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2016-08-08T13:18:32+00:00

Editor's note: In Prime Ministers' Props, Professor Sir David Cannadine explores political fame and image by looking at how an object or prop, whether chosen deliberately or otherwise, can come to define a political leader.

In the autumn of 2001, Ian Duncan Smith replaced William Hague as the Conservative Party leader, following Tony Blair’s second landslide victory at the polls, and the Daily Telegraph’s cartoonist, Nicholas Garland, offered IDS some advice about how he should manage his image and his public relations.

What Duncan Smith most urgently needed, Garland suggested, to set the Tories on the road back to political power, was to get himself associated, in the public mind, with a particular thing or artifact or prop. There were, after all, prime-ministerial precedents and earlier examples a-plenty, and Garland has made his point by drawing several of them: Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella, Winston Churchill’s cigar, Anthony Eden’s homburg hat, Harold Wilson’s pipe and Gannex mac, and Margaret Thatcher’s handbag. What, he wondered, would Ian Duncan Smith decide on as his equivalent prop?

There’s no evidence that he ever decided on anything, and while it might be going too far to suggest that IDS’s failure to discover an appropriate prop was the reason he never got to 10 Downing Street, Garland’s cartoon and Duncan Smith’s failure, do remind us that many Prime Ministers, both successful and unsuccessful, have indeed used props to present a version of their character and project their image to a wider public.

In this series, I’m exploring five examples of Prime Ministers and their props of power: how they came to choose or to be associated with them, how they worked, and also how they didn’t work. The overriding theme that emerges from these programmes is that Prime Ministers were never fully in control of their props. For while they might have been chosen in the hope of helping create a favourable image, when the going got rough their props could take on a hostile meaning and be turned against them to devastating effect, often at the behest of the cartoonists.

Professor Sir David Cannadine is a British author and historian and presents a series called Prime Ministers' Props on BBC Radio 4

Listen to Prime Ministers' Props

Nicholas Garland: Daily Telegraph 11 Oct 2002

2013-10-25T10:37:58+00:00

Editor's note: In Thursday's programme Melvyn Bragg and his guests discussed The Corn Laws. As always the programme is available to listen to online or to and keep.

The Corn Laws

Hello

Well, both from Twitter and from the e-mails so far – I'm dictating this five hours on from the programme – quite a number of people wanted it to go on much longer, principally in order to catch up with what they had not been very interested in at school.

Both [email protected]" target="_self">Boyd Hilton and Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey were on the programme for the first time and of course sailed through.

I'd become fascinated by Robert Peel while preparing for the programme and [email protected]" target="_self">Boyd Hilton more than matched my enthusiasm and had what seemed like infinite knowledge of the man. I queried Peel's religious nature and Boyd replied that he thought that Peel might have kept hearing in his head the Sunday sermons. And the background of his father – industrial, northern, "self-made" although he became a baronet – which had been thought to be erased by Eton and Oxford, somehow made him awkward among the aristocrats whom he led. Socially insecure, perhaps, and more inclined to lean towards his undoubted intellectual strength and follow his disdain for huntin', shootin' and fishin'.

Lawrence Goldman pointed out that in a recent discussion he'd had, Alistair Darling had said that his favourite politician was Peel. Which reminded me in that wonderful interview that Peter Hennessy did with Norman Tebbit on Radio 4, Tebbit had greatly favoured Ernie Bevin. You never know who is walking hand in hand.

Cobden and Bright thought that the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 would change their world. That there would be a complete overhaul of the state. That the power of the landed gentry, wrenched from the Anglo-Saxons in 1066 and maintained with boot and spur and blood and glory ever since, would now begin to melt like summer snow. Not a bit of it. Cobden had also hoped that the new move towards free trade would inevitably bring about peace in the world. And then the Crimean War turned up and various other colonial campaigns.

So out into London to a magnificent autumn day. Rustling in the trees rather like sea withdrawing across a pebbled shore. Leaves now falling in St James's Park and carpeting the paths and the grass; the deep browns, the plums, the shades of gold. On Regent Street men sweeping away every piece of nature that dared to disfigure the concrete. Outside Oxford Circus station a young man playing 'Hey Jude' through a traffic cone. Two East European girls having their photos taken with Big Ben in the distance, both rather shy and then suddenly snapping into a pose, left arm pointing to the sky, right hip jutted out, face in profile, then a quick, darting smile at the camera. Were they models? Further along on the way to St Paul's through crowds and crowds of schoolchildren (what will it be like when the Chinese come in force?) I saw two young English women being photographed. They stood almost at attention and managed a smile and their whole expression said "please get it over with as fast as you can".

