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Sunday 10 July
Drama
Classic Serial: The History of Titus Groan
BBC Radio 4, 3:00-4:00pm, 1/6
Based on the novels written by Mervyn Peake and on the recently discovered concluding volume written by his widow, Maeve Gilmore, the six one hour episodes chronicle Titus' life from birth, through childhood and adolescence to his decision to renounce his title and embark on an exploration of the alien world beyond the confines of his home. Gormenghast - a vast stronghold of crumbling masonry steeped in immemorial ritual and inhabited with an extraordinary cavalcade of characters including the kitchen boy, Steerpike, who ruthlessly rises to the upper echelons of dynastic power through mischief and murder.
It is a journey in search of identity that eventually takes Titus to a distant island where he encounters the man who is none other than his creator.
Peake's Gormenghast is both a fantasy world conceived by a unique and vivid imagination and a satirical allegory on the fancies, foibles and phobias of the world around us. The History of Titus Groan is broadcast to mark the centenary of Mervyn Peake's birth in July 1911
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Monday 11 July
Factual; History
Russia: The Wild East
BBC Radio 4, 3:45-4:00pm, 26/50 - Twelve Hours of Democracy
Martin Sixsmith continues his major series tracing 1000 years of Russian history. He begins part two of 'Russia: the Wild East' amidst the whirlwind of the 1917 revolution.
At this great flashpoint in Russia's past, he concludes, as we saw in part one that things seem to change radically, only to revert to old stereotypes with spellbinding regularity. The next five weeks show how these recurring patterns help us understand modern Russia, and modern Russians. Sixsmith quotes Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago which captures the cruelty, chaos and violence of 1917. It starts with positive and hopeful imagery anticipating a new beginning, the new order Russia had long yearned for - 'Freedom dropped out of the sky' writes Pasternak and Sixsmith reflects "It's a feeling I remember myself, from another turning point in Russian history 1991, when I witnessed the defeat of the hardline coup against the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev. For the victorious demonstrators I mingled with on the bullet riddled Moscow streets, freedom did indeed seem to have dropped from the sky".
While Pasternak captures the speed and violence with which expectations of a new world were crushed in 1917 Sixsmith reflects on the pragmatic necessity underlying Lenin's ruthlessness and on the fatal attraction Lenin held for a Russian people who naively thought he was bringing them freedom. In light of later Russian historiography, which continued to revere Lenin even as it denounced Stalin for the crimes of the Soviet system, Sixsmith paints a picture of the first Bolshevik leader. It was he, not Stalin, who founded the one party state, created the feared secret police and the Gulag system of forced labour camps and who first gave the order for summary executions of suspected political opponents.
Factual
Strictly Kosher
ITV1, 9:00-10:00pm
The Jewish community in Manchester is a kaleidoscope of tradition, religion and extravagance. This documentary film opens a window into their lives and shows a wide variety of ritual and celebrations.
Strictly Kosher, filmed, produced and directed by Chris Malone, revolves around three families and their friends and paints a colourful picture of the juxtaposition between the many different personalities and levels of religious observance in Manchester’s Jewish community. It offers an insight into lifestyles which range from one extreme – traditional and strict - to the other – modern and extravagant - but are bound together by one faith.
The film follows Bernette Clarke, a very lively and modern Orthodox Jewish mother of three. Bernette talks openly about her faith, explains the traditional approach her family has to the Sabbath and other Jewish festivals, and offers her views on the wider Jewish community.
Joel Lever and his wife Joanne also allow the cameras into their lives. Joel’s family are traditionally Jewish by birth, but he admits they are not very religious. Joel puts his all into his fashion boutique ‘Mon Amie’ which is frequented by the Jewish ladies of Prestwich – by making the Jewish women the talk of the town, he feels he is serving the local community.
83-year-old Jack Aizenberg tells the ultimate rags to riches story. He was just eleven years old at the outbreak of the Second World War and his family were killed in Belzec Extermination camp in 1942 when he was just 14. Against the odds Jack survived and made his way to Manchester, England in 1945. Jack feels that religion is not as important as basic common humanity and does not practice all the requirements of the Jewish faith, but he’s a celebrated survivor venerated by the Jewish community in Manchester. Having made a successful career in the luggage trade, Jack is thrilled to have the money to throw his grandson a lavish Bar Mitzvah – a special moment caught on camera.
Religion & Ethics; Documentary
The Life of Muhammed
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3 - The Seeker
In a ground-breaking first for British television, this three-part series presented by Rageh Omaar charts the life of Muhammad, a man who - for the billion and half Muslims across the globe - is the messenger and final prophet of God.
