Programme Information

Desmond Carrington presents words and music from stars whose records were first heard during the Fifties, using archive from Radio Luxembourg and the BBC Light Programme.

Each programme features stars interviewed by John Hannam, among them Nat Gonella, Edmund Hockridge, Russ Conway, Frankie Vaughan, Lonnie Donegan, Ruby Murray, and Lionel Bart. This week, he remembers Irish songstress Ruby Murray and American singer and actor Al Martino.

Throughout the series, Desmond's guest is veteran singer and broadcaster Teddy Johnson who, 60 years ago, was the first British presenter of the first-ever radio series of Top 20 record programmes.

Presenter/Desmond Carrington, Producer/David Aylott for Foldback Media Ltd

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

Vladimir Jurowski conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in music by Eötvös, Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2 with Alexander Markovich, and Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony.

Peter Eötvös's Shadows receives the UK première of its orchestral version.

With Liszt's thunderous piano concertos the age of the virtuoso was born, a fusion of Beethoven's single-mindedness and Paganini's breathtaking virtuosity. Alexander Markovich is the featured pianist.

Zemlinsky's setting of Hindu poetry by Rabindranath Tagore is an alluring, mysterious masterpiece of late Romanticism in which soprano and baritone drape alternate verses over a kaleidoscopic orchestra. Melanie Diener is the soprano, with baritone Thomas Hampson.

Presenter/Catherine Bott, Producer/Tony Sellors

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

The Long View Ep 1/4

Tuesday 1 February

9.00-9.30am BBC RADIO 4

Jonathan Freedland presents the history series that discovers the past behind the present and explores a moment in history which throws light on a contemporary debate.

Presenter/Jonathan Freedland, Producer/Julia Johnson for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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The Call Ep 1/5

Tuesday 1 February

9.30-9.45am BBC RADIO 4

Dominic Arkwright meets people who have made life-changing phone calls.

In the first episode of this series, he talks to Alice Brooking who was on the phone to her sister Nathalie in London when an Air France Concorde crashed into her Paris hotel.

It was 25 July 2000 and Alice was in the Hotelissimo in Gonesse, near Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. A language student working through her holidays as a tour guide, Alice was waiting for a party of young musicians to arrive from England. Torn between having a nap, having a shower and calling her sister for a chat, she picked up the phone to London. Halfway through the conversation there was a loud bang and the phone went dead. She went to the door of her room, to be met by searing heat and a wall of flame.

Alice recalls: "I ran barefoot across the fields, because I'd left my shoes in my room, then tried calling the attention of the car drivers ... If I'd chosen to take a shower or a nap I'd be dead."

Presenter/Dominic Arkwright, Producer/John Byrne for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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In Memoriam is an adaptation of Tennyson's long sequence of poems of grief and hope written after the death of his close friend Arthur Hallam.

Hallam was born 200 years ago and died in 1833 in Vienna. He and Tennyson had met at university and had become friends; Hallam became engaged to marry Tennyson's sister. His sudden and unexpected death prompted some of the most personal poetry Tennyson ever wrote and some of the most moving and powerful poetry of loss and grief in the language.

Tennyson returned over several years to write more and more poems in an accumulating sequence about his friendship with Hallam, the agony of the news of his death, the journey of his body back to his family home in Clevedon and the life denied Hallam.

Tennyson wanted to know why Hallam had died, what emotional purpose could be served by death and what faith had to say about loss.

The sequence includes several poems that have given phrases to the common language, such as "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

In Memoriam is performed by David Bamber and features music by Jon Nicholls.

Producer/Tim Dee for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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A Poet's Year Ep 1/3

Tuesday 1 to Thursday 3 February

3.30-3.45pm BBC RADIO 4

Poet Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales and winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2010, reads from her journal about life in rural West Wales where she lives on her smallholding.

This three-part series opens with a blizzard of snow, blocked roads and a frozen water pump which tests survival skills.

Wednesday's reading features bees, hay and swallows making a bountiful summer.

In the final programme, the autumn crops – potatoes, beetroot, blackberries and apples – are gathered in, and the honey is harvested. And the pond has a mysterious nocturnal visitor.

The Welsh landscape and the healing power of nature are both driving forces in Gillian Clarke's poetry and prose. These readings are adapted from her prose writings At The Source.

Producer/Kate McAll for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah chooses Marcus Garvey, the inspirational black nationalist leader, as his choice for the final programme in this series of Great Lives.

Presented by Matthew Parris, the programme also features biographer Colin Grant.

Presenter/Matthew Parris, Producer/Beth O'Dea for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Wondermentalist Cabaret Ep 1/4

Tuesday 1 February

11.00-11.30pm BBC RADIO 4

Matt Harvey hosts his own comedy infused, musically enhanced and mildly interactive poetry cabaret, featuring guests such as Elvis McGonagall, and one-man house band Jerri Hart.

Poet, performer, enemy of all that is difficult and upsetting, Matt brings his own particular style of cabaret to the airwaves.

Recorded in front of an audience in Bristol, he's joined by Elvis McGonagall and Jerri Hart, and fellow poets Lucy English and Byron Vincent battle it out with Elvis in a Dead Poets' Slam, while the audience compose their own poem on the subject of Sundays.

Presenter/Matt Harvey, Producer/Mark Smalley for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

5 Live Sport

Tuesday 1 February

7.00-10.30pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE

Mark Pougatch presents the day's sports news and the build-up to tonight's Premier League action.

At 8pm there's live commentary from one of the top games, which include Manchester United versus Aston Villa, Sunderland against Chelsea, Arsenal versus Everton and Birmingham City hosting Manchester City.

From 10pm The Final Whistle has all the reaction to the night's action.

Presenter/Mark Pougatch, Producer/Mike Carr

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

Football

Tuesday 1 February

7.40-9.45pm BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Uninterrupted commentary comes from one of the night's top matches in the Championship.

Producer/Jen McAllister

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

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Cricket

Tuesday 1 February

3.00-11.30am BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA

Uninterrupted commentary on the sixth One Day International between Australia and England comes live from Sydney with the Test Match Special team.

Producer/Jen McAllister

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra Publicity

Nemone is joined in the studio for a lunchtime chat with Milwaukee's Heidi Spencer And The Rare Birds.

A wayward traveller and burgeoning film-maker as well as a musician, Heidi embarked on a career making short films and travelling around America. Heidi's father, the late Jim Spencer, was a driving force behind Milwaukee's underground scene in the Seventies, a co-founder of countercultural poetry journal FREEK magazine and member of psychedelic folk group Major Arcana, whose original pressings are now extremely sought after by record collectors.

Jim cultivated Heidi's growth as an artist at an early age and she taught herself to sing and play aged 15. She has already drawn comparisons to the likes of Dolly Parton, Joanna Newsom and Edie Brickell. Heidi Spencer releases her debut UK album, Under Streetlight Glow, on the Bella Union label in March.

Presenter/Nemone, Producer/Jax Coombes

BBC 6 Music Publicity

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Gideon Coe plays archive sessions from Seventies English punk band X-Ray Spex alumnus Laura Logic, noisy Noughties band The Archie Bronson Outfit, Stereolab singer Laetitia Sadier and melodic, acoustic-tinged Swedes Dungen.

Presenter/Gideon Coe, Producer/Mark Sheldon

BBC 6 Music Publicity