³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Jazz alto saxophonist and rapper Soweto Kinch is in session with pianist Robert Mitchell at the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s Maida Vale studios, as Jamie Cullum continues to showcase his love for all types of jazz on his weekly show.

Soweto's mentors include Gary Crosby and Courtney Pine, while Robert has worked with the likes of Norma Winstone, Courtney Pine and Steve Williamson. This one-off performance sees the collaboration of some of the most exciting talent on the UK jazz scene.

Presenter/Jamie Cullum, Producer/Karen Pearson for Folded Wing

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 2 Publicity

To top

Paul Gambaccini charts the history of Elektra Records

Paul Gambaccini presents a three-part series charting the history of Elektra Records, 60 years after it was founded by Jac Holzman on 10 October 1950.

Primarily a New York folk label, with influential singers Judy Collins, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton, the company explored new avenues from the mid-Sixties when Jac signed West Coast artists Love, Tim Buckley and The Doors. Further chart success followed with the development of artists such as Bread, Carly Simon and Harry Chapin.

The series features interviews with Jac Holzman and many of his artists: Theodore Bikel, Oscar Brand, Judy Collins, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore (The Doors), David Gates (Bread), Tom Paxton, Joshua Rifkin, Jean Ritchie, Tom Rush and Carly Simon; plus Elektra executives Danny Fields and Clive Selwood, engineer/producer Bruce Botnick and session man at the time John Sebastian.

In part one, Jac Holzman and Elektra artists recall the early years of his label. Canadian Oscar Brand remembers his boisterous albums of songs associated with the armed services; Kentucky singer Jean Ritchie recalls her earliest recordings released by the label; and Theodore Bikel talks about his many Elektra concept albums devoted to songs from a variety of different countries and cultures. Carly Simon remembers Theo's albums with affection and sings snippets from his multi-lingual repertoire.

After 10 years of modest success, Elektra found itself well placed in New York's Greenwich Village to record singers emerging in the first half of the Sixties – a period of unprecedented enthusiasm for folk music. Jac discovered his first star of the decade when he signed Judy Collins in 1962.

Judy was joined on Elektra by many of the new generation of young folk singers – the prolific writer Tom Paxton, protest singer Phil Ochs and, from the Cambridge scene, Tom Rush. Hanging out in Greenwich Village and playing harmonica on many Elektra record sessions was future Lovin' Spoonful member John Sebastian. Jac Holzman also found an ally in his quest for quality artists when he employed Paul Rothchild as talent scout and record producer.

This revised series was first broadcast in six parts in 2008.

Presenter/Paul Gambaccini, Producer/Kevin Howlett for Howlett Media Productions

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 2 Publicity

Petroc Trelawny introduces the concert which opened the Hallé's Thursday night Autumn Season.

Sir Mark Elder continues his traversal of Mahler's music with the seldom heard Totenfeier, the heroic dialogue of life and death he later revised as the first movement of his Resurrection Symphony.

Then comes another echo, songs from Des knaben wunderhorn, or The Youth's Magic Horn, a fascinating collection of German folk poems which inspired Mahler not just in these songs but also in several symphonies. The singer is one of the world's most sought-after mezzo-sopranos, Angelika Kirchschlager from Austria.

Prokofiev's popular Fifth Symphony is his plushest and grandest, a work of affirmation and abounding melody composed in 1944, when victory in the war against Nazism was in sight.

Presenter/Petroc Trelawny, Producer/Peter Thresh

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3 Publicity

To top

Matthew Sweet talks to American novelist Jonathan Franzen, whose much anticipated new novel, Freedom, has already seen the author making the front-cover of Time magazine.

Franzen is frequently cited as a great chronicler of contemporary American life. His book about family life, The Corrections, was a critical sensation, nominated for a string of awards and led to a infamous incident where Jonathan was disinvited from the Oprah Winfrey show.