In a journey that is both literal and historical and beginning in Muhammad's birthplace of Mecca, Omaar investigates the Arabia Muhammad was born into - a world of tribal loyalties and polytheistic religion.
Drawing on the expertise and comment of some of the world's leading academics and commentators on Islam, the programme examines Muhammad's first marriage to Khadijah and how he received the first of the revelations that had such a profound effect both on his life, and on the lives of those closest to him.
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Tuesday 12 July
Factual; History
Russia: The Wild East
BBC Radio 4, 3:45-4:00pm, 27/50 - The Murder of the Royal Family
The tsarist regime may have toppled, but supporters of the old order wanted revenge. Even before the war with Germany ended, a violent civil war was threatening to erupt. The conflict between Bolshevik Reds and Tsarist Whites was immensely bloody, the atrocities committed by both sides appalling and its consequences terrible. Sixsmith stands at the spot in Yekaterinburg where the last tsar of Russia met his fate and draws on an eyewitness account of the execution by an ad hoc firing squad. Recent research suggests the decision was taken personally by Lenin to prevent Nicholas II being rescued and used as a rallying point for the White cause.
The Red's were surrounded and outnumbered but Lenin stirred up his forces with passionate speeches and Trotsky pulled off an incredible volte face when he routed the White Army stationed at Gatchina 30 miles North of Petrograd. The defence of Petrograd made Trotsky an iconic, terrifying figure, but his own memoirs quoted by Sixsmith, suggest it was a close run thing. Petrograd was renamed in his honour and was called Trotsk until he fell from grace in 1929. Germany's defeat in the World War allowed the Bolsheviks to recoup much of the territory they'd ceded when they withdrew from the war, although the Bolsheviks had to appeal to old fashioned Russian nationalism to defeat the advancing Poles. After peace with Poland Trotsky was able to annihilate the remains of the White Army in the Crimea, immortalised in Bulgakov's play Flight in which two departing White officers discuss the destruction of the old Russia, and the utter failure of the struggle to save her from the Bolshevik yoke.
Factual; History; Documentary
Imagine... Lennon: The New York Years
BBC1, 10:45pm-12:05am
In September 1971, two years after the Beatles split up, John Lennon, dispirited and disillusioned with life in England, escaped across the Atlantic to New York City.
He was tired of the constant scrutiny and criticism at home, and hated the venomous press hounding him and Yoko Ono. He dreamt of starting a peaceful new life in a city he'd come to love. Instead, what followed was more like a rollercoaster ride: a tempestuous period in his relationship, a battle against the US immigration authorities, and a famous wild spell: the 'lost weekend'. Michael Epstein's fascinating film, featuring previously unseen archive footage and unprecedentedly candid interviews with key figures including Yoko Ono, charts this little-known period of Lennon's life - the years leading up to his untimely death.
It's the story of an artist trying to reinvent himself having become one of the most famous musicians in history, an idealist finding a new way to channel his celebrity by trying to change the world through politics. And a talented but vulnerable human being coming to terms with his own demons in the absence of the woman he loves.
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Wednesday 13 July
Factual; History
Russia: The Wild East
BBC Radio 4, 3:45-4:00pm, 28/50 - The Terror
Gunshots ring out in a dramatic black and white Soviet feature film while Martin Sixsmith stands at the spot where Fanny Kaplan tried to kill Lenin in August 1918. It unleashed the 'Red Terror' in which 100's maybe 1000's of so-called class enemies were executed for no other crime than their social origin.
In the name of Lenin's future Utopia, an estimated half a million people were eliminated in 3 years. Famine, conflict, typhus and economic devastation were bringing the country close to collapse and shortly before he himself starved to death, the philosopher Vasily Razanov wrote presciently: "With a clank, a squeal and a groan, an iron curtain has descended over Russian history". With his regime tottering, Lenin was quick to abandon his promises of freedom, justice and self-determination, replacing them with what came to be known as War Communism - harsh, enslaving and repressive. Forced labour was systematically imposed on the population; industry nationalized, private enterprise banned; food rationed and Russian society transformed into an increasingly militarized dictatorship.
The Bolsheviks rallied the masses - no longer seen as agents of the revolution but as an expendable resource to be exploited in the great experiment of building socialism - to their cause by giving them the licence to plunder and murder the castigated richer peasants or kulaks who had kept the rural economy going. Agriculture regressed, cities starved & a 70,000 strong Peasant Army emerged, (reminiscent of the great historical revolts of Razin and Pugachev) prepared to fight for freedom and the right to the land. It took 100,000 troops to massacre the rebels with poison gas as they hid in the forests. But things were getting to the point where terror alone could not solve the problem.
