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48 :
After the Silver |
first
broadcast:
Thu Feb 3 2005 |
8.00 pm
Radio 4 |
presenter:
Mark Whitaker |
producer:
Janet Graves |
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Mark Whitaker presents a programme about the changes that have swept the oldest boxing club in the country since Amir won the medal at Athens.
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47 :
Who Was Wenceslas, and Who Decided he was Good? |
first
broadcast:
Wed Dec 22 2004 |
3.45 pm
Radio 4 |
presenter:
Mark Whitaker |
producer:
Mark Whitaker |
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St.Wenceslas, King of Bohemia in the early 10th century, is the greatest of all Czech national heroes. And when a Victorian cleric wrote a carol about him in 1853 it was a pointed political gesture.
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46 :
The Cutteslowe Walls |
first
broadcast:
Wed Nov 10 2004 |
11.00 am
Radio 4 |
presenter:
Mark Whitaker |
producer:
Mark Whitaker |
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Between 1934 and 1959 a middle-class community in North Oxford shielded itself from the working-class next door behind seven foot high walls. Those who grew up in their shadow tell the story.
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40 :
Red Games |
first
broadcast:
Fri Aug 13 2004 |
11.00 am
Radio 4 |
presenter:
Mark Whitaker |
producer:
Mark Whitaker |
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The International Olympic Committee has done its best to portray the 'official' Olympics as the only Games on offer since 1896. Not so. Between the wars rival 'Workers Olympics' attracted more athletes and more spectators. They were the centrepieces of the socialist sports movement that thrived across Europe, and which regarded the Olympic Games as a propaganda tool of aristocrats, business leaders and the far right. Using testimony from some who took part, this programme retrieves a lost chapter in the political history of sport.
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38 :
Conversations with Gandhi |
first
broadcast:
Fri May 7 2004 |
11.00 am
Radio 4 |
presenter:
Mark Whitaker |
producer:
Mark Whitaker |
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For most of the time between 1906 and 1914 a young Englishwoman by the name of Millie Graham Polak, together with her husband, shared the same house in South Africa as Mahatma Gandhi and his family; she and Gandhi talked about everything under the sun, and Millie wrote down their conversations, later publishing them in a small book. This programme recreates those revealing exchanges.
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36 :
The Jewish Dickens -- Israel Zangwill |
first
broadcast:
Sun Jan 25 2004 |
9.45 pm
Radio 3 |
presenter:
Mark Whitaker |
producer:
Mark Whitaker |
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Israel Zangwill has largely been forgotten ; but from the early 1890s until his death in 1926 he was a giant figure in the English literary landscape. He made his name with Children of the Ghetto in 1892 – a panoramic novel about the life of the Jewish poor in the East End of London. And for thirty years Zangwill mixed his life as a writer with one as a political activist. He was an ardent and controversial Zionist - opposing Palestine as the location for a Jewish homeland – as well a pacifist and supporter of women’s suffrage. In this programme Mark Whitaker assesses Zangwill as both a literary and political figure.
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35 :
Dig Here |
first
broadcast:
Sat Dec 20 2003 |
3.30 pm
Radio 4 |
presenter:
Mark Whitaker |
producer:
Janet Graves |
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For six weeks every summer, John and Ann Hearle's large hill top cottage garden is taken over by a group of professional and amateur archeologists. This year they make an important discovery which proves that their garden in the village of Mellor, on the border between Derbyshire and Cheshire, has had a community living there for three thousand years. Presenter Mark Whitaker joins archeologists and their amateur helpers, on this year's Mellor dig.
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34 :
The Land of the Oval Ball |
first
broadcast:
Mon Oct 13 2003 |
8.00 pm
Radio 4 |
presenter:
Mark Whitaker |
producer:
Mark Whitaker |
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There are eight major rugby nations in the world ; and seven of them are either part of the UK or former British colonies. The odd-country out is France. Yet the game is as much the national sport for the French as it is for New Zealanders and white South Africans. Reporting from l'Ovalie - which is how many refer to the rugby heartland of south-west France - this programme explores how and why this came about.
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30 :
Israel in East Africa |
first
broadcast:
Mon Jun 30 2003 |
8.00 pm
Radio 4 |
presenter:
Mark Whitaker |
producer:
Mark Whitaker |
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This programme marks the hundredth anniversary of Britain's offer to the Zionist movement in 1903 of a large part of Kenya as a homeland for East Europe's Jews. The offer was a serious one: and it was treated seriously. It split Zionism in two, between those who wanted a safe haven, almost anywhere, and those who insisted it had to be in Palestine. A forgotten and poignant perspective on the tragedy of the Middle East
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28 :
European Volunteer Workers |
first
broadcast:
Sat May 17 2003 |
8.00 pm
Radio 4 |
presenter:
Mark Whitaker |
producer:
Mark Whitaker |
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Between 1947 and 1949 the British government, desperately short of workers in the 'essential' industries of agriculture, coal mining and textiles, turned to the millions of East Europeans living in Displaced Persons camps in Germany. Nearly 100,000 were brought here as 'volunteers', and those who stayed founded the East European communities of Northern England. In the early 1980s the Bradford Heritage Recording Unit (a pioneer of local authority oral history) interviewed dozens of Ukrainians, Latvians, Estonians and Yugoslavs about their often difficult early days in Britain. The interviews they gave then form the basis for this programme.
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