Matthew Sweet talks to Jonathan about Freedom, which is set within the lives of a Minnesotan family, and about the process of writing the book.

Presenter/Matthew Sweet, Producer/James Cook

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3 Publicity

This week Neil MacGregor's world history is examining the relationship between Europe and the rest of the world in the 18th century.

In today's programme, he finds out what happened to Captain Cook as he was mapping and collecting in the Pacific.

Neil tells the story through a chieftain's helmet made from a myriad of colourful bird feathers that was given to Cook when he landed in Hawaii in 1778.

Anthropologist Nicholas Thomas and Hawaiian academics Marques Hanalei Marzan, Kyle Nakanelua and Kaholokula help describe Cook's impact in the Pacific and the meaning of the feathered helmet.

Presenter/Neil MacGregor, Producer/Anthony Denselow for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 Publicity

To top

Woodlands are important all over the world for wildlife and many things can impact on them. Saving Species continues by asking if rutting deer are a problem for woodlands.

This is the time of year when many deer species begin their breeding season and reporter Chris Sperring goes to Exmoor at the peak of the fallow deer rut.

Like most mammals it's the female deer that take on all the parental responsibility, the male role being reduced to providing the sperm. With none of the energy drain of raising young, clearly males can mate with many females. But it's not so easy. Females are choosy and want the best male they can get.

This sexual inequality in reproduction fuels the competition between males to win the favour of the gathering females. The deer rut is an explosive time, with intense bellowing and physical duels.

Deer numbers are rising in Britain and many other parts of the world, so much so that woodland ecologists are concerned about re-generation because of the volume of young saplings browsed by deer.

Presenter/Brett Westwood, Producer/Kirsty Henderson for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 Publicity

To top

Beethoven's fifth and final piano concerto, The Emperor, is the subject of the concluding programme in this series of Soul Music.

Richard McMahon, concert pianist and teacher at the Royal Welsh School of Music and Drama, plays extracts and discusses the virtuosic demands posed by The Emperor.

Australian film producer Hal McElroy talks about using the Adagio, the second movement, to illustrate the classic Seventies film Picnic At Hanging Rock.

Andrew Law, now Chaplain at Malvern College, first heard the piece in this movie. He describes the Adagio as "one of those pieces of art which it is worth being alive to have heard".

Concert pianist James Rhodes describes how The Emperor was central to his childhood and his developing love of Beethoven's piano music.

Music teacher and singer Prue Hawthorne recalls how her father, an amateur clarinettist, laboriously transcribed by hand the horn and clarinet sections of the first movement so they could play along with the record in their living room.

Also contributing is renowned Beethoven biographer John Suchet.

Producer/Karen Gregor for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 Publicity

To top

When a road accident ends with a fatality, the police officer involved is left searching for answers in Matt Hartley's tense drama.

Don Gilet and Claire Price star with Adeel Akhtar, Sean Baker, Sally Orrock and Reilly Newbold.

Producer/Sasha Yevtushenko for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 Publicity

To top

Three Short Stories By E Nesbit Ep 1/3

Tuesday 5 to Thursday 7 October

3.30-3.45pm ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ RADIO 4

Marriage Lines is the first of three stories for adults written by E Nesbit, author of The Railway Children.

The stories in this series are taken from In Homespun, a collection originally published in 1896. They are set in the villages of South Kent and East Sussex that Nesbit knew well.

Read by actress Jenny Agutter, each story is told in the first person, by a variety of strong, female characters looking back on their earlier lives.

Marriage Lines is a comic detective story-cum-romance. Harry, the son of the house, wants to marry Poll, but the delightfully wicked old housekeeper has other ideas. When the old man dies unexpectedly, poison is suspected. But there is a surprising twist in the tale.

In the second tale on Wednesday, The Bristol Bowl, Jane’s aunt is a real ogre to work for, but Jane is after her money, so she puts up with it. Everything is going to plan, until the day Jane smashes The Bristol Bowl, her aunt’s prize piece of porcelain. That disaster takes her on her first trip to London and a surprising offer of marriage.

