To tie-in with Radio 4's new versions of the Raymond Chandler classic thrillers aired in February 2011, Harriett Gilbert presents a reappraisal of the life and legacy of the man from Upper Norwood who invented the PI as we know him. 'I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had...

Join Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss in this absorbing guide to the sounds of our most popular farmland birds, as heard on BBC Radio 4. In the fifth of our series of bird guides, Brett Westwood is joined once again by enthusiastic birdwatcher Stephen Moss, and with the help of recordings made by wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson they present th...

The second series of the Sony Radio Academy Gold Award-winning BBC Radio 4 show in which physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince take a witty, irreverent and unashamedly rational look at the world according to science. In the first episode, specially recorded as part of 2010's Cheltenham Science Festival, Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined by...

Physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince return for the third series of the Sony Radio Academy Gold Award-winning BBC Radio 4 show in which they take a witty, irreverent and unashamedly rational look at the world according to science. In the first episode, 'Apocalypse!', Brian and Robin are joined by comedian Andy Hamilton to discuss some of the...

Physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince return for the fourth series of the Sony Radio Academy Gold Award-winning BBC Radio 4 show in which they take a witty, irreverent and unashamedly rational look at the world according to science. Winner of a Sony Radio Academy Gold Award for Best Speech Programme: 'A brilliant way of being both innovative...

'It's Your Round' is the comedy panel game where the format is simple: there is no format. Instead, each of the panellists has brought along their own round for the others to play, meaning that each show is unique, untried, and unpredictable. Angus Deayton is the host valiantly trying to make sure everyone comes out of it with their reputations int...

'It's Your Round' is the comedy panel game where the format is simple: there is no format. Instead, each of the panellists has brought along their own round for the others to play, meaning that each show is unique, untried, and unpredictable. Angus Deayton is the host valiantly trying to make sure everyone comes out of it with their reputations int...

'It's Your Round' is the comedy panel game where the format is simple: there is no format. Instead, each of the panellists has brought along their own round for the others to play, meaning that each show is unique, untried, and unpredictable. Angus Deayton is the host valiantly trying to make sure everyone comes out of it with their reputations int...

'It's Your Round' is the comedy panel game where the format is simple: there is no format. Instead, each of the panellists has brought along their own round for the others to play, meaning that each show is unique, untried, and unpredictable. Angus Deayton is the host valiantly trying to make sure everyone comes out of it with their reputations int...

It's Your Round' is the comedy panel game where the format is simple: there is no format. Instead, each of the panellists has brought along their own round for the others to play, meaning that each show is unique, untried, and unpredictable. Angus Deayton is the host valiantly trying to make sure everyone comes out of it with their reputations inta...

'It's Your Round' is the comedy panel game where the format is simple: there is no format. Instead, each of the panellists has brought along their own round for the others to play, meaning that each show is unique, untried, and unpredictable. In this final episode Johnny Vaughan, Alan Davies, Roisin Conaty and Arthur Smith battle it out to see who...

Resourceful mum, Shanice, is persuaded by her next-door neighbour, Evie, to take up the bizarre sport of jelly wrestling to make ends meet in this BBC Radio 4 'Afternon Play'. 'Jelly Babes' was originally broadcast on 13 April 2011. Becky, AKA 'Azaria The Amazon', shows Shanice the ropes, and she is soon wowing the rowdy stag night audiences with h...

Martin Sixsmith continues his history of Russia, from the tumultuous events of 1917 to the country's re-emergence as one of the world's most powerful nations. After the whirlwind of the revolution, the Bolsheviks struggled to consolidate their victory. To rescue the economy and save the regime, Lenin made concessions to the people. But after his d...

When a new concept or product comes along, how does it get its name? Making up new words for new things or ideas isn't new. New words-linguists call them "coinages"-are as old as the English language itself. Melvyn Bragg explores the history of linguistic innovation from the Middle Ages, through the inventiveness of the Industrial Revolution, to th...

Melvyn has fun and games with puns, wordplay and tongue twisters. Twisting, manipulation and stretching of the English language is an integral part of everyday communication. This language play exists in many forms, as puns, double entendres, word games and verse exercises, and we have been playing with English for centuries.

"By your vowels, your station shall be known." How accents and social class are entwined. For at least 400 years, the way we speak has been one of the fundamental measures by which we've judged our fellow men on the scale of social acceptability. To so many, "talking proper" matters, and "rough talk is not quality talk." But such attitudes are begi...

Bad language is not new. We've been swearing for centuries, and those in power have been trying to censor us for just as long. Nowadays, many people are quite relaxed about swearing and will be careful about the context-although we still try to avoid bad language in front of the children, or in polite society.

Melvyn travels west in search of the increasingly elusive Cornish dialect. Cornwall is an evocative place. A Celtic land with a rich mythology, a land of caves and coves, of cream teas and country lanes. At least that's the image that has long attracted travellers and settlers. Yet it's also a land that has, over the last century, faced dramatic so...

Melvyn visits Brixton to discover the most imitated, influential form of spoken English today. It's a dialect determined not by geography or profession, but by age, fashion and aspiration. Pulsing through music culture, spread by television and radio, it can be found throughout the UK. Sometimes subversive, often secretive, it is arguably the most...

Melvyn Bragg follows his long historical exploration of the Routes of English with Voices of the Powerless, the BBC Radio 4 series in which he explores the lives of the ordinary working men and women of Britain at critical moments across the last 1,000 years. The Norman Conquest is his starting point, a time when William the Conqueror's 'harrying...

Here, Melvyn visits Oswestry. Just five miles from the Welsh border, this is a frontier town whose name means "boundary". It's where Offa's Dyke and countless crumbling castles bear witness to centuries of shifting political allegiances. Language too, has been a battleground. Welsh and English have waxed and waned, woven and unravelled. Visit the t...