Illuminated

• The Story of Solent City

  Author Owen Hatherley goes in search of the lost future of Solent City – the extraordinary plan, devised in the mid-1960s at the height of the post-war modernisation of Britain, to join the historic city-ports of Southampton and Portsmouth with a vast, Los-Angeles style grid. The plan was finally rejected, but why? - and what were the consequences of its defeat, not only for the region but for the future of urban planning in Britain? Travelling across south Hampshire from Fareham to Portsmouth, Chandler’s Ford to his native Southampton, Owen meets architects, planners and historians to tell the story of one of the boldest visions in the history of British urban design, discovering that some of its most important ideas might still be ahead of us.With contributions from Nicholas Phelps, Chair of Urban Planning at the university of Melbourne; architecture historian and author Gillian Darley; Kate Macintosh, former senior architect at Hampshire County Architects; urban historian Otto Saumarez Smith; writer and software engineer Naomi Christie; city planner and architecture blogger Adrian Jones; Southampton Hackney Carriage taxi driver Perry McMillan; Charlotte Gerada, councillor for Central Southsea and social historian of modern place, John Grindrod.Produced by Simon HollisA Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4

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• Night Bus

  Ian Burke was not someone who grew up riding buses. His school was in walking distance, his parents had a car.But one night in his 20s, he had a dream which began a love affair with bus travel.Any spare moment is now spent exploring undiscovered routes or revisiting old favourites.“It’s about the journey, the out-of-the-way, the overheard snippets of conversation, the weird and unfamiliar place names, the people you’re with, the unexpected,” says Ian.He’s someone who can find beauty in an industrial estate or a gossip between pensioners. But it’s time for a new adventure. In a bid to boost the local economy and provide safer travel for revellers and shift workers, Manchester is trialling new bus routes at night.Alongside the drunken students dissecting their evening exploits and the night-time workers struggling to stay awake, we join Ian as he hops aboard the night bus to experience, for the first time, the darker side of both his home city and bus travel.

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• The Endemic Truth

  Estimates from NSPCC suggest around 1 in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused. This documentary brings together survivors whose experiences span different backgrounds, relationships and generations - challenging misconceptions that abuse only happens in certain communities. Through intimate conversations with Laura, Bryony, Joe, and Chris, we witness how institutional silence has allowed abuse to become endemic. At a time when child sexual abuse is making headlines, these survivors offer crucial insight into what real justice looks like, and how society must act to protect children while supporting those whose lives have been irrevocably changed by abuse.Voices: Laura, Bryony, Joe and Chris from IICSA Changemakers Consultant: Natalie Dormer, Ambassador for NSPCC Sound design and music by Phoebe McIndoe Production Support: Clare Kelly & Denise Pringle Produced by Phoebe McIndoe assisted by Tess Davidson A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

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• Thirty Eulogies

  The story of how a heterosexual, Indian immigrant to England, ignorant of the gay scene, ended up delivering heartfelt eulogies to 30 homosexual men at the height of the AIDS crisis. The experiences of Suresh Vaghela take us behind the headlines of the infected blood scandal and into a transformative relationship between a hemophiliac and the people who he came to regard as his new family.(Including extracts from the BBC Sound Archive and from the 1975 World In Action documentary Blood Money, Granada TV) Music by Jeremy Warmsley Produced by Nicolo Majnoni Executive Producer: Alan Hall A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

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• Bellboy

  The 2001 Foot and Mouth crisis forced North Devon farmers into a traumatic 6 month lockdown, cut off from their neighbours and living with the death and destruction of their animals. When restrictions were finally eased, the ringing of church bells signalled the end of the lockdown, bringing communities back together. For artist and farmer Marcus Vergette it was a sound that would change his life.Marcus was struck by the ancient power of bells to unite and resurrect a community and he embarked on a project that would span the length and breadth of the UK. His Time and Tide Bells project is a monumental work of both sculpture and social enterprise, 13 massive bells mounted along the British shoreline, each one ringing out twice a day with the tide and telling a unique story about its surrounding community. In Harwich a teacher uses the bell as a catalyst for marine biology lessons. In Aberdyfi, a town on the verge of collapse, their bell might just pull a disintegrated community back together. And in Par, their bell is facilitating conversations between generations that were once impossible.But closer to home, Marcus faces an urgent challenge. The church bells in the village of Highampton - the ones whose sound signalled the end of the Foot and Mouth outbreak - are under threat. In a story that is common across the country, the church has seen a steep decline in use and has become redundant. The tower is crumbling, and if the tower goes, the bells go too. Aside from their personal connection to Marcus, these bells have historic significance, dating as they do from between 1200 and 1500 AD. Marcus is determined to save them, but the forces of bureaucracy are against him.We follow Marcus on his quest to save the Highampton Bells and learn about the lives he has touched through the bells he created.A Sound & Bones production for BBC Radio 4

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