[BBC Radio 4] - Siegfried Sassoon - A Friend

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In 1954 Edmund Blunden introduced Dennis Silk to Siegfried

Sassoon. They remained friends until Sassoon's death in 1967.

During the period of their friendship Silk tape recorded Sassoon

in conversation and reading his poems. This programme consists

Silk's reflections on Sassoon and a selection of the recordings.

Includes Sassoon reading:

The General

Base Details

Died of Wounds

Everyone Sang

Presented by Dennis Silk
Produced by Tom Auburn
Broadcast July 4, 2004

[BBC Radio 4] - Crazy For Love: Layla and the Mad Poet

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The inspiration for Eric Clapton's seminal pop song, 'Layla and Majnun' is said to be the most beautiful poem in the Arab world and beyond.

Pre-empting Romeo and Juliet by centuries, Layla and Majnun is the classic Middle East love story. Sitting at the heart of pre-Islamic Arab culture, its message is universal and it has since crossed borders and transcended language barriers even spreading as far as India and Turkey.

Based on a tale of thwarted love and poetry sent on the wind, Anthony Sattin tells the tale of its creator - Majnun - whose name is the word for 'mad' or 'crazy' in Arabic and tries to find out if he, or the object of his love, were real or imagined, fact or fiction.


Producer: Sara Jane Hall.
Briadcast: 05 September 2010
Duration:  28 mins

[BBC Radio 4] - Penguin, Puffin, and the Paperback Revolution

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Children's author Michael Morpurgo tells the story of Penguin books, which was founded 75 years ago by his father-in-law, Allen Lane. The idea for the iconic publishing house came when Allen was waiting for a train to take him from Exeter back to London. He went into a bookshop to look for something to read and all he found were badly produced, low quality books with gaudy covers. He realised that there was a gap in the market for high quality, well designed paperbacks available to everyone at the price of a packet of cigarettes.

Michael grew up in a house that was especially full of Penguins and Puffins because his step-father, Jack Morpurgo, was one of the editors there. He remembers being intimidated as a child when Sir Allen Lane came over for dinner. When they met again, Michael was in his late teens and had fallen in love with Allen's eldest daughter Clare. They decided to get married - something Lane was not overjoyed about. It was only seven years later that Allen Lane died of cancer, so Michael never really got to know his father-in-law and never understood what had motivated him.

[BBC Radio 4] - The Shipwrecked Bears

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Gyles Brandreth investigates the mystery of three thousand missing teddy bears, the first ever made.

Three thousand teddy bears went missing in 1903, supposedly en route for New York from their native Germany. Bear expert and storyteller-par-excellence Gyles Brandreth attempts to discover what really happened to these earliest toy bears.

In 1902 the first ever toy bear was designed in Germany by Richard Steiff: Bär 55 PB, a lifelike bear with joints, a humped back and a snout. A New York toy company placed an order at the Leipzig Toy Fair in 1903 for three thousand of the bears - a novelty - to be ready in time for the Christmas market. The bears were made and packed up for shipment, but there is no record of them reaching their destination and none of this load of US-bound bears has ever been found. The templates, patterns and even photos of this bear exist but not even one sample was kept. One popular explanation is that there was a shipwreck and the bears had a watery end. All that is certain is that if one of these bears turned up now it would be 'open chequebook' time for certain museums and collectors.

Witty, magical and heart-warming, the documentary reveals fascinating detail behind the making of the bears, including a trip to the Steiff factory and a riffle through their detailed archives, as Gyles delights us with this little-known story, and imagines where water-logged bears might have washed up.


Producer.: Mary Ward-Lowery.
Broadcast: 27 July 2011
Duration: 27 min