’s past in response to the question: “who are the Japanese?” In his final essay, Harding discusses the third-century shaman-queen Himiko. She was feared by her enemies, received gifts from the Wei Emperor in China, and was said to be able to muster armies as well as summoning spirits.