Into the Lords where there was a tremendously well-informed debate on Britain's place in Europe, and then out to buy a sandwich and one of those fruit bar things and an apple, and back to the office later on for a coffee and a bit of work before getting out again and seeing England at its best in Keats's time.

Best wishes

Melvyn Bragg

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2013-07-19T14:42:21+00:00

Editor's note: is available to listen to online or to and keep

Baroness Shirley Williams and Jack Straw

This week in I talked to the historian and journalist, Lord Peter Hennessy, about his new series ‘Reflections’, broadcast on Radio 4 at 9am on Thursdays.

Most of our correspondents loved the two episodes which have been transmitted so far, one with Baroness Shirley Williams, and the other with Jack Straw, but others thought the whole thing too cosy, with its references to Roy (Jenkins), Jim (Callaghan) and Harold (Wilson), and with the peers calling each other Shirley and Peter.

As I am about the same age as Peter Hennessy, and produced political programmes when his interviewees were in their heyday, I was fascinated. I understood the references to the Labour civil wars of the late 1970s and early 80s, as I went (as a producer) to the conferences where blood was spilt and ‘brothers and sisters’ were knifed in the front as well as the back. Figures like Peter Shore and Barbara Castle are still vivid in my memory, but they must be obscure politicians to younger listeners, rather as Hugh Dalton was a bit of a mystery to me.

Was Peter Hennessy too soft on his subjects? Well I guess the answer depends on whether, by using a more gentle approach, he got things out of his guests which an aggressive frontal assault would not have done.

However I think there are significant differences between retrospective interviews like these, in which the facts are well known, and contemporary interviews where they are not, and the presenter is trying to find out what happened. Of course, in the former case, the interviewee may still try to put the best possible interpretation on past events, hoping to affect how history is written. However, in these retrospective cases, the fog of battle has largely lifted. Interpretation is involved rather than revelation.

It obviously helps that Peter Hennessy is greatly respected and well liked; but as he is also an outstanding historian, with impeccable s in Whitehall, his guests know better than to try to pull the wool over his eyes. They need to be subtler than that.

Peter Hennessy discusses the art of the political interview with 's Roger Bolton

You may find it strange that, in the week of the publication of the BBC Annual Report, neither the Chairman, nor the Director General was available to be interviewed on . We also asked the Director of Radio, Helen Boaden, to talk to us. She also declined.

As the BBC is committed to ability and is perhaps the most high profile programme through which they are supposed to be able to their audience, one of them will surely be available to talk to us in the future? Surely"> the podcast

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2013-05-22T16:03:25+00:00

Editor's note: A season of programmes relating to the five Cambridge graduates whose treachery shocked the British establishment - listen to Cambridge Spies from Saturday 25th May 2013.

Two of the 'Cambridge Five' - Anthony Blunt & Donald Maclean.

“Cambridge Spies“ is in many ways, a misleading title.
George Blake wasn’t strictly a part of that particular set. John Profumo certainly had no connection, he was to some extent just unlucky.
Yet the phrase sums up the contradiction at the heart of the matter. As a concept, espionage is always presented as an intrusion. Enemy agents breaching borders, slipping through defences via subterfuge and false identities.

An excerpt from Adventures in the BBC Archive - Stella Rimmington on the Cambridge Spies.

Perhaps what shook this perception was the idea that 1930s Cambridge, the very image of a venerated English institution, could be home to the ‘enemy’. More than that, the enemy itself was home grown. Some would say the apparent betrayal by Burgess, Maclean, et al wasn’t part of some insidious plan to topple the country. It seemed born of a sincerely-held belief that communist Russia was the best alternative to fascism.
If you’re not familiar with the Cambridge Five – Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess (a confession by ‘fifth man’ Cairncross came some years later) – then the paradox is even more striking. A group of almost textbook flamboyant, eccentric Englishmen (diplomats, art history professors, even sometime BBC radio producers) who were nonetheless apparently willing to information to the Soviet Republic during wartime. It certainly flies in the face of conventional spy imagery.

