Speechification

Radio 4 broadcasts 13,000 programmes per year so maybe it's inevitable that some programmes and formats seem hidden or under-promoted. From Fact to Fiction is the kind of thing that would be in the Sunday papers or on the front of the Radio Times if it was on the TV. But it's on the radio so there's a reasonable chance you've never heard of it.

The premise is simple: a weekly short drama about a story from the news - the whole thing necessarily put together in a few days. It's usually a short play - about the BA strike or 'Binge Britain' or demonised teens - but this one's a monologue. Writer/comic AL Kennedy riffs on the Gulf oil spill in a surprising and moving way. MP3 - 14:08.

The picture is from one of BP's mesmerising live video streams from the sea bottom (which are still on-air, by the way, as of this writing, unlike From Fact to Fiction, which will be back later this year).

At the end of June, Radio 4 broadcast an amazing episode of Peter White's No Triumph No Tragedy. White interviewed historian Tony Judt in his New York home. The programme was universally praised - it was a very moving account of the late stages of Motor Neurone Disease (Lou Gehrig's in the US). How late we could only have guessed but on 6 August Judt died in New York.

So here's the programme (MP3 - length: 41:38) and a couple of episodes of Radio 3's Night Waves in which he also appears - one from before his diagnosis in 2008 (discussing his book of essays Reappraisals) and one from after (discussing his final book, Ill Fares The Land).

Judt wrote regularly for the NYRB over many years - most recently a series of very moving and direct sketches from his life. All of his NYRB stuff is here (some of it behind a paywall, but not this lovely one about the food his mother cooked in the fifties). He was interviewed for NPR's Fresh Air in March. Here's a good obit from The Telegraph.

Jem, Beatles nut, recommended this one. Clever John Harris on John Lennon. Nice (MP3 - length: 27:37).

Picture by gw1. Used under licence.

Toby Amies, authentic crate digger, presented this. And Tamsin Hughes produced it. It's what Archive on 4 is for. Recent history bottled. Lovely (MP3 - length: 56:57).

Picture by Joshua. Used under licence.

Another jewel from the archive. Patrick Wright, author of countless articles and six books (including the excellent Tank: The Progress of a Monstrous War Machine) made this documentary about the uncomfortable collision of art and war in the early twentieth century. In particular, it's about a British society portrait painter called Solomon J Solomon and his innovations in camouflage. It was produced in August 2002 by John Goudie, who now, among other things, produces Radio 4's Front Row.

Wright has a brilliant web site with enough clever words on it to keep you going for weeks - including these about our hero Solomon.

The picture shows HMS Furious in about 1918, painted in what is still called 'dazzle camouflage,' another innovation of the period. It's from the Wikimedia Commons (MP3).

The excellent and excellently told story of the Makana Football Association, the league founded by political prisoners on Robben Island during Apartheid South Africa. The league's first president started with its constitution, and went on to draft that of the modern nation. [MP3]

I've read a lot of obituaries of Malcolm McLaren in the last few days but few have mentioned his later career as a radio voice - a funny and distinctive one too. In the last few years he's done (to my knowledge): The New Look (a tribute to Christian Dior) and The Appalling Mr Dali for Radio 4; A Musical Map of London, The Game (featured here on Speechification two years ago, natch), The Great Jukebox Racket (pop music and organised crime), Le Chanson de Serge (about Serge Gainsbourg) and From Forties to Noughties (his personal musical journey) for Radio 2. The Radio 2 programmes are especially lovely - ambitious, playful, poetic (sometimes a bit gauche - but that's the man, I guess). From Forties to Noughties has just been repeated on 6Music so you can listen again there. So, by way of a tribute to the man, here's A Musical Map of London (my favourite) and his Salvador Dali tribute (only the former will show up in the podcast).

Thanks to Daniel Weir for the pic.

In the first episode of a new series, Stephen Sackur investigates a secretive and controversial change in how we wage war: deadly drone aircraft swooping down from on high, their pilots sat in comfortable offices thousands of miles away. [MP3]

"From Falstaff at The Boar's Head to John Self at The Shakespeare in Martin Amis's Money, English literature and the pub are intertwined. It started in a pub - Chaucer's pilgrims setting out from The Tabard in Southwark - and has been waiting to be chucked out ever since. Robert Hanks presents an elegy for pubs in literature and an exploration of what the smoking ban, the gastro pub and the five quid pint are going to do to writing." Yes. [MP3]

Not much to say about this, except it's bloody lovely. Naturalist Paul Evans takes us on a sound tour of Dungeness and the Romney marshes. Enjoy. [MP3]

(Dungeness pic by me. More at Flickr.)