Why Home Front

One of the exciting things about working with a long running drama is its ability to show war effecting ordinary people’s everyday lives on the home front; the different characters show that there are numerous histories of the war.

When does the next series start?

Season Two of Home Front starts on 1 December.  In December 1914, with recruitment figures starting to dip, there was growing pressure on everyone at home to do more for the war.

Who is your favourite character?

I have a real soft spot for Kitty, she shows how war mucked up people’s personal lives and how for many ordinary people just surviving was heroic.

What history does Season Two reflect?

In looking at the scripts I obviously check for any historical inaccuracies that might have slipped through, things that don't quite ring true in relation to the behavior and attitudes of people at the particular point of the war that the episode is set in.

Recruitment campaigns used celebrities to broaden their appeal and recruited at entertainment events; a trip to the theatre could turn out to be a recruitment rally. The music hall star Vesta Tilley dressed as a soldier and sung songs such as -  Jolly Good Luck to the Girl Who Loves a Soldier, Real Good Boys are We - and  young children in replica uniforms were mascots for the recruitment  drives in regional theatres.  In Home Front, twelve year old Jessie Moore finds the idea of working for the theatre more alluring than joining the Girl Guides.

Medical officers inspected 200 recruits a day; but working class poverty resulted in many recruits being rejected; some due to poor teeth others for being too short. Poor Joe Macknade is one such rejected recruit desperate to sign up. Then bantam battalions were created for men under 5ft 3inches and patriotic dentists provided free dental care – often removing the offending teeth.

Some employers supported recruitment by promising to keep men’s jobs open for them or giving wives financial support.  A few women gave out white feathers to men not in uniform, others were less enthusiastic about husbands or sons volunteering; which could lead to financial hardship, particularly for those described as ‘unmarried wives’.

Propaganda posters tried to get women to support recruitment asking them -  Is Your “Best Boy” wearing Kharki ? If not don’t YOU THINK he should be ? Young middle –class women also volunteered, going to nurse, run canteens or drive ambulances on the Western and Eastern Fronts.

Home Front Season Two starts on BBC Radio 4 at noon on Monday 1^st December. To catch up with Season One, you can listen online or sign up for our podcasts.

 

What’s happening?

This version of Under Milk Wood was recorded in surround sound and when first broadcast in 2003 it was available in this format to listeners at home who had the right equipment and software. When the play is repeated on Saturday 18 October at 2.30pm the surround sound version will be available as a live stream; the play will also be available “on demand” from about 5pm that day for the next 30 days. If you don’t have a surround sound system you can try our experimental “binaural" experience, which turns the surround sound stream into an immersive headphone listening experience.

How to Listen to Under Milk Wood in Surround Sound

 

If you have surround sound speakers

You will need a computer with a broadband internet connection, an HTML5 compatible browser (such as the latest version of Chrome) and sound card connected to your computer with at least six channels, which should in turn be connected to a “5.1” surround sound system.

 

If you have headphones

You will need a computer with a broadband internet connection, an HTML5 compatible browser (such as the latest version of Chrome), a sound card with a stereo headphone output and a pair of headphones.

 

Where to find the audio

You will find the player for both loudspeaker and binaural headphone version on this web page

You will also find a link to some “Frequently Asked Questions” which include a test player so you can check your loudspeaker system is working before the play starts. If you are using the binaural experience you shouldn’t need to check it in advance, you can switch to different versions of binaural sound during the play.

 

What new technology is being used?

You don’t have to understand any of this in order to enjoy the surround sound experience; it’s included for those who want to know a bit about the underlying technology.

There is a new standard for HTML, the language that operates the World Wide Web, called HTML5. It includes an Audio API (application programming interface) which for the first time allows a web browser to play surround sound without the need to download and install additional software. It also includes the Mediasource API, which enables us to use MPEG-DASH, a new standard for media delivery, to get the data to you. Not all web browsers fully support HTML5 (particularly the Mediasource API) yet; we have tested the experiment using Chrome under Windows 7 and Mac OSX, and Internet Explorer 11 under Windows 8.1, but it might work with other combinations of computer and browser. We made all of the BBC Proms 2014 available using this technology.

The web browser also has the capability to render the 5.1 surround sound stream into a binaural presentation for headphones. This can provide a headphone listening experience which sounds as if it coming from outside your head, with front to back localisation of sound. To make binaural sound work perfectly we would really like the web browser to render the sound in a way that is optimised for the shape and size of each listener’s head but this is not practical at present so we are offering a choice of three different versions for you to try. We have not previously tried a public experiment with a surround sound stream rendered into binaural sound in a web browser so we are really keen to know what you think of it. To find out more about binaural sound and how this experiment works you can visit the BBC R&D Blog.

