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Paul Dacre: the most hated man in Britain?
Paul Dacre, speaking passionately against press regulation in October 2011.
A fortnight ago, I couldn't even picture the man running Britain's second biggest-selling newspaper, The Daily Mail. I knew who Paul Dacre was, and I had (irrationally) grown to dislike him, but beyond that, I didn't know anything about him ( Read more... ) -
Roy Jenkins' most influential speech
Here's an excerpt from the speech of a most fascinating politician, that eventually paved the way for the formation of the Social Democratic Party in 1981, and eventually, New Labour in the 1990s. At the time, Jenkins had been out of Parliament for three years and was working in Brussels as Britain's first and only (to date) President of the ( Read more... ) -
Making the Weather: Six politicians who shaped our age
Every Sunday at 10pm, Carolyn Quinn presents Westminster Hour on BBC Radio 4. For the past five weeks, she has filled a fifteen minute segment before What the Papers Say, with a fascinating profile into the careers of five 20th-century British politicians who "made the weather". The phrase was invented by Winston Churchill in reference to Joseph ( Read more... ) -
Cricket and Desert Island Discs
Aggers is this week's castaway and I'm sure the podcast will brighten up the usual commute, tomorrow morning.
Last summer I posted a list of all the Asian castaways, a dataset not searchable on the DIDA website. In comparison, castaways from the world of cricket are searchable, however, I have still chosen to list them below. For some reason, ( Read more... ) -
South Asians on Desert Island Discs Archive (DIDA)
[ Updated 13 Mar 2015 ]
You can't filter the DIDA results by ethnicity so here's an up-to-date chronological list of all the programme's South Asian castaways. Surprisingly there have only been twenty so far.
1970s:
Ravi Shankar* [Musician]
1980s:
V.S. Naipaul [Novelist]
Zubin Mehta [Musician]
Gayatri Devi [ ( Read more... ) -
BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs archive now includes the Roy Plomley years
It's one of the best radio programmes ever devised and now all of you (including those outside the UK) can access free official audio versions of episodes dating back to 1951. Most can be downloaded as mp3s directly from the website or as podcasts through iTunes. Due to copyright issues (involving the creator Roy Plomley's wife) the programme had ( Read more... ) -
Three approaches to the Paxman grilling
(On 26 June 2012)
(On 13 May 1997)
(Broadcast on 2 January 2007)
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Despite the fact she's a Tory I almost felt sorry for Chloe Smith. She faced a Jeremy Paxman in his element and I thought she did very well to stay calm, even if she attempted to deftly sidestep the questions put to her. Good preparation no doubt and I'd be surprised if ( Read more... )
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