Imagine
BBC One, 10.35pm
One of the great perks of watching television is the opportunity that it offers to meet extraordinary people, even if it is only at second hand. In another tremendous Imagine Alan Yentob talks to the 92-year-old Diana Athill — a lady of immense charm and intellectual vitality who worked as an editor for 50 years with André Deutsch. Her list of authors, from Norman Mailer and V. S. Naipaul to Jean Rhys and Gitta Sereny, reads like a Who’s Who of modern literature. But when she began writing herself — three of her six books of bestselling memoirs were written after she was 80 — it became clear why she was such an exceptional editor. Her prose is simple, elegant and utterly without disguise or pretence — perfect to describe a life lived to the full. This is a wonderful programme about an amazing woman.
Tribal Wives
BBC Two, 9pm
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Fifty-one-year-old Anna de Vere, who works as a business coach in London and is married to a barrister, heads off to southern Ethiopia to live with the Hamer tribe. Having already been visited by Bruce Parry, they will soon need to be represented by the publicist Max Clifford. The Hamer menfolk have a tradition of jumping naked over cows and whipping their women as part of an initiation rite into adulthood. One of the tribesman even goes into Anna’s hut and borrows her clothing. He can’t understand why it bothers her. “Can you believe,” he tells his fellow tribesmen, “that she’s telling me off for wearing her clothes?” It’s difficult to see why they had to go all the way to Ethiopia to make the programme — it sounds just like life in Lincoln’s Inn.
The Untold Battle of Britain
Channel 4, 9pm
The persuasive argument behind this programme is that the contribution made by Poland’s fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain tipped the balance in the Allies’ favour. The secret of their phenomenal success was a pure hatred of the Germans , which meant that they flew suicidally close to enemy aircraft before firing. After one month, No 303 Polish Fighter Squadron notched up its 100th kill and became the most effective squadron of Hurricanes during the war. But on the Victory Parade of June 8, 1946, the 200,000 Poles who had fought did not march alongside the Allies. The British Government didn’t invite them for fear of offending Stalin.
Disappearing Dad
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BBC Four, 9pm
Andrew Martin, the author of How to Get Things Really Flat: A Man’s Guide to Ironing, Dusting and Other Household Arts, looks at how fathers have been depicted in fiction over the past 200 years. The short answer is badly. In Dickens they are absent or flakey. In Jane Austen they are disengaged. In the Just William books, they are ineffectual and in Dodie Smith and Nancy Mitford they are just plain bonkers. The list of hopeless fathers continues to the present day, to a time when their stature is so diminished that they’re no longer even worth undermining. The programme is like an entertaining lecture, illustrated with choice clips from TV adaptations.