 

How can we give feedback?

You can comment on this blog or on Twitter using the hashtag #BBCR4UMW.

 

What if it doesn’t work?

As this is very experimental I’m afraid we can’t give you individual help getting it working but check the FAQ to make sure the equipment and web browser you are using are compatible with the experiment. If you can’t make it work or just don’t like it please let us know; you can listen to the broadcast in stereo on the radio, TV or online as usual.

Rupert Brun

Rupert Brun is Head of Technology for BBC Radio

 

BBC R&D blog: Find out more about Under Milk Wood in surround sound

It was the strangest sensation of deja vu. As Neil Pearson (a hero of mine ever since Drop the Dead Donkey and Between the Lines) pulled the velcro fastener of my satchel and then started typing away on my iPad keyboard, I was taken back to the 8 months I spent at the Old Bailey, tweeting out half a million words from the phone hacking trial.

Condensing the 130 days of testimony from the ‘trial of the century’, with witnesses ranging from archbishops to Hollywood actors, into 45 minutes of radio drama seemed at first an impossible task.  What was the narrative thread which could help a listener navigate through the byzantine court process and legal arguments? It rapidly became apparent that the thread would have to be me, partly because I created a new model of funding journalism during the process, and also because I was the target of several amusing mishaps, and then some worrying threats.

Over many years of drama writing, this is the first time I’ve used myself as a dramatic device, and I’m not sure it would have worked without Neil Pearson adding an overlay of charm, wit and intelligence (missing in the original version).

I’ve always been interested in research (it gets me out of the house). Drama writing has taken me on helicopters to crime scenes and stabbings, through RAF fast jets to open heart surgery. I went undercover in Hull while researching the BBC 1 drama series In Deep and out and about with police chaplains in Bristol while researching the Radio 4 series Bad Faith. But this is the first time I’ve based a drama entirely on fact and reportage. Which has one advantage…

There’s no debate with producers or cast about the language or the story: as a writer I have the ultimate answer “this happened.”

Power trips aside, I’m completely staggered by the way the cast and production team created a wild but comprehensible whirlwind tour through Britain’s longest and most expensive criminal trial. Fellow court reporters agree that it vividly conjures the atmosphere and tension of Court 12 of the Old Bailey, the defendants such as Rebekah Brooks, Clive Goodman, Brooks’ assistant Cheryl Carter: witnesses such as Jude Law and Sienna Miller; and above all the hidden legal debate and moral struggles that took place behind the scenes between the 21 bewigged barristers, and the judge, Mr Justice Saunders.

Modern courts are theatrical and full of drama, but not the typical drama one expects from TV and other fiction. There is tension, jeopardy, humour –barbed subtexts beneath the courtly language. But since the phone hacking trial was about major media figures, the media was to a certain extent itself on trial. A large part of the defence case was that Brooks and others could not get a fair hearing against the background of prejudicial comment, particularly in social media. Virtually every morning a defence barrister would rise and complain “My Lord, there’s been a Tweet”…

Only radio could capture the pace and impact of this brave new world of online communication while remaining true to the theatrical traditions of the barristers’ benches.  

Peter Jukes is an author and journalist based in London.

Afternoon Drama: Beyond Contempt is on Radio 4 on Friday 10th October and will be available to listen again for 30 days.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites

Most of all I needed metaphors as tools with which to handle the extreme emotions experienced by patient and carer going through such treatment. I thought of the cancer as a monster, but then understood that it’s a life form as valid as any other. I saw a distant doctor as a knight in armour, trying to avoid hurt by defending himself from emotion. When Leighton’s immune system was destroyed by the chemo, I became obsessed with hygiene.  I imagined microbes in a hospital having a ball in insanitary conditions. Logically, germs and viruses are highly innovative entities, I imagined them dancing and getting drunk and forgot about them as enemies.

Leighton’s now been in remission for the last ten years, thank God. We did go back sailing but instead of crossing to Brazil, I wrote of a voyage through a hospital. We all, at some point or another, have to negotiate our way through the good and bad news we receive medically. It seemed as big as the sea as a metaphor of becoming lost and of learning to make your way by new rules.

