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.

BBC Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House, London

There is an expression floating around the internet at the moment, plucked from a number of American magazines. It's "pulling a Gwyneth" and refers to that somewhat eccentric actress Gwyneth Paltrow.

Well on Feedback this week we pulled our own Gwyneth - Gwyneth Williams - who as Controller of Radio 4 has introduced the most significant changes to the network's schedule since James Boyle, well over a decade ago.

In private his successors will tell you that they were grateful for many of the changes he made, but at the time there was a huge uproar and shortly afterwards the man, nicknamed McBirt, retired to the quieter waters of Leith and the world of Scottish arts.

His next two successors, Helen Boaden and Mark Damazer concentrated on the programmes and those who make them.

Now Gwyneth Williams, driven in part, some suspect, by the need to make economies, but also by a genuine belief that The World at One needs more time, and that her network needs more science and less Americana, has refashioned the schedule she has inherited.

Quite a number of those who have contacted Feedback approve of what she has done, but a larger number worry that Radio 4 is now too dominated by news. They point out that between 6am and midnight over a third of the Radio 4 output is news or news related.

"We already have 5live", one wrote. "We don't need another rolling news station". I put the concerns to Gwyneth Williams when we met this week. (By the way the name Gwyneth, Welsh of course, means "white, fair, blessed". Well I can confirm that she is white and fair. You can decide on the third attribute.)

Here is our discussion.

Please let us know what you want Feedback to look into, and remember, the BBC Trust's consultation on Delivering Quality First ends on 21 December.

Make sure your voice is heard.

Roger Bolton presents Feedback

• Earlier in the week the Telegraph's Gillian Reynolds asked Radio 4's controller about the changes and more in a wide ranging interview. You can read about it and watch a video on the blog.
• More on the changes to the schedule on the Radio 4 blog
• Gwyneth Williams, Radio 4's controller, announces the schedule changes
• Listen again to this week's Feedback, produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with the programme, find out how to join the listener panel or subscribe to the podcast on the Feedback web page.
• Read all of Roger's Feedback blog posts.
• Feedback is on Twitter. Follow @BBCR4Feedback.

In the Observer radio critic Miranda Sawyer has written about the recent schedule changes at Radio 4. While she isn't happy about some of the afternoon switches:

Oh, and I don't like The Media Show being on at 4.30pm. Just so you know.

she is more complimentary about the reason the reshuffle came about in the first place:

"...The biggest change, which is that World at One has been given an extra 15 minutes, has proved very successful. It was a newsy week, and the programme has used this wisely...

Somehow World at One's extra 15 minutes has turned it into a far more rigorous, surprising, entertaining programme, and Radio 4 now has its news studded successfully throughout the day: Today, World at One, PM, each with a distinct personality, as well as good journalism. No more news, though, please. We already have 5 Live."

At the start of last week Gillian Reynolds, the Telegraph's radio reviewer, wasn't impressed by the new changes, writing under the headline Why it was a mistake to extend The World at One:

"When, for instance, Martha Kearney's trailer for the new World at One told me the programme's extra time would give them the chance to 'unpick' the story of Greek debt my switch went directly to 'off'. Unpick? Penelope at her Homeric loom, keeping off her suitors all those years Odysseus was away, could not have done more unpicking than the endless reports I have heard on this story."

Radio 4's controller Gwyneth Williams is appearing on Feedback soon and Roger Bolton, Feedback's presenter, has asked for your questions so he can put them to her. You can find contact details for Feedback on his regular weekly blog posts on the Radio 4 blog. Gwyneth Williams is in conversation this Wednesday night with "doyenne of radio columnists Gillian Reynolds" at a Media Society event:

"Gwyneth Williams has just completed her first year as Controller of Radio 4, the station with the most vocal and critical audience of any on the airwaves. How easy is it to innovate without upsetting the traditionalists? How can the station attract younger people without alienating older ones? What is the future for the flagship Today programme? Are there enough women on the air?"

More details here.

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio 4 blog

• Read more about the schedule changes and listeners comments on the blog
• Gwyneth Williams on the blog: Schedule changes on Radio 4
• Tony Pilgrim, head of Radio 4 scheduling, on Rescheduling Radio 4

The World at One radio news studio gallery, 2002

A small bit of radio history was made on Friday lunchtime when Edward Stourton became the last presenter of The World at One to say, "that's the World at One Thirty".