Guy Burgess and Kim Philby

Not that this information would emerge until the following decades. In fact, it was November 1979 before Margaret Thatcher made a clear ission about Anthony Blunt’s role. Those who hadn’t defected had long since confessed in exchange for diplomatic immunity. A very human reaction. A long way from the steely cold resolve of secret agent cliché.
It’s this conflicting, human dimension which we’ve sought to capture with a season of programmes under that moniker – the Cambridge Spies. It takes in others caught in that uneasy era of revelation (Profumo, Blake) and a variety of styles (features, comedies, dramatized s). Hopefully though, it reflects the lack of easy conclusions on offer when it comes to Blunt and company.

Anthony Blunt

Listen to the Cambridge Spies season:
Sat 25th May - Rebels : Guy Burgess – Spies investigated: Guy Burgess according to people who knew and worked with him, including brother Nigel. From October 1984.
Sat 25th May - An Englishman Abroad – Spies in decline: what did the agent say to the actress? Burgess meets Coral Browne. Stars Michael Gambon and Penelope Wilton.
Sun 26th May - Another Country – Spies in the making: the childhood of young Guy Bennett could well have a major impact on his adulthood. Stars Tom Hiddleston.
Tue 28th May - Blunt Speaking – Spies reflecting: Sir Anthony Blunt considers his life and the shame of his exposure. Written and performed by Corin Redgrave.
Wed 29th May - After the Break – Spies unchained: George Blake’s daring defection made headlines. But what about life behind the Iron Curtain? Stars Jack Klaff.
Thur 30th May - The Reunion: Courtauld Institute - Spies revealed: Brian Sewell and other former students discuss the impact Anthony Blunt had on the worlds of art and espionage.
Thur 30th May - Lost, Stolen or Shredded - Spies pursued: Rick Gekoski attempts to track down diaries and effects of Kim Philby. Are they as elusive as their former owner">Radio Active : Probe Round the Back – Spies parodied: The team's investigators are on the trail of the 'Fifth Man'. Starring Angus Deayton. From September 1987.
Saturday 1st June - Iron Curtain Call – Spies lampooned: how else would you commemorate Burgess, Maclean and team but with an all-singing, all-dancing spectacular?

2013-04-12T14:37:02+00:00

Editor's note: Roger talks to Head of BBC Newsroom, Mary Hockaday, about the BBC's coverage of the death of Margaret Thatcher, listen to from 5 April 2013.

Margaret Thatcher

She was 87 and had been in poor health for a decade. She had been out of power and front line politics for 23 years.
Yet the death of Baroness Thatcher opened debates and wounds which are still raw. Watching the coverage of the parliamentary special sessions, I was struck by the fact that her personality and policies still dominate the Conservative Party, and that many of her opponents still haven’t forgiven her. Former cabinet ministers, men of course, looked back on their - and her - golden days and chortled at the affectionate but pointed anecdotes. Elsewhere there were demonstrations against the so called “Wicked Witch”.
I’m not sure of how much interest this was to the younger generation, for whom Baroness Thatcher is a relatively remote historical figure, rather like Clement Attlee was to mine. And the television documentaries about her did not command great audiences. We don’t have access to the radio audience figures yet to see if audiences rose or fell, but a large number of listeners felt there was too much coverage and that some of it was biased. I discussed these issues with the Head of the BBC Newsroom, Mary Hockaday in this week’s .

Head of the BBC Newsroom, Mary Hockaday discusses the BBC coverage.

On a personal front, I was the editor of BBC TV current affairs programmes, like Panorama and Nationwide, and of ITV’s This Week, for much of Mrs Thatcher’s premiership.
Indeed I produced some of Panorama’s coverage of her election campaign for party leader in 1975 and saw the condescension with which she was at first treated by some of her colleagues, who called her “Nanny” behind her back, and rolled their eyes to us waiting hacks as they posed for a photo call outside her then home in Chelsea.
I greatly ired the way she fought against such ingrained sexual prejudice, but often found myself in trouble with No 10. At one stage her press office said she was “Beyond Fury” with one of my programmes. She “hated,hated,hated” television interviews but when they were over, with a glass of whisky by her side, would stay on for an hour or two telling us how to run our business. She really enjoyed a spirited debate.
She did one such tv interview later in the same day that she had met Mikhail Gorbachev for the first time and realised he was a man “she could do business with”. After the recording she pumped us for information about him and was clearly fascinated by such a different Soviet leader. She was immediately aware of the possibilities for improved East/West relations that his emergence opened up.
Whenever I met Mrs Thatcher I was struck by two things. The first was the clarity of mind and piercing intelligence she brought to those issues in which she was interested. The second was her frequent lack of interest in new ideas and her ignorance of much of the arts, and of Irish history.
She was never less than polite, even after a heated argument, but she was the despair of her cabinet colleagues on many occasions and her fall did not come as a surprise, except to her and her closest colleagues.

