The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
On My Wavelength
To an entire generation her name was synonymous with prudery and censorship. Now, in Archive on 4: Disgusted, Mary Whitehouse (Saturday, Radio 4, 8pm), Whitehouse is reassessed by Samira Ahmed, who’s been sifting through her private papers at the Bodleian. Alternatively, soak up the baroque delights of Opera on 3: Handel’s Theodora (Saturday, Radio 3, 6.30pm), the Royal Opera House’s revival of a piece that hasn’t been heard in Covent Garden since its 1750 debut. Soprano Julia Bullock takes on the role of the eponymous Christian martyr, given a feminist spin by director Katie Mitchell.
This week’s The Archbishop Interviews (Sunday, Radio 4, 1.30pm) finally reaches the conversation that caused ears to really prick up when the series was announced – the one with Tony Blair. No previews were available but, surely, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby will have plenty to engage our former prime minister on in regard to morality, as well as faith.
Back in November “big beast” political journalist Andrew Marr announced he was leaving the BBC after 21 years to take up a nightly slot at LBC. He said his reason was “to get my own voice back” and promised to “ruffle feathers” in his new show Tonight with Andrew Marr (Mon-Thurs, LBC, 6pm). It should be interesting to see how he goes about delivering on that and not just replicating his well-honed BBC voice.
This week’s Composer of the Week (Mon-Fri, Radio 3, noon) is the shamefully overlooked Dutch composer Henriëtte Bosmans (1895-1952). Born into a family of leading musicians, she developed a flourishing career as a pianist but the rise of Nazism had a huge impact due to her Jewish heritage. The series features a number of specially recorded pieces and UK premieres. Also of International Women’s Day interest on Tuesday (at 8pm) is Radio 3 In Concert’s rediscovered 16th and 17th-century madrigals by Maddalena Casulana and Barbara Strozzi, while Scala Radio devotes its entire output to women in classical music.
Last year Claudia Hammond and a team from the University of Sussex launched a public science project looking at kindness and its impact on mental health. With Radio 4’s help, 60,000 people eventually took part and now in The Anatomy of Kindness (Wednesday, Radio 4, 9am) the results are ready to share. Hammond is joined by project leader Robin Bannerjee and a panel of experts to unpick what they tell us about the place of kindness in Britain today.
A particularly nice edition of Ramblings (Thursday Radio 4, 3pm) has Clare Balding set out on a walk to celebrate the life of environmental campaigner Ethel Haythornthwaite, whose work led to the founding of the Peak District National Park (where 95 hilltops have recently been classified as “Ethels” in her honour). From the Redmires Reservoirs near Sheffield, Balding and fellow walkers head for Stanage Edge, immersing themselves in the scenery that inspired Ethel.
Sue Mitchell’s docu-series The Smugglers’ Trail (Friday, Radio 4, 11am) gets off to a shocking start, looking at the people-smuggling trade across the English Channel. Mitchell finds the camps around Calais are now run by criminal gangs organised from the UK, with French police “giving them an open run”. Most chilling is an interview with an Iraqi Kurd who claims to make £100,000 a night arranging for desperate people to risk their lives crossing in small boats.