Programme Information

Beach Boy Bruce Johnston chooses this week's Tracks Of My Years.

Bruce is often referred to as the "sixth Beach Boy", having joined the band in 1965, three-and-a-half years after its inception. A producer and songwriter in his own right, Bruce famously wrote Barry Manilow's US chart topping song I Write The Songs. Bruce's choices include classics from Glenn Miller, The Everly Brothers, Doris Day and Pink Floyd.

Plus all week Ken plays songs from the Album Of The Week and hosts the ever-popular music quiz PopMaster.

Presenter/Ken Bruce, Producer/Gary Bones for the BBC

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

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The Songs My Son Loved

Monday 7 to Friday 11 November

1.30-2.10pm BBC RADIO 2

BBC Radio 2 presenter Jeremy Vine

As part of BBC Radio 2's Remembrance Week programming, Jeremy Vine meets the mothers of five soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan who share their memories through music.

Talking through a list of her son's favourite songs, each woman tells the story of his life and his death, creating a moving yet ultimately uplifting account of a mother's love for her son.

Jeremy says: "I have never in my entire career recorded interviews which have been so powerful and so moving. Sons who were only boys, who died on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan as young as 19, are missed as much today by their family as the day they left them. It has been an incredible privilege to spend time with these mothers in preparation for Remembrance Week on Radio 2. They describe the lives of their sons through the music they loved. I doubt we will ever hear these songs in the same way again."

Each of the five shows paints a picture of the son, including the mother who now understands why her teenage son played Eminem at full volume, the mum of an army officer who was a talented cello player and the passionate football fan who loved a song inspired by a game of football played during the First World War. Jeremy also hears from the mother who cleans while listening to her son's iPod and about the sniper who is honoured by his band mates who play Sex On Fire to a packed pub.

Presenter/Jeremy Vine, Producer/Jill Misson for the BBC

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Tonight's show features The Gary Fletcher Band, recorded live at The Great British R&B Festival in Colne.

Presenter/Paul Jones, Producer/Paul Long for the BBC

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Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Section welcome Happy Mondays front man, the multi-talented Shaun Ryder, into the studio for music, conversation and a unique performance of Dean Martin's Gentle On My Mind.

Presenter/Jools Holland, Producer/Sarah Gaston for the BBC

BBC Radio 2 Publicity

Sarah Walker shares great music and performances in this week's Essential Classics. New each weekday at 11.50am in BBC Radio 3's Symphony Guide, Tom Service, Suzy Klein and Andrew McGregor present a personal guide to 20 landmark symphonies, from Haydn to the present day. Each featured symphony can be heard in full later on the same day in Afternoon On 3 as part of Symphony on Radio 3 and BBC Four.

From 9am, Sarah presents the Essential CD of the week, a selection of Avison's 12 Concerti Grossi after Scarlatti. From 9.30am, Katia and Marielle Labeque, an internationally renowned French piano duo who have performed and recorded most of the repertoire for two pianos, are this week's Artist Of The Week. At 10.30am, Sarah's guest is leading New Testament scholar and former Bishop of Durham, Professor Tom Wright. And at 11am, listeners can hear major works of the classical music repertoire including Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and Haydn's Surprise Symphony.

Presenter/Sarah Walker, Producer/Classic Arts

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Katie Derham continues BBC Radio 3's month of programmes complementing the BBC Four series Symphony, including every note of every symphony featured in the television series.

On Monday, she's joined by her live guest, conductor Nicholas Kraemer, for a whistlestop tour through the early years of the symphony in the mid-1700s – with some of the greatest symphonies by Haydn and Mozart, plus three members of the Bach family, among others.

On Tuesday, the Ulster Orchestra can be heard in a live concert from Belfast, featuring great symphonies by Haydn and Mozart – plus Radio 3 New Generation Artist Benjamin Grosvenor playing Schumann, and a key work from the mid-1700s that helped to establish the standard four-movement form of the classical symphony.

The programme ends with another Mozart symphony – the first in his final trilogy of masterpieces which listeners can hear over the next three days.

On Wednesday Katie launches Afternoon On 3's complete Beethoven symphony cycle, running every weekday until Friday 18 November. Plus there's the second of Mozart's final trilogy of symphonic masterpieces, and one of Haydn's astonishing symphonies composed for London in the 1790s.

On Thursday Katie presents five different BBC orchestras in a programme juxtaposing the first of Haydn's superb trilogy of early symphonies named after Morning, Noon and Evening, with the final symphonic masterpieces of both Mozart and Haydn, and Beethoven's second – plus the sunniest symphony by one of Beethoven's greatest fans, Felix Mendelssohn.

Friday's programme features two symphonies that changed the world in their different ways: Schubert's Unfinished and Beethoven's mighty Eroica – originally dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte and by far the biggest symphony ever composed up to then.

