BBC For Free

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For canal enthusiasts, there is nothing better than hearing about the colourful history of the waterways. Thanks to the work of one North Staffordshire radio producer, Arthur Wood, they can listen to the authentic voices.

Back in 1985, work was finally completed in the Radio Stoke studios on a huge project.
It's a project which would have challenged today's leading national broadcasters, even with the cash at their disposal.
But when you think it was essentially the work of just one radio producer, working on the sort of tiny budget provided on BBC local radio, it was an amazing feat.

Arthur Wood, whose 'day-job' was as Education Producer at Radio Stoke, had managed to record some one hundred hours of interviews out on location, and then edited them all, distilling them all down to ten half-hour documentary programmes.
It is a staggering achievement - and even more when you consider that Arthur also wrote the narrative script (and voiced it himself) and even wrote the music! Arthur was of course a distinguished jazz piano-player.

Arthur, who died in 2005, was a canals-man.
Raised in North Staffordshire, he was familiar with the many waterways that run through the area, and even chose to settle in a house near to the Cauldon. He had his own boat.
However it was those who worked on the canals that fascinated him the most; and he decided to record memories of a disappearing way of life before they were finally lost for ever - and so began the "On The Cut" project. "Cut" is of course the local dialect word for a canal.
Arthur described the opus as: "An account of day-to-day life on commercial waterways by the men and women who worked on, and alongside, some of the main canals of England in the earlier years of the 20th century."

The programmes are:

Part 1 Homes & Boats
Part 2 Narrow Boats & Broad Boats
Part 3 Carrying Cargoes
Part 4 Horses & Motors
Part 5 Boats On The Move
Part 6 Forging Ahead
Part 7 A Tough Life
Part 8 On The Bank
Part 9 Growing Up
Part 10 End of An Era

BBC R3 - Louis MacNeice's 'Christopher Columbus'

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First perfomed in 1942 to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Columbus'
first great voyage of discovery. This production made and broadcast
to celebrate the 500th anniversary. Far less theatrical/more natural
than the original production.

The music is intrusive up front, but after about five minutes settles
down and supports - rather than competes with - the action.

Music by BBC Symphony Orchestra

BBC R4 - Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle

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A hundred years ago Edgar Rice Burroughs created the character of Tarzan who quickly became a global sensation - when the books were first adapted for the big screen in 1918, the resulting film was one of the first ever to take over a million dollars at the box office. Way ahead of his time, Burroughs ignored the advice of business 'experts' who told him not to roll out the character across different formats. By doing so, he was one of the true pioneers of the multi-media franchises that have since become the norm.

Tarzan himself has been as troubling as he has been popular - the different characterisations that have appeared in the hundreds of books, films, radio shows, comic books, cartoons etc., make it very hard to pinpoint one single, authentic character. Some critics have derided him for his affirmation of white, colonial assumptions, while others have championed his eco-warrior credentials. One thing is for sure - with a range of new books and films appearing, the character of Tarzan has lost little of his original appeal. John Waite talks with, among others, James Sullos of ERB Inc., Desmond Morris to find out about the plausibility of the notion of a baby being raised by apes, and cultural historian Jeffrey Richards.

BBC R4 - The Lobotomists

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2011 marks a 75th anniversary that many would prefer to forget: of the first lobotomy in the US. It was performed by an ambitious young American neurologist called Walter Freeman. Over his career, Freeman went on to perform perhaps 3,000 lobotomies, on both adults and later on children. He often performed 10 procedures or more a day. Perhaps 40,000 patients in the US were lobotomised during the heyday of the operation - and an estimated 17,000 more in the UK.

This programme tells the story of three key figures in the strange history of lobotomy - and for the first time explores the popularity of lobotomy in the UK in detail.

