Radio choice

Book of the Week: Takeaway Radio 4, 9.45am

Subtitled Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter, Angela Hui’s piquant memoir of growing up in a Chinese takeaway in the former mining village of Beddau, in rural South Wales in the 1990s, offers a fresh perspective. It is a rich portrait of life growing up in an immigrant family with unique traditions and food culture – where Hui would be found doing her homework at the counter. It’s balanced by a record of the experience of being aware from a young age of the “difference” with which, as immigrants, her family was regarded and treated (often abusively) by locals.

The Silent Mind Radio 4, 8pm

Historically “hearing voices” has been synonymous with losing one’s mind but, actually, almost everyone has an inner voice, or voices, rabbiting on inside them much of the time. In this fascinating programme Prof Charles Fernyhough explores the long-neglected area of psychology he calls inner speech, listening to people describe the widely varying nature of their inner worlds. For some it is not a voice per se, but images or sensations that create the inner dialogue. But as we discover, what is truly rare is the person who never hears an inner voice at all – a blissful state for some, an emptiness for others.