This isn't a blog which hates the BBC, merely its bias.
Though being out of action for much of the past couple of weeks I've been listening, from time to time, to editions from the astonishing In Our Time archive - surely one of the BBC's recent crowning glories.
There's nothing I love more than hearing three academics either pleasing or displeasing Melvyn Bragg as they tell us about plasma, Garibaldi, John Dalton or The Fighting Temeraire (among recent editions) - and so on and so forth (to quote Melvyn's catchphrase).
Over the past couple of days I've been informing myself about the origin of the Quakers and about Foxe's Book of Martyrs (recording the crimes of Bloody Mary for Elizabethan England and beyond), both exceptionally fine editions.
May occasionally cantankerous Baron Bragg of Wigton in the County of Cumbria live for as long as the Holy Roman Empire and go on making episodes of In Our Time until the end of infinity!...
Though being out of action for much of the past couple of weeks I've been listening, from time to time, to editions from the astonishing In Our Time archive - surely one of the BBC's recent crowning glories.
There's nothing I love more than hearing three academics either pleasing or displeasing Melvyn Bragg as they tell us about plasma, Garibaldi, John Dalton or The Fighting Temeraire (among recent editions) - and so on and so forth (to quote Melvyn's catchphrase).
Over the past couple of days I've been informing myself about the origin of the Quakers and about Foxe's Book of Martyrs (recording the crimes of Bloody Mary for Elizabethan England and beyond), both exceptionally fine editions.
May occasionally cantankerous Baron Bragg of Wigton in the County of Cumbria live for as long as the Holy Roman Empire and go on making episodes of In Our Time until the end of infinity!...
...talking of which...
Another recent absolute gem on Radio 4 has been A History of the Infinite by the philosopher Adrian Moore. My admiration for this series is boundless. Even the ancient Greeks (who liked the idea of infinity about as much as the BBC likes the idea of Donald Trump as US president) would surely have approved.
And the other nice thing I've got to say about the BBC (resolutely ignoring my old English teacher's advice never to use the word 'nice') is that QI is doing very nicely under Sandi Toksvig. Alan Davies has (mostly) stopped pretending to be stupid for starters.
Couldn't agree more - In Our Time is one of the few jewels left in the crown. Why on earth isn't there a TV equivalent...it's hardly expensive TV getting a few academics together to shoot the breeze with maybe some pics as illustration. It's the least we can expect from our £5 billion public service broadcaster...but strangely they prefer to squirt the money elsewhere.
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