Maris in A Hospital Odyssey is both me and not me. I loved seeing Alexandra Roach (who plays Maris) giving the character’s language new emotion. In writing A Hospital Odyssey, I’d heard every word inside my head. I hadn’t expected Allegra McIlroy’s production to sound like that internal poem, but it did, except for when it sounded even better. The production made me laugh, which pleased me because when you’re in extremis in a hospital, a laugh is one of the few things that can make you feel better. As for how you know what a greyhound – one of the main characters - speaks, I don’t know. Alex Beckett’s cool reasonableness caught the dog in my head exactly. You know a greyhound isn’t going to panic when he’s faced with a terrible wound or an orchard full of stem cells. He’s the ideal companion for a journey through a hospital. I hope this map helps other carers make the same successful journey with sanity and humour.

Gwyneth Lewis
June 2014

• A Hospital Odyssey is the Afternoon Drama on Thursday 26th June 2014
• Gwyneth Lewis chooses Laurel and Hardy's dance in Way Out West as part of Front Row's Cultural Exchange
• The Guardian review A Hospital Odyssey by M Wynn Thomas

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES?

The Illustrated Man was part of an elite group of books that we genuinely looked forward to getting involved with at school. Along with The Day of the Triffids and The War of the Worlds, it was off syllabus but our teacher that year was determined to broaden our horizons beyond Shakespeare—and she did it with such a passion that I hope she will be mightily pleased that I, if not others, have continued to keep this flame alive.

In 1981, I was 14 and it was not a period in time when tattoos were even remotely pop-culture orientated, but the backstory to Bradbury’s tale is absolutely captivating. What 14-year-old boy would not have his eyes swept wide open by the tale of a vagrant who had been tattooed with magical images by a time-travelling witch?
That the book had been out in the populace for thirty years already makes it all the more special. 

Some years later, I found a VHS copy of Jack Smight's 1969 movie adaptation on a market stall. Held up at the front-end by Rod Steiger and Claire Bloom, it's a strange film and up until that day, I had never seen it. It was captivating for all the wrong reasons—it certainly wasn't how I remembered the book that was for sure, so I back-tracked to the novel again and found that a subsequent reading was actually far superior to the first. 

Since then, I've read The Illustrated Man many times, and not only as I've had cause to work with the book due to my job. You can never be sure with Ray Bradbury as to what his intentions were with his stories. As something of a ‘fussy’ fan of Bradbury, I get the impression that he was simply writing stories he liked, and if you liked them too, that was great. If not, that was also fine because there would be something different along shortly. 

I believe 2014 makes it 63 years on the shelf but still, The Illustrated Man never gets old. If you were to press me as to why, I would say it was because it consists of contrastingly different short stories held together with a premise thinner than a spider’s silk that just so happens to be stronger than steel. The book is not really even about a tattooed man—that's nothing but a mask to see it safely into the carnival to make its speech. 

What the book is really about is human behaviour. And for that reason alone, The Illustrated Man becomes truly timeless in a way many books wish they could also be and yet, fail miserably.

Sion Smith is Editor of Skin Deep Magazine

 

Listen to The Illustrated Man

Hear Brian Sibley talk about The Illustrated Man 

Hear Real life tattoo tales

Dangerous Visions on Radio 4

 

How can crime be funny?

I'm Scottish so that's a slightly baffling question. I grew up in a culture where we always dealt with difficult or painful things by finding the black humour in them. Still do, for that matter. I know I sometimes respond to situations with comments that other people find in questionable taste, but it's the way my head works. I think it's a way of defusing a situation that we're struggling to cope with. It doesn't mean we're dismissing the seriousness; it just provides a release valve for complicated and overwhelming emotions.

 

What are your favourite comedies or comedians?

Sarah Millican, Susan Calman, Mark Steel, Victoria Wood, David Mitchell, Marcus Brigstock  -- can you tell I'm a Radio 4 listener? I love I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Outnumbered, The Thick of It, The League of Gentlemen, Dinnerladies, The Inbetweeners, Green Wing... I like stuff that takes observational detail then bounces it off the wall.

 

How does writing comedy compare with writing crime? - which is harder - more gruelling?

It's all hard! I don't think there's much difference. They both present challenges; they both make significant imaginative demands. It's very hard to sustain comedy, and I never know whether it's come off or not until I actually hear the actors doing the readthrough. Good actors find that seam of comedy that runs through the work and they push it to the surface, which is a joy for me to hear. With a novel, I also have to wait for the reaction of others, but I don't have that direct experience of what the reader brings to the book.

 

When you wrote Deadheading, what was your thinking behind using a Natural History doc style narration?

It came from my producer, who directed me towards a Radio 3 adaptation of Gogol's Dead Souls which incorporated a narrator into the drama itself. We thought it might be interesting to try something similar, and I reckoned the Natural History approach would offer me opportunities for humour as well as offering an insight into the structure of the storytelling. But because it's comedy, I was able to make fun of the convention itself and the sometimes grandiose nature of the commentary. So it added a whole new layer to the drama.