Roger Bolton

•Listen to this week's
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2011-07-14T15:30:00+00:00

Editor's note: This episode of Thinking Allowed is available to or listen to online on the Thinking Allowed podcast page. More listening options at the end of the post - PM.

Even though my dad had to undergo 'instruction' by a priest before he was allowed to marry my Catholic mother in church, it did nothing to alter his view that all religion was nonsense.

Not that he exactly enlarged upon this view. He simply contented himself with brief irreverent interjections whenever the subject arose.

So, for example, when my mother embarked upon a lengthy story about how she'd prayed to Saint Anthony in an attempt to learn the whereabouts of a lost brooch, he would lean forward wearily, wave an arm across his chest as though sweeping away an irritating dust cloud, and mildly inform everyone in the room that mother was talking 'her usual muck'.

His expressions of political allegiance were equally laconic. Any canvasser who knocked on our door at election time and found it opened by dad, was brusquely told 'We're all Labour here', before the door was closed firmly in their face.

Because 'we were all Labour', there was never much talk about political issues in our family. But, under dad's influence, we all took it for granted that the Conservatives only looked after their own kind.

And in dad's vocabulary, this put them on a par with the Rotarians.

Even though I've asked other of my family, I've never been able to discover the exact origins of any of my father's obsessive hatred of the Rotary Club. But from the age of six or seven I'd come to regard its with much the same degree of hostility that my mother reserved for Satan and his works.

Rotarians, dad repeatedly told anyone who cared to listen, were local business people who conspired against the ordinary folk. They'd business on to each other. So, if anyone local died, the undertaker would on the news to the man who ran the floral tribute shop who'd on the news to the local probate solicitor.

'They're all in it together', dad would constantly assure us.

He was so adamant about the perniciousness of the Rotarians, that when I grew up, became a university lecturer and was invited to talk one night to the local branch I hesitated for several days before replying.

What could I do? Even though my father was long dead by that time, an acceptance would feel like jumping on his grave. And after all didn't the fourth commandment of my mother's Holy Roman Catholic Church demand that I honour my father?

I eventually wrote back and said that I was too busy. I chose not to mention dad's eccentric belief that all Rotarians were crypto-fascists or indeed that my final decision had been based upon nothing more (or less) than my 'mother's muck'. Sometimes less is more.

Children and politics. That'll be up for discussion when I meet the author of a research paper called The Form of Children's Political Engagement in Everyday Life. That's at four o'clock today or after the midnight news on Sunday or on the Thinking Allowed podcast. Also in this programme - ing the 1981 Liverpool riots.

Laurie Taylor is the presenter of Thinking Allowed

You can listen to this episode of Thinking Allowed on the Radio 4 website, subscribe or the podcast.
Sign up for Laurie's Thinking Allowed newsletter.
You can find out more about the programme's new partnership with The Open University and related features by going to their website.
The picture of Laurie was taken on the banks of the Mersey near where he was brought up.

This episode of Thinking Allowed was first broadcast on Wednesday 13 July 2011 and is repeated on Sunday 17 July 2011.

2010-11-05T18:25:13+00:00

Seismic events. An upheaval in the British political landscape. Radical change in the destiny of parties and political careers. The challenge - to capture the complex, fast-moving, five-day narrative of those events in just 58 minutes.

There was no shortage of material. Transcripts of the many hours of interviews that took place with the protagonists - with Cameron, Clegg, Mandelson, Balls, Ashdown and many more. Many more hours of recorded interviews with the people who were there, in the room as the negotiations that led to the formation of the coalition took place.

As a writer, as you absorb that mass of material, what you have to have is a filter. A way of selecting from that mass of messy reality the things what will help you most in the creation of your script - that artificial construct you have promised to deliver in three weeks time. In my filter there were four layers.

Essentials

This is the easy bit. The must haves, the things that have to be there. The resignation of Gordon Brown. David Cameron's acceptance speech on the steps of No 10. The big events give you the milestones. That moment as your plane taxis from its stand and then turns to align itself with the runway - when, for a few moments, you see those long lines of lights that lead from where you are to the vanishing point, to the climax of that thundering charge down the tarmac.

