A MAP OF BRITISH POETRY
Sunday, Radio 4, 4.30pm
Andrew Motion, our energetic Poet Laureate, begins a 12-part series in which great thoughts are delivered in suitable settings. Unfortunately, radio being what it is, we have to take Motion and his contributors’ word for it that they are actually in an ancient stone-ring fort on the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland, say, or on the Thames Barrier at Woolwich. Still, one of the contributors is the Archbishop of Canterbury, and if you can’t trust him then who can you trust? Each setting provides the inspiration for its own poetry, read by Juliet Stevenson, Tom Courtenay and others. Chris Campling
LOSING THE CHILDREN
Saturday, Radio 4, 3.30pm
Michael Rosen tells what really might have happened to the children of the town of Hamelin one summer’s day in 1284, and a pretty ghastly tale it is too — so frightening, in fact, that when the fairy story came to be written the rats were introduced for a bit of light relief.
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WHY DID WE DO THAT?
Monday, Radio 4, 8pm
Duh idea of the week — an investigation of just why it is that we sit down. Actually, as it transpires, not so duh: Chris Bowlby fills 30 minutes with history presented the way it should be — as entertainment. From medieval throne etiquette to Tony Blair’s “government by sofa”, by way of the imperialist tendency to oblige those we subjugated to sit down while we told them how to run their country, the fine art of sitting is a bit of a gas, really.
WHAT A CARVE UP!
Tuesday, Radio 4, 11pm
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Jonathan Coe’s satire about 1980s Britain gets the eight-part serialisation treatment from no less a writer than David Nobbs. Then, on top of that, there is a cast that includes Robert Bathurst, Charlie Higson and Fiona Allen, with guest performances from Alan Davies, Arthur Smith and Geoffrey Palmer. So, all in all, we are looking at the sort of quality that makes the BBC licence fee well worth paying.
THE FRIDAY PLAY: TERRE HAUTE
Friday, Radio 4, 9pm
From the fact that, before his execution for the Oklahoma bombing, Timothy McVeigh was corresponding with the author and political commentator Gore Vidal, the similarly august novelist- turned-playwright Edmund White has woven this fantasy about what might have happened had the two men met. The cast is top-notch, featuring Troy Hill as the racist mass murderer and Ian McKellen as the thinly disguised Vidal. CC