 

Have you ever come a-cropper on an allotment?  

I have friends who are serious allotment holders and I benefit both from their anecdotes and their seasonal gluts! I just hope none of them has a committee chairman who recognises their foibles in my characters!

Did you unearth any stories about criminal activities or love interest on allotments when you were plotting the drama/researching?

My lips are sealed... My favourite line, which I couldn't shoehorn in, was about an allotment society chairman who held the post for several years and always held the meetings at his substantial house. 'And do you know, in all those years, he never so much as offered us a cup of tea or a biscuit,' one outraged committee member said.

 

Are we likely to see more radio drama from you?

What are you working on next?I'm hoping that DCI Blair, DS Trotter and CSI Black will be back next year in another adventure, Dead Clever, set in a university. And in the meantime, I have this year's crime novel, The Skeleton Road, to finish...

 

Val McDermid was talking to Deadheading programme Producer Justine Potter

 

Hear Deadheading on Radio 4

Hear more programmes or clips from Val McDermid on Radio 4

 

What were your initial impressions of Frank Zappa?

I was working for business people mostly, although I had worked for celebrities, like Gregory Peck, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Terence Rattigan and Marcel Marceau, so I wasn’t fazed by celebrity. But when Frank opened the door with his hair down to his shoulder blades, pitch black ringlets and dressed in a pink t-shirt and orange trousers, I was somewhat taken aback and thought I’d come to the wrong room.

He had this wonderful spoken voice that was so quiet and commanding and he was just very, very nice. I’d got a lot of his lyrics wrong and had made up my own, but instead of being cross, he thought it was hilariously funny. He laughed out loud, really laughed, and debated with me for half an hour about the lyrics to one of his songs, Brown Shoes Don’t Make It, and whether they were immoral or not. I was so stunned by the fact that he was willing to listen to me, take in what I had to say and engage with it. Nobody took any notice of secretaries, you were invisible. So from that point on I was hooked. He was IT as far as I was concerned.

 

Why do you think you got on so well?

His manager told me that it was because I wasn’t a groupie and Pamela Zarubica (Zappa’s friend) said it was because I was more intelligent than most of the other girls around him. And I was obviously quite attractive. I mean I wasn’t beautiful or anything, or pretty, but I was very attractive and I had a certain way with me. I’m sure he initially thought I was going to spend the night with him, but I wasn’t. And I’m sure that made him take notice.

Los Angeles must have been quite a shock to the system. How did you find it?

I wanted to go to university. I told Frank that in the beginning and he pooh-poohed it, saying education is a waste of time, teach yourself and all that business. And then when I got to Los Angeles I thought - this is better than university, this is real life.

I was an observer. I was totally outside of the scene and I was a bit snotty-nosed about it all, frankly. I thought they were all like a bunch of teenagers, even though some of them were nearly 30 years old. They scorned American education and scorned the government. Nothing was any good, parents were dreadful… I just didn’t have any time for it.

But as the time went on, a year and a half later, I gradually got drawn in to it. I became very hippified.

The atmosphere in Laurel Canyon changed in 1969. Why? 

The Manson murders absolutely changed everything. It really was a very friendly place before that. There were no buses down Laurel Canyon, so to get to Hollywood you just stuck your thumb out and any car would stop and take you down. And you didn’t feel nervous. We had no locks on our doors. People wandered in and out of the log cabin and I didn’t take any notice of them because I was so besotted with Frank Zappa. Charles Manson may have come in – Frank would have been mad enough to have given him a record contract.

But as soon as the murders happened, every house became a fortress. Frank put a speakerphone outside and really fortified his place. Everybody did.

What impact did feminism have on you?

When women’s lib came out, it was absolutely stunning to me - I embraced it totally. I waded my way through Sexual Politics and thought it was fantastic. And I thought Frank would agree with me, because he was for the downtrodden and the disenfranchised and I thought he would see women in that light. And he didn’t. From that moment on I thought, “I know more about this than you do. You’re talking rubbish.” And it was the beginning of my moving away from him.

What made you decide to write about your time with Frank?

I’ve always listened to radio plays and I wanted to write. A BBC producer said, “Write something that no-one else can write. That’s your best chance of appearing on the top of the pile.” And so I thought the only thing that no-one else could write is this story of me working for Frank Zappa.

I got the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and I wrote to every publisher that was suitable in there, about 50 or 60 letters. And about 12 of them wrote back and said “Yes, send a chapter”. So I knew I had a marketable product.

And then I sat outside in the beautiful weather in Singapore, where I was living, and just wrote for ten hours a day, practically. Did my back in, but that’s that. I really learned how to write while I was doing it.