Essential inessentials

I know. An oxymoron. A statement carrying an internal contradiction. But they exist. These are things that are utterly inessential to the forward progression of the narrative - but that carry an emotional, dramatic or symbolic meaning that makes them absolutely essential to your script. Gordon Brown about to face the cameras to make his last ever speech as Prime Minister. He borrows a red tie from Alistair Campbell. Peter Mandelson gives a final piece of advice. Sue Nye, Brown's faithful assistant, puts the advice into action - and adjusts the knot of Brown's tie. How many layers are there? The need, in these final moments to wear, like a badge of honour and an assertion of identity, the party colour. That last service from Mandelson, the ultimate, Machiavellian courtier. And then that moment of intimacy as the errant knot of Brown's tie is straightened.

Issues

Dangerous things for the dramatist. The seductive allure of bringing to the centre of the stage that big bass drum marked 'issues' and then banging it hard with the biggest blunt instrument you can find. In writing drama there are commandments, carved in stone, etched with awesome authority, stern injunctions you ignore at your own peril. One is simply this - show don't tell. It's for the audience to decide what the issues are. Your job is to embed the ones you think are important in the story, the actions, the characters.

People

The infinite variety of human behaviour. Even better, human behaviour in extreme situations, under huge pressure when the things they do and the decisions they take will have massive implications for themselves, for the people around them and for the future of the country. David Cameron facing the Conservative Parliamentary Party knowing he must bring them with him into a coalition that, only months before, would have seemed inconceivable. Paddy Ashdown deciding to put his weight behind the deal. William Hague making jokes to defuse the tension in the negotiating room. Brown insisting on calling his potential partners 'the Liberals' and not the Liberal Democrats. On these brief fragments of human conduct does the destiny of nations hang. And what delicious drama it all makes.

Matthew Solon is writer of Five Days in May

Listen to Five Days in May on BBC Radio 4 this afternoon at 1430.
Elisabeth Mahoney reviewed the play in The Guardian
The picture of Number 10 Downing Street is from the BBC's picture library.
Discussion of the play has begun on the Radio 4 messageboards
Nick Robinson wrote about the deal that brought the coalition into being on his blog during the Summer.

2010-10-29T12:55:00+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006slnx
In this week we discussed the deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg but listeners weren't concerned about what he said on Desert island Discs about his inability to give up smoking, or where he took his girlfriends in the days before he met his wife.
No, our correspondents were concerned about whether he should have been on Desert Island Discs at all so soon after the Government had announced big cuts in benefits.
They wondered if his appearance was part of a Government PR campaign to show the warm human side of our leaders who have had to take such tough decisions. Eyebrows were also raised about a storyline in The Archers which seems to fit nicely with a Government drive to get more people online. Paranoia or intelligent scepticism? What do you think" -->
Roger Bolton is presenter of

Listen again to this week's , produced by Karen Pirie, get in touch with , find out how to the listener or subscribe to the podcast on the web page.

Listen to Nick Clegg's Desert Island Discs appearance on the Radio 4 web site.

is now on Twitter. Follow @BBC.