In the final story on Thursday, Grandsire Triples, Kate’s intended comes back from learning farming, a Catholic. Kate is torn between duty and love, a conflict that is dramatically resolved when the two lovers inadvertently get locked in the bell tower, during a "grandsire triple peal".

Reader/Jenny Agutter, Producer/Celia de Wolff

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 Publicity

To top

A Good Read Ep 1/9

Tuesday 5 October

4.30-5.00pm ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ RADIO 4

Sue MacGregor presents the new series of A Good Read

The start of the autumn series of A Good Read, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4's paperback discussion programme, is launched by veteran politician Baroness Shirley Williams, who explains why she's chosen The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

Sue MacGregor is also joined by writer Sathnam Sanghera, who selects a paean of praise to pop, Lost In Music by Giles Smith.

Other guests in the series include politician Edwina Currie; Will Gregory from the band Goldfrapp; cricketer Mike Brearley; and mother-and-son writers Judith Kerr and Matthew Kneale.

Presenter/Sue MacGregor, Producer/Mark Smalley for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 Publicity

To top

The Write Stuff Ep 1/6

Tuesday 5 October

6.30-7.00pm ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ RADIO 4

Novelist Sebastian Faulks

The Write Stuff returns for a new series, chaired by James Walton with John Walsh of the Independent newspaper and novelist Sebastian Faulks as team captains.

Each episode features an author of the week, whose life and work provide a focus for the questions, as well as the basis for the pastiches at the end of the show.

The author of the week in today's edition is PG Wodehouse; followed in the second episode by Tennessee Williams; then Marcel Proust; the Beats (Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs); author of the Twilight series Stephenie Meyer; and concluding in the final episode with Edgar Allan Poe.

The team captains will be joined by guest panellists from the literary world and guests for this series include best-selling crime writer Mark Billingham; Horrid Henry author, Francesca Simon; poet Ian McMillan; children's author Sue Limb; and journalist and broadcaster Francis Wheen.

The guest panellists for the first programme will be Francis Wheen and Ian McMillan and the show will finish, as ever, with each panellist reading out a pastiche of the author of the week's work. This week they imagine how Wodehouse might have tackled historical fiction.

Producer/Sam Michell for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 Publicity

To top

A research team at an Edinburgh University think they've cracked the answer to providing renewable, commercially viable and environmentally friendly energy from urine.

Harvesting the multitude of medically powerful ingredients it holds could become big business. An innovative Danish company is turning it into plastics; it may provide a means of easily accessing hydrogen for green cars; and it could hold the key to providing desperately needed shelter for displaced multitudes across the world.

The scientific applications for this wonder substance seem almost to be without end – but the downside is many people's attitude to it. Most are squeamish at the mere mention of urine, blinding them to its astonishing versatility and potential.

In The Secret Science Of Pee, Sally Magnusson provides a truly surprising and enlightening look at some of the more extraordinary and innovative contemporary scientific applications for urine.

She asks why many are so uncomfortable with even talking about this casually despised blood product when it has been an essential part of life for centuries – and she considers the shocking environmental cost of flushing away such an abundant and abundantly useful substance.

Flushing the toilet will never be the same again.

Presenter/Sally Magnusson, Producer/Pennie Latin for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 Publicity

Mark Pougatch presents the day's sports news, plus in-depth interviews and discussion.

From 8pm, Mark presents Open Goal – an investigation into the celebrity culture and lifestyle of the modern footballer.

At 9pm, there will be a Football league special with the chairman of the Football League Greg Clarke.

Presenter/Mark Pougatch, Producer/Mike Carr

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 5 Live Publicity

Commonwealth Games

Tuesday 5 October

11.25am-1.00pm ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 5 Live Sports Extra presents live coverage of the second day of the swimming finals at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

Producer/Jen McAllister

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity