Speechification

Paul Gambaccini seems to have become the Beeb’s unofficial historian of 20th Century pop culture. He’s got a new four-part series about the Oscars which has got off to a good start with a show about the 1962 best picture Lawrence of Arabia. Contributors include David Thomson, Kenneth Turan, Bob Osborne and - my favourite - Kevin Brownlow.

Actually David Thomson is my favourite really (his Biographical Dictionary of Film is a genuine wonder) but I needed a reason to link to an exceptional Brownlow programme from March 2005 featuring his interviews with artists of the silent era. So here (for the podcast) is the Gambaccini programme (MP3) and here (for later) is the Brownlow (MP3).

Get up early Saturday morning for the next few weeks for Julian Putkowski’s quirky 15-minute snapshots from the national archives: this week, a breathtaking incidence of corporate manslaughter from 1900 in which hundreds of people from the North of England were poisoned, apparently by bad beer. But were they? MP3.

Britain (long before it was called Britain, obviously. I think it was called ‘Ugghh’) used to be joined to continental Europe (’Hagghh’). The land between the two long ago sank below the waves but down there, on the bottom of the ocean, is a pristine archaeological site. Not a narrow ’causeway’ as people used to think but thousands of square kilometres of settlements, paths, riverbeds and burial grounds. From speechification’s collection of ’scientists who can’t contain their excitement’ here’s a 2005 show about the exploration of this mysterious and inaccessible domain, only recently uncovered with the help of oil industry seismic data. Fascinating (MP3).

Sometimes good radio leaves me in awe. It’s the patience, the respect for material, the attention to process. Here’s a good example. Sarah Cuddon has visited and recorded the wives of the first generation of American astronauts and she’s come back with something quite thoughtful, sad and lovely (MP3).

Tom Mangold’s warm, grave voice rushes me back to a childhood of very serious and grown-up Panoramas (he was on the show for 26 years). He presents this programme - from the Beeb’s religion department - about a remarkable man, Jim McCloskey, a Newark presbyterian who works to get wrongly convicted people released from New Jersey’s jails (MP3).

Groucho was an imperfect man, some of the movies were rubbish and he was mean to his family but I can’t help it: he’s my favourite person in all of history. There, I said it. Matthew Parris’ Great Lives is all about him this week. Well worth a listen (MP3).

I’ll see your chummy hikers and your earnest Aussie designers and your Krazy Korean Kids and raise you a famously reclusive US political strip cartoonist happily cornered in his studio by Joe Queenan. I belong to the group (surprisingly quite well represented in this show) that doesn’t really get Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury so the history of the strip is really news to me. Quite fascinating (MP3).

Russell Davies’ metal post demands a response. So here’s a programme about George Formby. Lots of good archive material (including stories of Formby’s remarkable bravery entertaining troops on the front in wartime Italy) and a slightly random bit of George Harrison, who was a fan. The show (which I hijacked in June 2005) is presented by one of the other Russell Davieses (MP3).

I didn’t expect much of this one but I’m a junkie for stuff about the creative process so I listened and it’s just excellent - the first of four half-hours apparently. They call it ‘an exploration of the differences between poetry and song’ but it’s really a genteel Radio 4 version of a Reality TV format: poets write lyrics for singers.

There’s something interesting about the reactions of the participants, too: the poets (Paul Farley and Jo Shapcott) are blown away by the whole process but the singers (Jamie Cullum and Doc Brown) are almost blasé. Maybe they just lead more exciting lives. The pay-off is unmissable and quite moving. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series (MP3).

I went outside earlier on and, blimey, it was Spring! I kid you not: crocuses, twittering birds, the works. So here’s a Spring programme from a couple of years ago. A really lovely half hour about bumble bees from Lionel Kelleway and The Living World. The show went out in April 2005 and you don’t even need this MP3 because the switched-on people in Radio 4’s nature department keep a proper archive so here’s a working Real stream.