DESERT RATS’ DIARY
Radio 4, 8pm
At the beginning of November soldiers of the 7th Armoured Division — the Desert Rats — returned to southern Iraq, a country they had left in triumph a couple of years earlier. With them went the journalist Stephen Grey, who provides over the next two weeks “being there” coverage of life in the front line of a particularly vivid hue. When he was last in Basra, in 2004, Grey was able to work, and walk, freely — now the dangers have accumulated to the point where he goes about in full body armour and never by himself. The coalition won the war; the peace is proving a more difficult nut to crack.
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CHECK UP
Radio 4, 3pm
After the fatal stroke suffered by the politician Baron Stratford (aka Tony Banks), and the one that ended the career of the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, Barbara Myers presents a timely pipe-opener to a new nine-part season of Check Up. Every three minutes someone in Britain suffers a stroke and while it tends to be a complaint of age, children and even babies have been struck down. Dr Anthony Rudd, a consultant at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals, takes questions from worried listeners.