BBC R2 - The Devil's Christmas

Hope you had a good Christmas and New Years, hope you enjoy this little collection of stories (albeit a little late!)

The Devil's Christmas
Read by Christopher Eccleston
Produced by Frank Stirling
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Doctor Who star Christopher Eccleston reads a series of stories with a sting in the tail for Christmas

Episode 1: The Signalman
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Charles Dickens's eerie tale of a railway tunnel haunted by the ghost of a winter's death that is yet to come.

Episode 2: The Necklace
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In this story by Guy de Maupassant, a young wife yearns, like Cinderella, to go to the Twelfth Night ball. Her husband gets hold of a coveted invitation and she borrows a priceless necklace from a friend. What happens at the party, however, ruins their lives for ever...

Episode 3: Thurlow's Christmas
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John Kendrick Bangs's short story, Thurlow's Christmas, is about a demon, a mysterious stranger and a magical manuscript. Or is it..?

Episode 4: The She-Wolf
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Munro Saki, a master of black comedy, provides tonight's final ghoulish offering, The She-Wolf. At a winter house party, one unbearable guest claims to be a master of the dark arts. But there is consternation all round when he turns his hostess into a wolf and can't turn her back again.


Duration: 60 Mins (Each episode 15 Mins)

[BBC Radio 2] - The Richard Burton Legacy

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"Coal dust and rain"

Michael's intention is to try and measure how much of Burton's life and work still resonates today. Is it the stage performances that entranced audiences in Stratford, London and on Broadway, or the films, some less than memorable but others as good now as the day they were launched? Or perhaps it's the Burton story, the myth he made, including Le Scandale - the grand Celtic passion with Taylor for which he sacrificed a family and raised the hornets nest of national and international paparazzi which has been on a feeding frenzy for similar targets ever since. And there's also the story of the family, the Welshmen and women he kept so close, none more so than his beloved elder sister Cecilia who brought him up after his mother died when he was only two.

There's Burton the King of 'Camelot' the musical, Burton the narrator voice in Jeff Wayne's rock album 'War of the Worlds' and then there's his own writing, the notebooks and diaries which are to be published soon and of course his letters.

But perhaps the Burton legacy is at its most lasting in his championing of the people he revered above all others. A copy of Shakespeare's plays was always at his side, not that he needed it much having committed huge swathes of it to memory. And the poets, Hopkins, Donne and perhaps above all others his friend Dylan Thomas. One of the greatest treasures in the BBC archive is Under Milk Wood and there, beguiling the listeners and conjuring the imaginings of Thomas is the Burton voice at its very best.

It'll be an hour rich in 'Rich' riches with a very personal view from one of today's great actors at its heart.


56 mins
Broadcast on 18 August 2010