O For The Wings of a Dove

 

BBC Radio 4's Sunday Worship today (listen to it here if you can) was themed around the music of  Felix Mendelssohn, who was a devout Christian. He died before he was 40, yet left behind some much loved music, and himself was a prime mover in bringing Bach into popular view. Wikipedia has a good article.

I am grateful for the programme - and next time some Mendelssohn comes up on my iPod (yes I have plenty of classical music there) I will interpret the music in a different light.

2009 is the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn's birth.

BBC podcasts

Rose and I quickly became fans of BBC Radio 4 when we moved to Worthing - 'thinking people's radio' I have heard it called, and that sounds nice to us! People living around the world who cannot tune in to Radio 4 by terrestrial radio can get a great selection of their programmes via podcasts. Fancy hearing the longest running radio drama in Britian (maybe the world) - you can get The Archers via podcast now.

BBC policy is to make their programming available online for 7 days after broadcast, but if you subscribe via a podcast, you will get it and be able to keep the MP3 permanently. I always travel with a great selection of podcasts on my ageing but trusty old iPod mini, and having some good radio to listen to on demand in some pretty remote places, is always fun and often comforting.

Clive James has a Point of View

Clive James is an Australian relocated mostly to the UK whose work I have long admired. Writer, poet, documentary maker, speaker ... see his own understated website. At the beginning of this year he started presenting A POINT OF VIEW on BBC's Radio 4. You can read some of them here or listen to them here. Why do I like his work when he often sounds like a miserable and sarcastic fellow with a cautionary and typically Oz view of life? I guess it is because for the most part, whenever I listen to Clive or watch something he has done, it simply rings true. It often cuts through the PC nonesense that so occupies people's minds these days. I wish he would do something current on King Robert of Jongwe, aka Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

New Paradise Lost show ... finally!

Show #15 Who Remembers Harold Wilson?
This photo taken aboard HMS Fearless

Happy New Year to Paradise Lost listeners. This show features two short interviews: Rita Gibb, who has been living in the UK for nearly two years, and my brother Rogan, who only left Zimbabwe a month ago.

Also included is a clip from the BBCs Radio 4 programme, ‘UK Confidential’ which was dealing with hitherto secret papers from 1976. Something about the way the Labour government dealt with ‘the Rhodesia problem’, I found interesting.

You also get a little bit of nostalgia with music some may remember from the RBC days of Radio Jacaranda.

You may listen to the show online using the player below, or go to the podcast's Odeo page, or look up PARADISE LOST in iTunes and subscribe from there.

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