Listen to Frank Zappa And Me from Tuesday 6 May

Download 'Freak Out - The Frank Zappa Story' - a Radio 4 on Music podcast

I have said that Karras is at the heart of the matter. (But we must never forget Regan, an innocent 12 year old girl who may be possessed by a demon or insane; either way she’s in hell.) Karras is the true, if not the official, exorcist. One of my first decisions was to tell the story almost entirely from his point of view. (More than half of the original novel has passed before Karras even learns of Regan’s existence.) One reason for that decision is that Karras may be seen as the demon’s real target. (Regan – worthless, disposable – is a means to an end.)

The demon’s purpose is to destroy faith – and not primarily a priest’s faith in God; our faith in our own humanity must be destroyed. Also, the scenes in the novel that I found most compelling and disturbing were those in which Karras and the teasing, mocking, subtle demon converse and joust. I always wanted more of those scenes. Now I had the chance to have devilish fun and create my own.

One development I always hope for when working on a dramatisation is that I begin to hear the book’s characters speak in my head; then they become my characters. Unfortunately, or fortunately, when I began work on The Exorcist the first voice in my head was that of the demon. I had that sneering, merciless creature whispering in my ear constantly – for months. This was frightening and exhausting; it was also exhilarating. 

There were times when the demon’s attack on other characters – and on humanity in general – was especially fierce, that I felt the dangerous thrill of being on its side.When the script was done I was almost superstitiously glad to be rid of all the books about possession, demonism and mental aberrance that had littered my desk for so long. But I’ll be forever grateful for the chance to wrestle with that decades-old, baffling fascination with this novel – and to confront some of my own demons. 

Father Merrin, the experienced and wise old official exorcist, says that the only defence we have against demonic attack is our faith. Karras says the best of our saving graces are courage and compassion. 

Faith – or courage and compassion? I’m not sure I can chose between them.

• Listen to The Exorcist on Radio 4 on Thursday February 20 at 11pm.
• Radio 4 Blog: Bringing the Exorcist to Radio 4
• Fright Night - a selection of programmes guaranteed to raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites. 

My inner fight didn’t last long until responsibility - which I reckon is our family trait – won. And with some encouragement from my friends, here I am. 

My name is Elena Kudimova, I’m Anna Politkovskaya’s sister. We grew up together in Moscow in the 1960s and 1970s, and were very close until we both married in the late 70s and our lives took different paths for some time.

I’m very happy that Radio 4 have decided to make this drama series based on five episodes from Anna’s life. It’s extremely important for Anna’s children, my mother and myself to keep her memory alive and let people know what she was standing for, quite often on her own. 

Since she was killed there were attempts to make a film about her life in Hollywood, but these have not materialized. There have been several documentaries about her life made in various countries. Each tells something about Anna’s character, so the more coverage she receives, the better. Each producer’s perception is different, each finds something new in Anna’s character and her life and altogether these programs help people to get a better understanding of Anna’s life and beliefs.

In Moscow the second trial is taking place now. Last week, both of Anna’s children; first Vera, then Ilya – were interrogated in court once again. I don’t feel bloodthirsty anymore as I felt at the beginning. You can’t raise the dead from the grave, but justice should be eventually done. We have been waiting for it for more than 7 years now. 

The investigation is going very slowly, and if they don’t manage to find who killed my sister within 10 years the case can be left unresolved. That would be very frustrating for the family.

While Anna was alive, our parents and I tried to persuade Anna to write about something else. Why write about Chechnya or the North Caucasus all the time? Russia is a big country and there are more than 140 million people living there. They too had problems. But she knew that Chechnya was the most vulnerable area at the time and ordinary people were subjected to a lot of stress and suffering there. She just couldn’t fail these poor people who had usually tried all other means to find justice before they came to Novaya Gazeta with their misfortune or grief.

Her human rights campaigning continues to inspire many people around the world. Her friend and colleague Mariana Katzarova founded the organization RAW (Reach all Women) in War, and every year since Anna’s death they present an Anna Politkovskaya Award to the most amazing women who work in areas of conflict. Last year the winner was Malala Yousafzai, the extremely brave and very articulate girl from Pakistan who was wounded in the head by the Taliban for her fight to give girls the right to go to school. There is also an Anna Politkovskaya award for journalism in Italy. 

My sister has become a symbol for the fight for freedom of speech and for the fight for basic human rights which are deprived from people in war zones. 