From Monday, the programme will be extended to 45 minutes - and as a result the presenter's payoff will change. Of course, it's not the first time that the duration has been altered. In 1998, the then Radio 4 controller, James Boyle, cut the duration of The World at One - or WATO as we call it - from 40 minutes to 30 minutes and moved the Archers from 1.40pm to 2.00pm.

Some people complain that there is too much news already on Radio 4, but our audience is at record levels with a weekly reach of 3.3m and around 1.4m listening to WATO each day. There seems to be a real appetite to find out what's happening in the world and for us to explain it.

As Gwyn Williams has said, the faster development of stories following Today (especially now that Parliament sits in the morning) means there simply isn't enough time in 30 minutes to cover the full news agenda, both foreign and domestic.

The programme was extended to an hour throughout the general election campaign and in what has been an incredibly dramatic year - with the economic troubles at home and in the eurozone; the Arab uprising; and the summer riots - we've extended WATO a number of times on an ad hoc basis.

My intention is that the programme will continue to be the home for strong, news-making interviews, analysis and discussion. However, too often at the moment, the programme feels boxed in by its duration. I've lost count of the number of times I or my colleagues have had to talk into Martha Kearney's ear telling her to wrap up an interview or move on to the next item, even though we know there are questions we'd like to have asked our guests. I understand how frustrating listeners find this and the extension to 45 minutes will allow the interviews and discussions time to breathe just a bit more.

I'm hoping we'll also be able to use the extra time to do a slightly broader range of stories. Audience research suggests that you really appreciate what we do at the moment - comprehensive, in-depth coverage of domestic, political and international news - and would welcome more of the same. But that there's also demand from our listeners for greater reporting of technology issues, business and economics news, and arts and culture.

I would also like to experiment with using different formats on the programme - being creative in our production and treatment, with more outside broadcasts and more reporting (by Martha, Shaun Ley and Edward; by the dedicated reporters we have on news programmes; and by the great team of BBC correspondents in the UK and around the world).

Do let us know what you think.

Nick Sutton is the editor of The World at One

On the World at One today the Chairman of the BBC Trust Lord Patten talked about the 20% savings that are being made across the BBC as part of the Delivering Quality First process.

Update: You can hear Lord Patten being quizzed by Roger Bolton about the DQF cuts and how you can take part in a public consultation on the proposals on tomorrow's Feedback.

The BBC Trust are leading the public consultation on the DQF proposals. You can have your say via the BBC Trust website.

Paul Murphy is editor of the Radio 4 blog

• About the the BBC: Delivering Quality First
• BBC Trust: Delivering Quality First
• BBC News: BBC set to cut 2,000 jobs by 2017

Update: details of how to enter an interview for the award and the competition rules are now here. The closing date for this year's award is 4 August.

Nick Clarke was a great Radio 4 broadcaster. He died far far too young in late 2006 and is remembered by many of us - and I am sure many of you - as a master of his art - on The World at One and Round Britain Quiz in particular. The man with the marvellous voice and intellect and unique interviewing style.

Radio 4 and BBC News launched an interview prize in his honour - for the best broadcast interview over a 12 month period. Last year - the inaugural year - the prize was won by the BBC's Carrie Gracie - though I am delighted to say that we had a pretty healthy number of entries from all over the industry. The prize was announced at the Cheltenham Literary Festival in early October and we are expecting to repeat the pattern for this year.

Entries have to be in by the end of July and we have a very able group of judges who listen in pairs before a final list is drawn up and listened to by a panel of three. Last year that final panel consisted of Gillian Reynolds (of The Daily Telegraph), Peter Hennessey (the renowned political historian from Queen Mary, University of London) and Nick's long time editor - Kevin Marsh (Editor of the BBC's College of Journalism).

• Mark Damazer wrote an obituary for Nick Clarke for The Guardian in November 2006. Of Clarke's return to radio after his first illness, he says: "His first Any Questions outing was at a school in Tring, Hertfordshire. The audience in the hall knew it was his first programme since the cancer. When Nick came on to the platform there was a Radio 4 version of pandemonium. The walls vibrated to the sound of the clapping and stamping. Many people stood."
• The Press Gazette on Carrie Gracie's 2008 win
• The picture shows Nick Clarke presenting The World at One in 2001. It's from the BBC's picture library.