2010-10-25T13:12:02+00:00

The BBC is famously good at marking anniversaries. Wars, coronations, Darwin's birth, 'Dad's Army.' So it is right that the fortieth anniversary of Radio Four's Analysis, which takes place this year, should be marked in some way. It was at 21:15 on Friday 10 April 1970 that the voice of the urbane Ian McIntyre was heard presenting the very first edition of the programme, "Next Tuesday sees the annual enactment of a classical piece of British folk ritual. Budget Day ranks with the Grand National or a deciding Test against Australia."
For students of radio, those who think that radio, and in particular its history, is worth studying, Analysis is high up the list of significant programmes. I think the reason can be found right at the very beginning, in 1970. Interestingly, the first Analysis was broadcast on the day that Paul McCartney announced the break-up of the Beatles; the end of one era, the 'swinging sixties' and the beginning of a new, more serious times, and Analysis was most certainly serious. Ian McIntyre as presenter and his producer, the formidable Hungarian émigré, George Fischer, took the Reithian values of the old BBC very seriously indeed and gave Analysis a deep commitment to the highest standards of research.
One of my favourite editions of Analysis from this period featured Ian McIntyre in Egypt and began in typical style, "A great place for jokes Cairo. I suspect they have a certain therapeutic value; without them the chaos that is Cairean traffic and the inert mindlessness of the bureaucracy would drive everyone screaming up the walls of the Mohammed Ali mosque." A year earlier, also in tourist mode, McIntyre had visited Salisbury, the capital of the former Rhodesia, which got a similar treatment, it was "an agreeable town" with "better curio shops than most cities in Southern Africa" and McIntyre was not one to ignore "the glory of the jacaranda trees."
An article of faith which underpinned the early Analysis was a deeply held commitment to radio itself. Throughout its 40 years, the programmes has been based on a belief that radio, uncluttered by pictures and carefully-manicured presenters, does the job of explaining the world better than any television programme. Which is not to say that Analysis has never had its stars; most notable of these was Mary Goldring who was the main presenter from 1975 to 1984. Her first Analysis in May 1975 began in her famously direct style, "Did you vote in local government elections today? Did you even know that elections were going on outside Northern Ireland?" Mary Goldring probably deserves the accolade of the foremost current affairs broadcaster of her generation and she used Analysis as her main platform. She was not afraid to be outspoken; in 'Whipping the Cream' in June 1981, she made it perfectly clear that she would close 'failing' universities, that the government failed to do so was due to "the vestigial awe of universities" we have and as a result, "the government has lost an unrepeatable opportunity to throw some redundant institutions to the wolves." Ouch!
Analysis today remains Radio Four's most authentically intellectual programme. Listening to Michael Blastland present the most recent Analysis I felt the founding fathers would have recognised in that thoughtful, unadorned and truly 'analytical' edition the qualities of thorough research and rigour to which they aspired, 40 years earlier.
Hugh Chignell is Associate Professor of Broadcasting History at Bournemouth University

Listen to tonight's 40th anniversary edition of Analysis, presented by Michael Blastland, an Analysis producer from the 1990s and now a regular presenter, and produced by Linda Pressly.

There are pictures of early presenters and producers on the programme's web page. Also an archive episode, presented by Ian McIntyre, from 1971.

The picture shows McIntyre in 1977, during his time as Controller of Radio 4

2010-10-11T07:42:50+00:00

Editor's note: Radio 4's new Controller has been in the job for three weeks. Her second blog post concerns the party conferences, poetry and anagrams - SB.
The End of the Affair - I mean the party conference season. The Today Programme's set of leader interviews was unmissable. Ingredients: take four fresh, untried would-be leaders with relatively unknown views, facial expressions and speech patterns. Mix boldly with seasoned, piquant Today programme presenters.
Shake rigorously and sprinkle with chilli, cinnamon, nutmeg and chocolate (the bitter, dark sort - never sweet) and there you had it... four revelatory dishes served hot to the Radio 4 audience in our breakfast programme. Oh - and each followed by a tasting at the refined political palate of our discerning political editor. This is a time when politics and the changing shape of the state will be central to our coverage on Radio 4 and we will be looking for original programme ideas to track and interpret the future.
I was thrilled by the Ted Hughes poem unearthed by our own Melvyn Bragg in his guest-edited edition of The New Statesman.
Wole Soyinka sent me an original poem as a gift to broadcast when I started at the World Service. It was called 'A Moment of Peace' and I include it here as a treat for anyone who cares to listen. We are brilliant at analysis and critique but it is hard to beat the real thing- and a poem on radio... well, it fits:
My Radio 4 aside of the week is David Mitchell in Unbelievable Truths, which featured on Pick Of The Week. A brilliant sequence on rain ended with a statement that there are no anagrams in rain... "Iran" said David in a nano-drop, "Move on."
Gwyneth Williams is Controller of BBC Radio 4
Gwyneth Williams was profiled on Radio 4's this week. Listen to the programme on the Radio 4 web site.
Radio 4 is on Twitter and on Facebook.

2010-06-16T08:30:00+00:00

This morning's Woman's Hour balloon debate was a huge hit with the studio audience and I've just closed a very busy parallel live chat on the same theme. Click 'replay' to see all the comments we published. Some were typed directly into the chat and others sent via Twitter using the hashtag #WHballoon.
If you listened to the programme or ed in here, please tell us what you thought of the event and of the live chat. Should we run more chats like this around Radio 4 programmes? If so, what could we do to improve the experience? What would get you involved? Tell us in a comment below. I'll make sure that Woman's Hour editor Jill Burridge and debate producer Anne Peacock get all your .
Read more about the balloon debate, the candidates and their advocates on the Woman's Hour web site. The Radio 4 interactive team filmed the event and you'll be able to watch their video on the same page.
Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog
Picture by Dick Rochester. Used under licence.