The story starts in 1935 with a Portuguese doctor called Egas Moniz, who pioneered a radical surgical procedure on the brain. Moniz was a remarkably distinguished figure, a diplomat as well as a doctor, who had invented the technique of cerebral angiography which is still used today. With very little evidence, he speculated that cutting the links between the frontal lobes and the rest of the brain would relieve symptoms of mental disorder. His results were seized on with enthusiasm the following year by Freeman, the grandson of one of the US's most famous surgeons. Freeman was a relentless self-publicist and managed to convince many of the efficacy of his procedure. Freeman's promotion of lobotomy as a cure for mental illness was instrumental in Moniz receiving the Nobel Prize for medicine. The operation was also taken up by the most celebrated British neurosurgeon of the time, Sir Wylie McKissock. Like Freeman, he travelled the country, performing numerous lobotomies in single sessions. For this programme, Hugh Levinson interviews McKissock's former colleagues and hears in detail about how he performed several thousand lobotomies, or leucotomies as they were known in the UK.

The operations were successful in subduing disturbed patients, usually with immediate positive results, which sometimes persisted. Freeman argued that this was better than letting mentally ill patients rot away for decades in squalid institutions, untreated and unattended. However, further monitoring showed very mixed results. While a significant number of patients with affective disorders seemed to become better, a large proportion were unaffected or got worse. Many patients reverted to a child-like state. A significant proportion died as a direct result of the procedure.

In the 1940s, Freeman pushed on, devising a faster and cheaper procedure. He hammered an icepick (originally taken from his home fridge) through the top of each eye socket, directly into the skull. He then swept the icepick from side to side, destroying the connections to the frontal lobes. Other surgeons were horrified by the random nature of the operation. He recorded with satisfaction in his diary when attending doctors ended up vomiting or fainting. His closest aide refused to participate. By the late 1950s the lobotomy craze was over, and only a very few continued to be performed in special cases. In the late 1960s, Freeman was banned from operating.

The stories of Moniz, Freeman and McKissock - all commanding and dynamic figures - raise profound questions about our ideas both of mental health and science. Is a patient "cured" just because he becomes subdued? And how come the lobotomy became so popular despite the lack of evidence of its efficacy - and the rapid dissemination of evidence of its potential for harm? To what extent is science independent of powerful personalities, economic considerations and media pressure?

Jerome K Jerome - Three Men In A Boat

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Episode 1:

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4 Extra Debut. George, Harris and J holiday on the River Thames from Kingston to Oxford - with Montmorency the dog. Stars Jeremy Nicholas.

Episode 2:

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A tin of pineapple takes on a starring role as the story of the Thames holiday continues.

Episode 3:

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As the friends conclude their Thames adventure, they encounter a tragedy and some nasty weather.

Duration: 81 Mins (Each episode 27 Mins)

Cormack McCarthy - No Country For Old Men

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In 1980 southwest Texas, Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, stumbles across several dead men, a bunch of heroin and $2.4 million in cash.

The bulk of the novel is a gripping man-on-the-run sequence relayed in terse, masterful prose as Moss, who's taken the money, tries to evade Wells, an ex?Special Forces agent employed by a powerful cartel, and Chigurh, an icy psychopathic murderer armed with a cattle gun and a dangerous philosophy of justice.

Also concerned about Moss's whereabouts is Sheriff Bell, an aging lawman struggling with his sense that there's a new breed of man (embodied in Chigurh) whose destructive power he simply cannot match. In a series of thoughtful first-person passages interspersed throughout, Sheriff Bell laments the changing world, wrestles with an uncomfortable memory from his service in WWII and?a soft ray of light in a book so steeped in bloodshed?rejoices in the great good fortune of his marriage.

While the action of the novel thrills, it's the sensitivity and wisdom of Sheriff Bell that makes the book a profound meditation on the battle between good and evil and the roles choice and chance play in the shaping of a life.

(Dr.) Timothy Leary - LSD: The Psychedelic Experience

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if one were to make the Joeseph Campbell connection from Star Wars then it would be clear why i'm following up Star Wars with this. If not, it simply boils down to the fact that this guided walkthrough to LSD is more than it seems.

The ideas presented here and in general in Leary's life earned him the reputation as the "most dangerous man in America" and why he was sentenced to 30+ years in jail for half a joint (which he said was planted anyways).