I do hope that Anna’s work is a constant inspiration for young journalists. She was very strong as an investigative journalist. Yet I don’t want even one more journalist killed because of their professional activities. They are still being shot every year trying to bring their readers and listeners the valuable truth about the events around the world. They realize the importance of the truth. I believe, like a doctor’s first rule is not to harm, the first rule for journalism should be "truth, nothing but the truth." This was of course also Anna’s belief.

Listen to Anna's War

Listen to the Woman's Hour tribute to Anna after her death, including an interview with her from 2004

Listen to the Woman's Hour update on her murder trial from August 2013

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.

The drama’s producer Gaynor McFarlane has described this programme as ‘one to listen to with the lights on; the story is scary, uneasy and deeply unsettling’.  She is not wrong.  It is a great production that tells the full Exorcist story the way it should be told.  Ahe power of radio is that we create all the images in our mind, making this adaptation as haunting and as affecting a version as I have ever come across. That is why we decided to stay faithful to the novel - which as many of you will know from the 1973 film production is a challenging story -  and create a special late night slot on Radio 4 - on Thursday 20th and Friday 21st February at 11pm-midnigh to air the drama.

However, in this version, adapted by Robert Forrest, the drama really tackles the battle between the demon and the priest; looking at it as one of wits, with the devil taunting the doubting priest.  The production had an incredible integrity to it as well from only using sound effects in ‘3’s (the devils number) or backwards (like the demon), to working with the actress, Alexandra Mathie, who plays the demon, to learn how to speak backwards.

It is a meaty story to take on, and the casting reflects that, with Robert Glenister as Karras, Ian McDiarmid as Merrin and a wonderful performance from Alexandra Mathie as the demon. The Exorcist is a modern classic and I hope you all enjoy it, and I hope everyone in production is alive and well!

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.

This year June Spencer marks an amazing 70 years of acting in radio drama.  She first appeared on radio in 1943 and has become known to millions of radio listeners as Peggy Archer, first playing the matriarch of the Ambridge clan in the pilot episodes of The Archers in 1950.  June is the first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Audio Drama Award, presented by Director-General Tony Hall. In her speech June graciously remembered her many colleagues past and present, including Arnold Peters who played her late husband Jack Woolley.

As Head of Audio Drama for the BBC, the awards occupy a corner of my brain all year round, a corner which gets bigger the closer we get to January and then becomes all-consuming. This year I managed to persuade Lenny Henry to be our Master of Ceremonies. Lenny has a long history with the BBC, and more recently with radio drama as writer of the dramas Corrinne Come Back and Gone and Miss You Still. I spend much of January inviting supporters and contributors to be award-givers: most of them are delighted to be asked but they’re also very busy people so I’m delighted when they say yes. This year, they included Fiona Shaw and Stephen Tompkinson (each of whom also judged a category), writers Howard Brenton and Mark Ravenhill and actors Philip Glenister, Alison Steadman and Jessica Raine.

You can read a full list of winners, see photos and hear clips from the ceremony here.

You can also hear a selection of nominees and winners on Radio 4 over the coming weeks:

• Billions (winner of Best Audio Drama – Single) will be repeated on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 11th February 2014 at 2.15pm.

• The Sleeper (nominated for Best Audio Drama – Single) will be repeated on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 8th February 2014 at 2.30pm.

• The Gestapo Minutes (nominated for Best Audio Drama – Single) will be repeated on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday 12th February 2014 at 2.15pm.

• Sketchorama: Absolutely Special (winner of Best Scripted Comedy with an Audience) will be repeated on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 10th February 2014 at 11pm.

Listen to June Spencer interviewed on Woman's Hour after receiving the award

Read more about June's award at The Archers blog

I first read Up the Junction sitting in an appropriately Sixties red brick library and was blown away by the energy and sheer movement of the stories.  The settings were so vivid: I could smell the constant cigarette smoke, hear Ben E King blaring from a juke box and was transported to that damp sweet factory where Sheila sits in her torn vest worn under an incongruous gold blouse. 

And it is that energy and boldness that all of the titles in Radio 4’s British New Wave season share.  Published in the late Fifties and Sixties, the content of these books hasn’t grown dusty with age. They are as vibrant and alive as ever, as I hope listeners will agree.  

Even though they tackle fairly near-the-knuckle subjects with gritty realism, they are not depressing.  They grab you by the scruff of the neck and don’t let go.  You get dragged across the rugby pitch with the hulking Arthur Machin. You fall down the stairs with the obnoxiously charming Arthur Seaton. You slurp spaghetti with Georgy and Peg at Fred’s. You drink whiskey with John Osborne on his houseboat that reeks of cabbage soup. You race cackling on the back of Dave’s motorbike alongside Terry and Rube.