2010-05-14T12:25:00+00:00

Editor's note. This week's item from Radio 4's programme concerns the network's extensive coverage of the post-election drama in Westminster, 'busting' the schedule and coverage of the Liberal Democrats. Did Radio 4 get it right? Tell us what you think in a comment below - SB
"Deceitful weasels", "double crossing two faced shysters who would sell their mothers for political gain", "untrustworthy and treacherous."
That is how some gentlemen of the press described the Liberal Democrats for their negotiating tactics before they formed a coalition with the Conservatives. When David Cameron and Nick Clegg gave a press conference together in the garden of No 10 Downing St they were described as being like Morecambe and Wise.
You would not of course expect BBC journalists to give vent to such feelings but it had been a long night, or rather a succession of long nights.
I hope BBC News doesn't have to make overtime payments any more because instead of being tucked up in bed for the weekend, after the usual exhausting election night and the frenetic campaign which preceded it, the Beeb's journalists were still out on the streets of Westminster six days later, as cabinet posts were finally being allocated.
So it was thrilling but exhausting for them, how was it for listeners? Did they enjoy it as much as the reporters" -->
is now off the air until July but please keep in touch. We read everything you write and we are keen to come back all guns blazing.
Roger Bolton presents on BBC Radio 4

Listen again, get in touch with the programme, find out how to 's listener or subscribe to the podcast on the web page.

The picture, from the BBC's picture library, shows Harold Wilson leaving Downing Street with wife Mary during another dramatic period in Westminster, in 1974.

Radio 4 head of Scheduling Tony Pilgrim wrote about the network's extensive election schedule changes on the blog yesterday.

2010-05-07T19:09:35+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/today
Editor's note: listen to the 15-minute montage of Radio 4's election night coverage below - it's a real rollercoaster - and it was delivered minutes after the programme went off-air. I asked Hugh Levinson, who made the montage with colleague Tom Brignell, to tell us how they did it - SB.
Our mission: To boil down the election night's programming on Radio 4 into a single snappy podcast with all the highlights, ready for the next morning. Simples!
Except for the fact that the studio we were using in the Radio Current Affairs department isn't really equipped for this task. A massive engineering feat by colleagues Jonathan Glover and Masood Ilyas got it into working order. I had perhaps foolishly agreed to stay up all night to make the podcast, as had studio manager Tom Brignell.
We had a foolproof plan to get through the wee small hours. We'd take it easy during the day on Thursday, roll up just before the start of the programme at 10 p.m., relaxed and ready to go. Somehow it didn't work out that way. Both of us worked a full day before we even got into the studio. However, as seasoned radio professionals, we'd ensured we were supplied with the appropriate resources. Namely a large bag of chocolate caramel shortcake and enough coffee to give Rip Van Winkle palpitations.
Then the fun began. I sat in one room, listening to the coverage from Jim Naughtie and Carolyn Quinn. I frantically scribbled notes - 50 pages by the time 6 a.m. rolled round - and marked up sections for Tom to cut. The only problem with this brilliant plan was my handwriting, which is apparently illegible to mere mortals like Tom. Somehow, he managed.
I was listening out for the magic moments: the breathless atmosphere of the counts at key marginals: the tearstained interviews with failed candidates: and of course the bit where Jim Naughtie talked about a horse getting into a polling booth. Around 3 a.m. I started to flag and was close to hallucinating, but perhaps that was just the bright lights of the set on the TV election special.
Some dramatic results and a spellbindingly unusual interview with Nick Griffin helped pull me through towards dawn. As 6 a.m. rolled round, Tom and I compressed the 8 hours down to a super-snappy 15 minutes. Doesn't time fly when you're having fun.
Click here to play the election night highlights.
Hugh Levinson is an editor in BBC Radio Current Affairs
The election night highlights package is part of the Today programme's daily podcast. the audio in MP3 format, subscribe to the podcast here or listen again to the whole of Radio 4's election night coverage, if you have a spare 480 minutes!