In sum, a great individual and someone I have nothing but respect for and thus am very pleased to upload.

Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (Unabridged)Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (Unabridged)

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After his youthful adventures of raping and pillaging, Alex finds himself in prison. When he volunteers for an experiment, his sentence is commuted to two weeks.

The experiment leaves him physically incapable of doing wrong and releases him back into the world. However, when he repeatedly runs into people he has wronged in the past, his real suffering begins.

Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451

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Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury which was first published in 1953.

The novel presents a future American society in which the masses are hedonistic and critical thought through reading is outlawed. The central character, Guy Montag, is employed as a "fireman" (which, in this future, means "bookburner").

The number "451" refers to the temperature at which book paper combusts. Although sources contemporary with the novel's writing gave the temperature as 450 Â°C (842 Â°F),

Bradbury apparently thought "Fahrenheit" made for a better title.The "firemen" burn them "for the good of humanity". Written in the early years of the Cold War, the novel is a critique of what Bradbury saw as issues in American society of the era. Read by the author.

J.R.R. Tolkien - The Annals of the Kings and Rulers

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This is a funny one as I discovered I had this only by chance. this is a rare recording of an appendix-type history of kings and other such information about Middle-Earth. basically if one has the Silmarillion (which will be uploaded in due time as well) then this would be right up your alley. three cheers for the master of all fantasy.

Friday, 9 March 2012

BBC R4 - Your World - Dreaming Dickens

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A dream-walk with Charles Dickens through the London night.

In the 200 years since his birth, Charles Dickens has become an institution - the archetypal Victorian novelist, whose works have spawned countless costume dramas on television.

But he also left another, very different legacy: some of the strangest and most surreal writing in the English language.

At times so cosy and sentimental, Dickens’ novels are full of transgressive desires and fears - murderous rage, anarchic glee, cannibalistic threats, and sexual obsession.

In this documentary-fantasy we bring the danger back to Dickens.

Slipping in and out of his weird and brilliant imagination, we see modern London as he might have done, travelling through the city's streets at night to crack dens and strip-joints as the police sirens wail.

We meet characters from his novels and characters who would be in his novels if he were still alive today.

Starring Sandy Grierson and Madeline Brolly.

------- File Information ---------

Broadcast BBC WS, 04 Feb 2012

Wednesday, 7 March 2012

BBC R4 - Plain Tales From The Raj

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Seeing the popularity of our older post - More Plain Tales from the Raj, I decided to look around and find the first of this series, which I've uploaded here for your pleasure.

Enjoy!
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Reminiscences of people who lived and worked in India from the late
19thC to Independence in 1947.

Interviewees came from a wide range of civilian and military departments.
Military personnel range from the Commander in Chief of the Army in India
to Army privates. Civil servants of various ranks and members of the business
and commercial world.

Subjects include accommodation and living conditions, daily routine, social life,
recreation, health sanitation, the effects of India postings on family life, relations
between the British, other Europeans, Indians and Eurasians, events such as
riots and earthquakes, the fauna and landscape and political events.

Monday, 5 March 2012

Black Mass - Horror Programs

Download Part III Here

Download Part IV Here

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31 of the 39 programs from the Horror stories produced by the Black Mass:

BBC R4 - Book At Bedtime: The Dream Life of Sukhanov

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It's the summer of 1985. Gorbachev is in the Kremlin and the first breezes of change are in the air. But for now, Anatoly Pavlovich Sukhanov (Tolya) is at the height of his prestige. He is the best-known art critic in the Soviet Union - editor-in-chief of Art of the World - with a grace-and-favour Moscow apartment, a dacha, and a chauffeur-driven Volga.

His wife, Nina, is the daughter of Malinin, the most famous 'approved' artist in the Soviet Union, twice-winner of the Lenin Prize. But at a retrospective of Malinin's work, things start to unravel for Tolya.