The BBC Philharmonic launch the programme with a concert live from their new home at MediaCity, Salford, completing Haydn's trilogy of early symphonic masterpieces – Morning, Noon and Evening.

Presenter/Katie Derham, Producer/Ellie Mant for the BBC

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BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concerts this week feature the Vienna Piano Trio and the award-winning Pavel Haas Quartet.

Monday's concert comes live from Wigmore Hall in London, where the Vienna Piano Trio have become regular favourites. They begin with a late work by Haydn, the founding father of the piano trio. After Schubert's sublime Notturno in E flat major, they perform Shostakovich's second Piano Trio in E minor, a work that he dedicated to the memory of his close friend, Ivan Sollertinsky.

On Tuesday, the award-winning Pavel Haas Quartet perform in the first of four Lunchtime Concerts this week, recorded last November at LSO St Luke's in London. Tuesday's concert features two works by their countryman Dvořák: the best known of his quartets – the American – and the String Quintet, also written on that same American trip. In the String Quintet, the additional viola is Krzystof Chorzelski who is the viola player with the Belcea Quartet.

On Wednesday, the concert focuses on Beethoven: his Trio in C Minor Op 9 and the Razumovsky Quartet Op 59, No. 1.

Thursday's concert features two 20th-century quartets from France – Debussy's String Quartet in G minor (Op 10) and Ravel's String Quartet in F major.

Finally, on Friday, two works by Schubert are presented: his Quartet Movement in C minor (D703) and his perennial favourite, the quartet in D minor (D810), Death And The Maiden.

The quartet members are: violinists Veronika Jaruskova and Eva Karova, viola player Pavel Nikl and cellist Krzystof Jarusek.

Presenters/Suzy Klein, Katie Derham and Penny Gore, Producers/Elizabeth Arno and Bill Nicholls for the BBC

BBC Radio 3 Publicity

Brain Season On BBC Radio 4

Monday 7 to Friday 11 November BBC RADIO 4 (Copy update 27 October)

A special series of BBC Radio 4 programmes about the human brain begins with Dr Geoff Bunn's 10-part series A History Of The Brain.

Throughout the week (1.45-2pm) Geoff journeys through 5,000 years of human understanding of the most complex object in the known universe.

On Monday in A Hole In The Head, the focus is on trepanation, the practice of drilling holes in the skull in the belief that it might correct physiological or spiritual problems.

Tuesday's The Blood Of The Gladiators discovers the knowledge gained from Ancient Greece and Hippocrates. In Wednesday's The Origin Of Common Sense, Geoff admires Da Vinci's Renaissance draughtsmanship but looks back to ancient Rome and Baghdad.

On Thursday, in Spirits In The Material World, the focus is on Thomas Willis, a 17th-century physician. In the final episode of the week, The Spark Of Being, Geoff examines the influence of the 18th-century preoccupation with electricity.

On Monday, Radio 4's series of programmes about the brain continues with The Lobotomists, presented by Hugh Levinson. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the first lobotomy in the US. It was performed by an ambitious young American neurologist called Walter Freeman.

During his career, Freeman performed some 3,000 lobotomies, on both adults and children, often performing 10 or more a day.

Hugh tells the story of three key figures in the history of lobotomy and explores the popularity of lobotomy in the UK. The figures are: Portuguese doctor, Egas Moniz, who pioneered a radical surgical procedure on the brain - cutting the links between the frontal lobes and the rest of the brain; Walter Freeman; and Sir Wylie McKissock, the most celebrated British neurosurgeon of the time, who travelled the country, performing numerous lobotomies in single sessions.

On Tuesday continuing Radio 4's series of programming about the human brain, Claudia Hammond slays five common myths about the brain and its workings in Mind Myths.

Claudia finds out if people really do only use 10 per cent of their brain. She explores the theory that the right side of a brain is the creative, intuitive side and often repressed by the cold, logical left hemisphere.

She also looks at the concept that playing Mozart to young children and babies will make them grow into more intelligent people by enhancing brain development.

The programme also finds out if there is any truth in the belief that full moons can make people mad or dangerous.

Presenters/Dr Geoff Bunn, Hugh Levinson and Claudia Hammond, Producers/Marya Burgess, Hugh Levinson and Andrew Luck-Baker for the BBC

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Book Of The Week –
One Day I Will Write About This Place Ep 1/5

Monday 7 to Friday 11 November

9.45-10.00am BBC RADIO 4

One Day I Will Write About This Place is prize-winning author Binyavanga Wainaina's impressionistic memoir of growing up in modern-day Kenya.

He describes his life as living among a cacophony of sounds: black mamba bicycle bells, the hairdryers at his mother's beauty parlour, the languages of dozens of tribes and the infectious laughter of his sister Ciru. But over it all hangs the dread of what is happening in his mother's homeland, to her family and friends, under the dictatorship of Idi Amin.