2010-05-05T19:13:52+00:00

Radio 4's election - like yours - is almost over. The BBC's election rules state that, from 0600 tomorrow, all discussion of the parties and their campaigns must stop until the polls close. On the blogs and messageboards this means we'll be asking people to stop leaving comments of a political nature during that period. Some forums and threads will be closed. The online guidelines are here.
In the meantime, I urge you pop over to the PM blog and listen to this hilarious item: Carolyn Quinn gives Eddie Mair a tour of Radio 4's election night studio - a facility that Eddie speculates "they must have spent hundreds of pounds on."
Tonight's PM saw the last of Tim Harford's enlightening ElectionWatch items - in which Tim disassembles the key campaign numbers and claims - from charter schools to opinion polls to net migration and national debt. You can hear all 23 of them on the More or Less web site. More or Less proper returns on 21 May.
One of the highlights of Radio 4's campaign (don't listen to me: ask Twitter) has been the three-nights-a-week treat of the Vote Now Show, a twist on the Now Show format involving commentators and reporters of all kinds as well as all the usual comic suspects. My favourite items were interviews with Robert Peston - on banks, a hung parliament and who really runs Britain - and Mark Kermode - reviewing the party political broadcasts, both of which were caught on video. Watch Peston here and Kermode here.
Another highlight of Radio 4's election coverage has been Today's of eight floating voters. Listen to the last of their contributions, from this morning's programme.
Politics junkies will have relished the extended editions of the World at One. I especially enjoyed 'Martha's lunch party' (with its Beatles theme tune and home baking) - this is the kind of stuff that has the current affairs addicts wishing it was an election all year round. Today's lunch guests were Tim Bell, Philip Gould and Tom MacNally.
Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

Radio 4's election night coverage starts at as soon as the polls close tomorrow evening and carries on until it neatly segues with the Today programme Friday morning.

Tonight's Vote Now Show is the last one. Listen to this week's editions on the Radio 4 web site or subscribe to the podcast (which will cleverly revert to the Friday night comedy after the election).

Tomorrow's PM is the special 'non-election edition', full of non-election content, much of it suggested by listeners. Like an oasis in the midst of all this election stuff for you election-phobics.

The photo shows the red sofas at TV Centre on which Martha's lunch club has taken place daily.

2010-04-30T17:02:44+00:00

We're nearly there - less than a week to go - but the More or Less election team still needs your help.

Our job is to explain the numbers being thrown around by all candidates during the campaign. Our presenter (and the FT's Undercover Economist) Tim Harford is broadcasting our analysis on PM and Today. You can find an archive of our work so far on the More or Less web site.

It's been fun. But after weeks of going line-by-line through speeches, combing data-sets and finding functions on our calculators we didn't know existed, we're getting tired.

So here's how you can help: if you spot what you suspect is a rogue statistic - or simply a confusing one - please us at [email protected].

What sort of thing should you be looking for? Here's an example which caught our eye on Wednesday.

This is Sarah Montague and David Miliband on Today:

DM: The biggest complaint the IFS have is that we haven't had a spending review, a detailed spending review. And the second biggest complaint is that we haven't set out plans up to 2016 and 2017, i.e. into the Parliament after next. When it comes to the four years... br>SM: They say £44 billion of cuts remain undefined in Labour's plans... br>DM: For 2016, 2017.

We nearly choked on our morning croissants when we heard that one. You can see here (PDF) that the well-respected think-tank the IFS were perfectly clear: they say £44 billion of 'mystery' cuts - cuts Labour has so far failed to specify - will need to be made by 2014/15. (The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, incidentally, have similar black holes on their plans).

During the final PM's debate Nick Clegg said "80% of people who come into this country come from the European Union" - and therefore, in his view, it was dishonest of David Cameron to suggest there could be a meaningful cap on immigration.

But that 80% figure is wrong. Actually, it's about a third. On Friday morning Vince Cable, speaking on Today, said his leader was referring not to all immigrants, but to 'workers'. The Lib Dem press office pointed us to their source, an article in The Economist which included the following claim: "Workers from outside the EU make up just one-fifth of all immigrants when students (who pay valuable tuition fees) are excluded".

As my colleague Oliver Hawkins has discovered, however, the fact that one-fifth of all immigrants are workers from outside the EU does not prove that the remaining four fifths of all immigrants are workers from inside the EU.

What about other types of immigrants, like dependents".

All families with an income over £40,000 would lose some of their tax credits (and most families earning over £48,175, who get tax credits now, would lose all of them).

It seems, even at this late stage in the campaign, we need to keep our eyes open. If you can help, please do.

Richard Knight is series producer of More or Less

More or Less is off-air at the moment but you can hear Tim Harford's Electionwatch on Today and PM until the election.
Picture by Lenore Edman. Used under licence.