Olga Grushin was born in Moscow in 1971 and spent her childhood in Moscow and Prague. In 1989 she became the first Soviet citizen to enrol for a full-time degree in the United States while retaining Soviet citizenship. In 2006 she was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers and named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007. She has published two novels: The Dream Life of Sukhanov (2006) and The Concert Ticket (published in the US as The Line) in April 2010. Olga lives in Washington D.C.

"A contemporary novel so good, I felt like buying 10 copies and sending them to friends"
The Independent

"It breathes new life into American literary fiction"
The Washington Post

Abridged by Jeremy Osborne

Directed by Marilyn Imrie
A Sweet Talk Production for BBC Radio 4.

BBC R4 - Rudyard Kipling - The Gardener

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An aunt's grief for her nephew, killed by a splinter shell on the Somme. A poignant tale of remembrance read by Patricia Hodge.

BBC R4 - The Lost Special

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story of the mysterious disappearance of a train en route from Liverpool. Read by David Schofield

BBC R4 - Classic Serial: Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels

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Jonathan Swift's classic satire, in a brand new dramatisation starring Arthur Darvill [Dr Who.]

(57 Mins each episode)

Episode 1 (05 Feb 2012)

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Gulliver is shipwrecked on the Island of Lilliput where the natives are tiny people living in a miniature society. With his unique overview of this realm, Gulliver discovers a world of petty politics and small minds. Coerced into a war between two nations who disagree on the best way to eat boiled eggs, Gulliver finds himself betrayed by friends and battered by enemies - escape is his only option if he wants to survive!

Gulliver's adventures in Lilliput are hilarious, disturbing and profound. This is a story of dishonest politicians, mindless ceremony and wars based on unconvincing arguments. A satire as potent now as it ever was!

Gulliver's Travels quickly became a classic. The book has become not only the defining work of its author but also of its genre - a landmark in English Literature to which all satirists today can trace a heritage.

Gulliver's Travels is adapted for radio by Matthew Broughton, and is a BBC Cymru/Wales production, directed by Sam Hoyle.

Gulliver's Travels stars Arthur Darvill as Gulliver. Other members of the company are Matthew Gravelle, Sam Dale, Bethan Walker, Judith Faultless, Richard Nichols, Chris Pavlo, Claire Cage, Lynne Seymour.

Episode 2 (12 Feb 2012)

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Gulliver's adventures continue when he finds himself in Brobdingnag - a land where the inhabitants are enormous! Here, as a miniature man, Gulliver must fight for survival against rats the size of dogs, a dwarf who is 40 foot high, and the ridicule and humiliation of a scornful court.

With his uniquely close-up view, Gulliver sees the people (even the great beauties) as if under a microscope - and they are dirty, stinking and disgusting. He becomes increasingly horrified by humankind, stranded in a frightening land where his only ally is an innocent child. Once again, escape is imperative - if he doesn't, he won't survive...

As an exploration of of man's vanity and complacency, Gulliver's second voyage is an acute satire - as relevant today as ever. Beyond that, it is also a rattling good adventure story - a man lost, swashbuckling his way through manifold giant-sized dangers, desperate to find a way back home.

Episode 3 (19 Feb 2012)

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The last voyages of Jonathan Swift's story are the lesser told. Gulliver finds himself on the floating Island of Laputa, where he encounters mad scientists and the terrifying ghosts of the great and the good. He flees from these intellectual and spiritual horrors, only to finally find a kind of Eden with the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent and gentle horses. However, in this land, humans - or as they are called, the 'Yahoos' - are considered vermin. The dark and traumatizing experiences Gulliver has in this land change his life (and his wife and family's lives) forever. With the satire here focused on crazy scientific experimentation, superstition, and finally spiritual desolation - Gulliver's Travels is as modern and potent now as it has ever been.

Gulliver's Travels stars Arthur Darvill as Gulliver. Other members of the company are Matthew Gravelle, Sam Dale, Bethan Walker, Judith Faultless, Richard Nicol, Chris Pavlo, Claire Cage, Lynne Seymour, Gareth Pierce, Ewan Bailey and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

BBC R4 - The Spike Show - Milligan Remembered