The season kicks off (literally) with This Sporting Life on Saturday 31st August directed by Johnny Vegas (recorded in St Helens- the home of Rugby League). Followed by Paul Allen’s Beyond the Kitchen Sink which takes a look at the key players of the period and sets the dramas in context.

It’s been a treat to spend time with these gutsy characters and we’ve been lucky enough to attract some brilliant actors to our productions. James Purefoy, Joe Dempsie, Lacey Turner, Samuel Barnett, Sheridan Smith to name but a few.  Perhaps they’ve seen something of the same appeal in these iconic books as I did when developing the season.

This Sporting Life is on BBC Radio 4 at 14.30 on Saturday 31st August

The BBC is not responsible for content from external websites

I’m Nicholas McInerny and the writer of How To Have a Perfect Marriage.  I was married for nearly 19 years, with two children, before I Came Out at 45. My children were 16 and 12 at the time.

Obviously this was a huge transition in my life. I was caught between two great forces. One was the overwhelming need to be authentic, the real person I felt I had to be. The other was the terrible knowledge of the pain I was going to cause to people I cared about most.  Looming over all of this was the elephant in the room – the undeniable fact that I was gay and could no longer avoid it.

After I Came Out I realized I wasn’t alone. There were lots of other ex-married men who were gay and a strong support network for all gay married men, whatever their status. I also discovered this fascinating organization in America called the Closed Loop, which promoted another model where, in order to preserve stability in a marriage, and with the wife’s consent, the husband is allowed contact with a single gay man. A very modern kind of ménage a trois!

Having left my wife and also had my first significant gay relationship, I eventually found myself with someone I was very deeply in love with. This gave me the courage, along with sufficient time and distance, to reflect on what had happened. Naturally it was something I wanted to write about. It felt timely and relevant, and not just as a gay issue. I believe it touches on all kinds of long term relationships where the desire for commitment and security struggles with the need for adventure and self discovery.

Three years ago I was introduced to Mel Harris of Sparklab Productions and we started a conversation about how to approach the subject. We quickly agreed it should be told from the wife’s point of view – our main character, Karen. After all, it was she that was being confronted by a huge change in her life over which she had no real control, but had to come to terms with. We wanted Karen to have a strong voice which caught the impact of what was happening to her – raw and real and honest. We also wanted to try and capture the great conflict that lies in the heart of all of us – our imagined ability to react decisively and rationally whilst dealing with those things that strike deep into our very being – messy and confused and volatile. Above all I wanted to try and depict Karen as not being a victim, and to show her having choices too.

I found this both the easiest and most difficult thing I’ve ever written. Sometimes I felt like I was transcribing my life, as conversations with my ex-wife captured every accusation, assertion and plea in those agonized attempts to be brutally honest. They brought up powerful emotions of shame, guilt, entitlement and self-loathing -  and finally self-acceptance. A great example of that is the final scene where Karen first gets to meet Tom, who wants to be her husband’s lover.  I felt physically sick writing that scene and yet it sprung fully formed onto the page, needing no revisions.

We always knew, right from the star,t that we would get a strong reaction to this subject.  Mel and I were lucky to thrash out what we felt over the drafts I wrote, but even when we started recording with our wonderful cast - Julia Ford as Karen and Greg Wise as Jack - we’d often find ourselves in passionate debate.  Should Karen chuck Jack out? Is it really possible to love more than one person? Does sex mean something different to men than women?

What I realized was that in moments of great personal intensity we naturally fall back on our instincts, and yet in the shifting sands of emotions, even those instincts become deeply unreliable, even alien. And that’s where Karen finds herself. Jack’s revelation about his sexuality doesn’t just provoke her need to find some certainty in her marriage. It becomes her struggle to find the language necessary to articulate that need for certainty – the right way to speak her truth.

I’m delighted with what Mel has produced.  I’ve written over 30 radio plays and this is the one I’m most proud of. I really hope it will speak not only to people in the same situation but all couples in a committed relationship dealing with what is the only real constant in our lives - change. 

We’re led to believe there is only one kind of marriage. What I’ve discovered through my own experience is that there are many kinds of marriage being successfully negotiated up and down the country.  But that in order to happen, it requires a degree of absolute honesty and willingness to communicate, that we as human beings often seem to find more difficult than the idea of monogamy.

Nicholas McInerny

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Listen to How To Have A Perfect Marriage

Here at Feedback we have just had our largest postbag since the controversy over the coverage of the death of Lady Thatcher. This time it concerns a fictional death, that of Paul in The Archers and the revelation that his brother Matt knew all about his relationship with Matt’s lover, Lilian. A case of one woman, two brothers, two lovers.