The book is read by Freddy Macha and abridged by Jane Marshall.

Reader/Freddy Macha, Producer/Jane Marshall for Jane Marshall Productions

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

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Book At Bedtime – The House Of Silk Ep 1/10

Monday 7 to Friday 11 November

10.45-11.00pm BBC RADIO 4

Acclaimed actor Sir Derek Jacobi

Derek Jacobi reads a new Sherlock Holmes mystery by bestselling author Anthony Horowitz – the first such project to be endorsed by the Conan Doyle Estate.

Some hundred years after the death of Sherlock Holmes, a manuscript has been discovered in the vaults of Cox and Co in Charing Cross. It recounts the events of a "missing" Sherlock Holmes case, a case written up by Dr Watson for the sake of completing the Holmes canon but considered by him to be too shocking to be published in his lifetime. Only now can the full story be told...

The House Of Silk is abridged by Jane Marshall.

Reader/Derek Jacobi, Producer/Jane Marshall for Jane Marshall Productions

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

The Tales Of Max Carrados – The Coin Of Dionysus Ep 1/5

Monday 7 to Friday 11 November

6.30-7.00am BBC RADIO 4 EXTRA

Suave sleuth Max Carrados is called on by old friend Louis Carlyle to help determine whether an old coin is real or a clever fake.

What Louis doesn't know is that due to an accident, Max is now blind. But that doesn't stop Max from proving, in some style, just how much he "sees" and how formidable an amateur private detective he could become.

Arthur Darvill reads Ernest Bramah's tale, recorded especially for BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Reader/Arthur Darvill, Producer/Neil Gardner for Ladbroke Productions

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

Mark Chapman has the day's sports news, plus football debate and discussion in The Monday Night Club.

From 9pm Mark Clemmit rounds up the weekend's Football League news with reaction and interviews.

At 9.30pm The Monday Night Club team presents MNC: Booted with fresh insights from the best bloggers, podcasters and writers.

From 10pm there's more of the day's news and sport.

Presenter/Mark Chapman, Producer/Mike Carr

BBC Radio 5 Live Publicity

Actor Tom Hollander, singer/songwriter Benjamin Francis Leftwich and legendary musician and producer Nile Rodgers join Lauren Laverne this week.

On Monday, Tom Hollander joins Lauren ahead of the new BBC Two series of Rev. The sitcom sees Hollander return as the vicar who's promoted from a sleepy rural parish to a failing inner-city church. Tom's career has successfully flitted between radio, TV and theatre, from Valkyrie to Gosford Park, Absolutely Fabulous to Pride And Prejudice, and from Elizabeth: The Golden Age to The Thick Of It and In The Loop.

On Tuesday, singer/songwriter Benjamin Francis Leftwich joins Lauren for a live session playing songs from his critically acclaimed debut album, Last Smoke Before The Snowstorm.

Finally, on Friday, legendary musician and producer Nile Rodgers joins Lauren in the studio to talk about his autobiography Le Freak: An Upside Down Story Of Family, Disco And Destiny. The man who formed Chic, produced Madonna's Like A Virgin and David Bowie's Let's Dance and wrote We Are Family for Sister Sledge and I'm Coming Out for Diana Ross looks back at his life.

Presenter/Lauren Laverne, Producer/Gary Bales for the BBC

BBC Radio 6 Music Publicity

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On Monday, the Peel On 6 Session comes from Microdisney, and Afro Celt Sound System are in concert. Archive session tracks come from Tanya Donelly, Be Bop Deluxe, Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia and Blood Red Shoes.

On Tuesday, Gideon Coe presents a Peel On 6 Session from Wedding Present side-project, frenetic-folk combo The Ukrainians. The Longpigs are in concert in Camden from 1995 and session tracks come from Adam & The Ants, The Cardiacs, Adem and SFA.

On Wednesday, Gideon presents Portishead in concert from 1995 and a Peel On 6 session from Goatboy. There are also session tracks from Adrian Crowley, Trembling Bells, Guana Batz and The Bluetones.

Finally, on Thursday, Gideon's archive choices come courtesy of Asian Dub Foundation, The Lilac Time, Lucky Jim and Tindersticks. The Peel On 6 Session band is Californian indie rockers Polvo.

Presenter/Gideon Coe, Producer/Henry Lopez Real

BBC Radio 6 Music Publicity

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The story of Northern Ireland's post-punk music scene is told, with contributions from Jake Burns of Stiff Little Fingers, Rudi's Brian Young, Tim Wheeler of Ash, The Undertones' John O'Neill and Terri Hooley of Good Vibrations Records.

Repeat Producer/Frank Wilson

BBC Radio 6 Music Publicity