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Thursday 14 July
Factual; Life Stories; Documentaries
Roger: Genocide Baby
BBC3, 12:15-1:15am
At 16, Roger Nsengiyumva has already made a name for himself as the star of the football movie Africa United. But there's something else about Roger; he was born in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and only survived thanks to the raw courage of his mother. She spent 100 days hiding her newborn baby from the murderous gangs, and then bravely escaped to Britain after seeing her husband, Roger's father, shot dead. This is the story of Roger's return to his homeland to discover the harrowing truths of his family history and to find out whether he can share his mother's remarkable willingness to forgive those who destroyed both their lives.
Factual; History
Russia: The Wild East
BBC Radio 4, 3:45-4:00pm, 29/50 - The People's Revolt
With the party divided, workers and peasants disaffected, and food running out, Russia was teetering on the brink of another revolution, and in March 1921 an event of such colossal importance forced the Bolsheviks to rethink the whole way they exercised power. Martin Sixsmith picks his way through the "crumbling, deserted and rather eerie warren" of massive stone fortifications on an island in the Gulf of Finland: Kronshtadt.
In the 1917 revolution, the Kronshtadt sailors rose up and murdered their tsarist officers and helped storm the Winter Palace. But by 1921, things had changed. The mood was ugly and the sailors' anger was directed against the Bolsheviks. They drew up a manifesto claiming the Communists had lost the trust of the people, demanding the release of political prisoners, freedom of speech and free elections open to all parties. Lenin realised it was make or break for the Bolsheviks and sent Trotsky to crush the Kronshtadt revolt whatever the cost. The fortress eventually fell to the Bolsheviks, and fifteen thousand rebels were taken prisoner, to face immediate execution or a lifetime in the camps. The immediate crisis was over, but Kronshtadt was a warning that Lenin could not ignore.
When he addressed the Party Congress just days after the Kronshtadt rebellion, Lenin promised a new era of milder, more humane government. His New Economic Policy - or NEP as it became known - would soften the dictatorial control of the state, reintroducing some elements of capitalism to try to improve the nation's disastrous economic conditions. In economic terms it was the only way to placate the people, and although it was an ideological bombshell that split the party, it gave Lenin the precious time he needed to consolidate his hold on power.
Factual; Documentaries
Timeshift: 1960 - The Year of the North
This programme sets out to show that the 60s - the most creative decade of the 20th century - began not in swinging London but in smokestack Northern England. It was from there that a new kind of voice was heard: cocky and defiant, working class, affluent, stroppy and sexy.
Novelist Andrew Martin explores how in 1960 the North asserted itself, came out of the closet artistically speaking, abandoned the cloth cap stereotype and in the process liberated itself and Britain as a whole.
The story of how the North went from being economic engine room of the country to cultural powerhouse is told through the work of northern writers such as Alan Sillitoe, Shelagh Delaney, Stan Barstow and Tony Warren. Thanks to their lead in conspicuously kicking over the old traces, by the end of 1960 if you wanted iconoclasm, humour, style and music, you definitely looked to the North.
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm
Factual; Arts, Cultrue and the Media; Documentaries
British Masters
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am, 1/3 - We Are Making a New World
In a major re-calibration of 20th-century British paintings, art historian James Fox argues that British painting from 1910 to 1975 was an extraordinary flowering of genius. He predicts that art historians of the future will rank the period alongside the Golden Ages of Renaissance Italy and Impressionist France.
Drawing upon the work of Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, Francis Bacon, Stanley Spencer and David Hockney, among others, Fox explores why, during the 20th century, British painters were often dismissed for being old-fashioned. He reveals how these artists carefully reconciled tradition and modernity, providing a unique creative tension that now makes the period seem so exciting.
Over the course of the three-part series, Fox presents his theory that this period of artistic excellence was closely linked to a dramatic shift in Britain's fortunes. He suggests that the demise of the British Empire, as much as the two world wars, defines Britain's unique take on modern art: a determination to rediscover and cling on to 'Britishness' while the country's territorial assets and global influence fell away.
In the years immediately before and during the First World War, a radical generation of painters determined to eject Victorian sentimentality and nostalgia from their art pioneered a new style of painting that would capture and make sense of the modern experience. Walter Sickert shocked the public by making the low-lives of Camden Town and a brutal murder the subject of his gaze. Wyndham Lewis and David Bomberg broke with centuries of realist tradition, reducing humanity to cold geometric forms. But as the country descended into war, three painters - Christopher Nevinson, Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer - reconciled what was best of the avant-garde with Britain's rich painterly tradition to create powerful images of war that would speak to us all.
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Friday 15 July
Factual; History
Russia: The Wild East
BBC Radio 4, 30/50 - The Death of Lenin and Rise of Stalin
Episode details not yet avaialable.
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*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.
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