Actually we had all twigged that Matt knew but that Lilian did not know that Matt knew, if you are still with me. The scene in which he revealed his knowledge to Lilian was an absolute cracker, brilliantly acted by the key participants. The problem was that you had to listen to another related programme, Ambridge Extra, to hear it. And for that you needed to be able to listen digitally.

The revelation was reported in the Archers on Radio 4 when Lilian told Jolene all about it, but that was like reading a newspaper report of a crucial sports match that you couldn’t attend, or the review of a play you hadn’t seen. One can understand the dilemma.

Ambridge Extra gives The Archers’ writers the opportunity to run storylines at greater length and to explore and develop newer or younger characters. And the digital channel has come a long way in recent years. Audiences have grown significantly, and the hope is that fresh story lines will attract even more Archers addicts over to 4 Extra.

However, as the present BBC Director of Radio, Helen Boaden, said this week “The BBC must not get ahead of its audience”. Many of our listeners feel that in this case the Corporation has.

The problem is that only 25% of overall listening is done on digital, and at least 50% of homes still do not have even one digital radio receiver.

Even those homes which have digital tend to have, in addition, several analogue radios and unlike when watching television, radio listeners tend to move from room to room or into the garden or the car while listening, and they expect to be able to hear the same programme wherever they are.

Much of the correspondence we received revealed real anger and upset amongst those who could not hear the Matt Lilian confrontation at first hand, and who fear they will be excluded from other crucial scenes in the future.

This week I talked to the person responsible for overseeing drama on BBC Radio 4 and 4 Extra, Commissioning Editor Jeremy Howe.

By the way, next Tuesday the BBC Trust will publish the BBC’s Annual Report. It will then be available on the Trust’s website. This follows this Wednesday’s admission to Parliament by the Chairman, Lord Patten, that  he and his colleagues felt “shock and dismay” over some recent executive pay outs, and the new Director General Tony Hall’s statement that the BBC had “lost the plot” over executive pay in the recent past.

The report should make interesting reading and we hope to have one of the BBC leaders on next week’s Feedback. After all we are one of the key ways BBC “share holders” can attempt to hold the Corporation to account. Please help us to do so by writing to us or phoning with your questions and concerns.

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The moment where Matt revealed all

Ambridge Extra

The tale that I tell in Love, War and Trains has been a family story of ours for as long as I can remember; in fact we told it to each other across kitchen tables and in back rooms with murmuring TVs in the background for so long that in the end it stopped being remarkable, it became ordinary, like the fact that I had four uncles called Uncle Blood, Uncle Terror, Uncle Passion and Uncle Thunder wasn’t too unusual. I’ll come back to the uncles later, perhaps.

The facts are these: my dad was from a place called Carnwath in Lanarkshire and my mother was from Great Houghton near Barnsley. My dad joined the Royal Navy in 1937 and my mother was called up to the WAAFs at the start of the war and they wrote to each other as pen pals in a scheme organised for the services at the time. They wrote for a while as my dad sailed the world and my mother worked in signals at RAF Blackbrooke near Wigan. They met a few times and the letters got more and more passionate. Eventually they got married on a 48-hour pass: my dad got a 48-hour pass, anyway, and sent a telegram to my mother saying GET LEAVE NOW. She couldn’t get leave but he chugged up to Peebles, where the wedding was, on a slow train, not knowing this. She eventually decided to go AWOL and climbed the fence and got on a train and just got to her wedding in time. They had one night together in the Tontine Hotel on the High Street in Peebles, my dad went back to the war, my mother went back to base and got arrested and chucked in the glasshouse for two weeks. Arrested for love: the height of romance.

When I told Gary Brown this story he said I should write it as a play and not only that, I should write it as a rhyming play. I wasn’t sure how that would work but I had a go; he also said that I should be in it as a narrator, with a different kind of rhyme-scheme. So I narrated in rhyming couplets, my dad spoke in quatrains, and my mother spoke in a special way that I invented for her, a six-line stanza that rhymed abc/abc, reflecting the more reflective (!) way she spoke.

After lots of drafts during which Gary and I wrestled with the dilemma that we all knew the ending (or I wouldn’t be here) and we tried to get some jeopardy in and I tried all kinds of new rhymes I’d never thought of before, we recorded the play at Media City in March. Billy Boy and Verity May Henry were fantastic as my parents, and I did a passable job of being me, although I don’t normally talk in rhyme that much.

And the Uncles? One was passionate, one was loud, one liked a scrap and one was scary. That was Terror. His real name was Norman. Of course.

Listen to Afternoon Drama: Love, War and Trains

 

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