Illuminated

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 cemented the Cold War, confirming the USSR’s dominance over Eastern Europe and the limitations of NATO. Many thousands were killed.
As we approach the 70th anniversary, Nathalie Olah, whose own grandfather was one of 200,000 people to flee Hungary as the working-class uprising was violently suppressed by Soviet tanks, visits Budapest in search of its traces.
The Parliament building is still marked with bullet holes. On the facade of the Magyar Radio building, once occupied by students, she finds a sculpture commemorating four of those killed. After decades of suppression, the uprising is now highly symbolic and used in recent years to serve different political agendas.
Nathalie speaks with younger people touched in different ways by ’56. Kornélia Deres is a poet whose family stood on different sides of the conflict, and whose work is informed by intergenerational trauma. Noémi Varga is a filmmaker who observes the memory culture of ’56 and its uses in public discourse. Elemer Balazs is a musician who performed Liszt's Funérailles (composed after the crushing of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution) at the inauguration of the new Prime Minister, Peter Magyar, ushering in what many wish to believe is a new era of hope.
Presented by Nathalie Olah
Produced by Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

In 1916, struggling across the mountains of South Georgia after the loss of the Endurance, Ernest Shackleton sensed that his party of three had become four. T.S. Eliot carried the idea into The Waste Land with "Who is the third who walks always beside you?", also a reference to the biblical tale of the Road to Emmaus where a mysterious unseen companion accompanies two disciples. The Third Man has shadowed explorers ever since - the belief, at the far edge of exhaustion, fear or grief, that someone unseen has come to walk alongside.
Poet Kathleen Jamie has written a new narrative poem in which that presence speaks, and sets it among people who have met it: Stephen Venables, descending alone from the summit of Everest; Peter Hillary, on the long haul to the South Pole; and Chamonix mountain guide Jean-Franck Charlet who remembers a glacier he had to cross alone, roped to an unknown companion.
In a deer hide in the Scottish hills, mountaineer Sandy Allan recalls the white rabbit in a red waistcoat that kept him company on Nanga Parbat, and Liz Duff, the first Scottish woman on Everest, describes the day in 1985 when she and two others watched a figure carry a load along Everest's North-East Ridge. The climbers at the next camp saw no one arrive.
Is it the mind protecting itself, or something else? Between the voices, the wind and the ice, Kathleen Jamie listens for who is there.
With thanks to Globule Radio Chamonix for recording Jean-Franck.
Presenter: Kathleen Jamie
Producer: Victoria Ferran
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4

For much of their lives, Micki, Esther, Nicola and Colin were devoted members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Nigerian Deeper Life Bible Church and Mormonism, respectively. Each recounts the moments when certainty began to unravel.
In raw and honest detail, their stories explore the difficult line between deep religious devotion and unhealthy control. Along the way, for each of them, the balance tipped. Eventually, the effort of holding on became harder than letting go.
With thanks to Faith to Faithless, a Humanists UK service guided by people with lived experience of leaving controlling religious environments.
Original music by Steve Urquhart.
(Photograph: Nicola Brophy)
Produced by May Robson
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

Young Polish field-recordist Izabela Dłużyk travels to the Amazonian rainforest of Peru. Izabela, blind from birth, is a self-taught recordist with a wonderful ears for sound and limitless passion for the natural world. She is ‘rather shy and modest’ by her own account, but indefatigable in her adventurous pursuit of lovely recordings, leaving her recorders running night and day. She knows around 300 creature sounds by heart and in Peru she meets Red Howler Monkeys, Scarlet Macaws, Cobalt winged parakeets and many others. But what do these names and animals mean to someone who 'cannot imagine' colour or any other visual mapping? Izabela in Peru leads sighted listeners to a deeper understanding of blindness, especially the innate blindness that has shaped her inner world. Join Izabela as she climbs fearlessly up a 40 metre scaffolding rig to record above the tree canopy. 'I cannot understand height emotionally or intellectually,' Izabela says 'I cannot touch it with my hands or feet...what is 40 metres?'
Izabela first delighted BBC audiences with ‘Izabela in the Forest’ in 2023 when she guided us around the ancient forest of Białowieża in her native Poland.
Producer Monica Whitlock
Mix by Peter Ringrose

Radio 4 is marking the arrival of the Bayeux Tapestry in Britain with a day of programmes on the Norman Conquest and its lasting legacy today.
George Parker, political editor of the Financial Times, was first captivated by the tapestry as a young boy when he was taken to see it on a family holiday to Normandy. He went on to discover why the tapestry is first and foremost a deeply political object.
Tracing an extraordinary history over nearly 1000 years, George singles out the moments which show the power of a 70-metre-long piece of embroidered cloth with its stories of war, ambition and betrayal.
Why do some see it as an 11th century war ‘dossier’, justifying the Norman conquest of Britain and the building of a new nation?
Why did Napoleon have it brought to the Louvre as he plotted a new invasion across the Channel?
Why were the Nazis obsessed with the fine details of the tapestry - and how were they thrillingly stopped in their quest to claim it at the climax of the Second World War?
And how has a piece quintessentially associated with Anglo-French conflict come to symbolise the reverse – a new ‘entente amicale’ in the post-Brexit era?
George talks to historical experts and key players from politics and diplomacy. Guests include former prime minister Theresa May, George Osborne, Chris Bryant, French culture minister Catherine Pégard, Philippe Bélaval, Peter Ricketts, Professor Shirley Ann Brown and Dr Dave Musgrove.
With thanks to the City of Sheffield Festival Band.
Producer: Leela Padmanabhan
Sound Design: Hal Haines