AFTERNOON PLAY
Radio 4, 2.15pm
Andrew Birkin tells the story of how he came to write his play The Lost Boys (from which great chunks are quoted). It is, unsurprisingly, about J. M. Barrie and his relationship with the Llewelyn Davies brothers, for whom he wrote Peter Pan. It is also about Birkin’s relationship with his own son, who died young, and the curious parallels between that love and the one Barrie had for the similarly doomed Michael Llewelyn Davies. A paedophile in everything but act, Barrie flirted with Michael in a way that makes the flesh creep, but was still capable of equating his love for the boys with that for golf and his pipe. A conundrum? Yes, and a brilliant, moving 45 minutes of drama.
ICONOCLASTS
Radio 4, 8pm
In an Israeli Knesset where the hawks far outnumber the doves — haven’t they always? — Rabbi Michael Melchior gives us hope that, eventually, the soft answer will turn away wrath. “Religion has created the war; we must help it to create the peace,” he says. To that end he is talking to the imams who counsel his nation’s enemies. That’s iconoclasm, 21st century-style, for you.