Schedule for Week Commencing May 14th 2012 

(UK Broadcast Times)

8.00 am / pm

and

2.00 pm / am

On Being Idle

By Jerome K. Jerome

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, published in 1886, is a collection of humorous essays by Jerome K. Jerome. It was the author’s second published book and it helped establish him as a leading English humorist. While widely considered one of Jerome’s better works, and in spite of using the same style as Three Men in a Boat, it was never as popular as the latter. The book was out of print for many years, but a paperback edition became available in 2002. A second "Idle Thoughts" book, The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow, was published in 1898. ‘On Being Idle’ is the opening story from the first book.

Read by Hugh Laurie.

Playing time: 14 minutes.  

8.14 am / pm

and

2.14 pm / am

The Black Cat

By Edgar Allan Poe

The nameless narrator begins his horrifying tale by informing his readers that he is about to relate a "series of mere household events." He then wonders if, in the future, when his morbid tale is discussed by others considering his case, they will find it to be "nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects."

Read by Richard Griffiths.

Playing time: 26 minutes. 

8.40 am / pm

and

2.40 pm / am

For Conscience Sake

By Thomas Hardy

Mr Millborne thinks back to his youth in Wessex with guilt as he remembers his broken promise of marriage. To relive his heavy conscience, he decides to venture back west and honour his 20-year commitment, turning Leonora Frankland's life upside down once again.

Read by Eve Karpf.

Playing time: 44 minutes. 

9.24 am / pm

and

3.24 pm / am

Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was born in Dublin to unconventional parents. His mother, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (1820-96), was a poet and journalist. Her pen name was Sperenza. According to a story she warded off creditors by reciting Aeschylus. Wilde's father was Sir William Wilde, an Irish antiquarian, gifted writer, and specialist in diseases of the eye and ear, who founded a hospital in Dublin a year before Oscar was born. Although he is ostensibly remembered for his brilliant plays, this short collection of poetry is further testament to his self-declared genius.

Read by Sean Barrett.

Playing time: 12 minutes. 

9.36 am / pm

and

3.36 pm / am

In Conversation…

Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal is the author of twenty-two novels, five plays, many screenplays, more than two hundred essays, and the critically lauded, Palimpsest: A Memoir. Vidal's United States (Essays 1952-1992) won the 1993 National Book Award. In its "American Masters" series PBS said "Vidal's lineage in American literature may be traced back to Henry James, the sophisticated American from the upper echelons of society who mingles with European sophisticates, and Mark Twain, the raw humorist and critic of American empire."

www.lannan.org for more information.

Playing time: 70 minutes. 

10.46 am / pm

and

4.46 pm / am

The Wind

By Ray Bradbury

A writers obsession with the destructive Valley of the Winds in Tibet lead him to believe the ones currently howling outside his front door and windows have to come to collect and add his own voice to those they have already killed. 

Performed by Rocky Coast Radio Theatre.

Playing time: 18 minutes. 

11.04 am / pm

and

5.04 pm / am

Adventures of the Brooke Sisters

By Larry Weiner

Clone Miss Marple, give'em a heavy dose of nitrous oxide, and you've got the Brooke Sisters! Two lovely, wacky little old ladies keep finding themselves bloomers-deep in murder and mystery in this hilarious series from the Radio Repertory Company of America. 

www.rrca.com for more information.

Playing time: 30 minutes

11.34 am / pm

and

5.34 pm / am

Fatherless Nation

By Dean Atta

The poet, writer, playwright and performer Dean Atta is one of the leading lights in the London poetry scene, winner of the Spirit of London Award for ‘Achievement Through the Arts,’ his powerful, personal and emotional poem ‘Fatherless Nation’ is brilliantly eloquent yet forceful. Dean Atta is 26-years-old and lives in north London.

Performed by Dean Atta.

www.deanatta.co.uk for more information.

Playing time: 4 minutes. 

11.38 am / pm

and

5.38 pm / am

Fern Hill

By Dylan Thomas

Classic Thomas as he reflects on a lost and frolicking childhood…The house Fern hill is just outside Llangain in Carmarthenshire. Thomas had extended stays here in the 1920s with his aunt Annie and her husband, Jim Jones. His holidays here have been recalled in interviews with his schoolboy friends, and both the house and the Thomas family network in the area are detailed in the same book.

Read by Sian Phillips.

Playing time: 4 minutes. 

11.42 am / pm

and

5.42 pm / am

Pat Hobby and Orson Welles 

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Hollywood is abuzz about the arrival of Orson Welles. Meanwhile, tightened security prevents Hobby from entering the studio. His frustration takes the form of a hatred of Welles, about whom Hobby knows very little aside from the fact that he has a beard, and is making a great deal of money.

Read by Kerry Shale.

Playing time: 16 minutes. 

11.58 am / pm

and

5.58 pm / am

The Ghost and the Bone-Setter

By Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Irish journalist, novelist, and short story writer, called the father of the modern ghost story. Although Le Fanu was one of the most popular writers of the Victorian era, he is not so widely read anymore. Le Fanu's best-known works include Uncle Silas (1864), a suspense story, and The House by the Churchyard (1863), a murder mystery. His vampire story 'Carmilla,' which influenced Bram Stoker's Dracula, has been filmed several times. 'The Ghost and the Bone-Setter' first appeared in the Dublin University Magazine in 1838.

Read by T.P. McKenna.

Playing time: 20 minutes. 

12.18 pm / am

and

6.18 pm / am

There is A Field

By Jen Marlowe

There Is A Field recounts the death of 17 year-old peace activist Aseel Asleh during the protests of “Black October” in 2000. Seen through the eyes of his older sister, Nardeen, There Is A Field is a story of trauma, identity, and compromise that forgoes politicising the region’s conflicts in favour of telling a more human story.

A Full-Cast Dramatization.

Playing time: 55 minutes. 

1.13 pm / am

and

7.13 pm / am

A Wagner Matinee

By Willa Catha

A young Bostonian named Clark receives word that his Aunt Georgiana is coming to visit from Nebraska to settle an estate. As a young woman, Georgiana had been a talented music teacher at the Boston Conservatory until, during a trip to the Nebraska plains, she fell in love with a homesteader, Howard Carpenter, ten years her junior. They married against her family's wishes. Thirty years have passed since Georgiana has seen Boston. Clark recalls her kindness to him when, as a boy, he visited Nebraska and she introduced him to fine literature and music. He attempts to repay her kindness…

Read by Liza Ross.

Playing time: 19 minutes. 

1.32 pm / am

and

7.32 pm / am

Irish Poetry Selection

By Various

Featuring works by Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Moore and George Darley.

Read by Dervla Kirwan, Niamh Cusack, T.P. McKenna and Aidan Gillen.

Playing time: 28 minutes.