Illuminated

If a person dies without friends or relatives, the authorities can instigate a 'public health funeral'.

These funerals often see online appeals for mourners to attend. And when the BBC's Kevin Core spots a particularly moving appeal on behalf of a 102 year old woman, he's intrigued.

“Funeral notice for Miss Margaret Robertson. 11 O’Clock, Thursday. Sefton Road United Reformed Church in Morecambe. Margaret Robertson has no family. If anyone could attend, that would be lovely.”

This documentary charts his visit to that funeral.

Produced and presented by Kevin Core

Welcome to the feast! We’re invited to a traditional Georgian ‘Supra’ to immerse ourselves in the magic of Georgian polyphonic singing.

The table groans with food, the wine flows, and the singing fills the heart. Led by toastmaster Levan Bitarovi, diners are guided through a narrative, weaving together their personal and collective experiences, through song.

At home in the mountains, in Georgia's "singing village" Lakhushdi, people sing like they breathe. A lullaby, a grieving song, a song when the belly is full, a song for milking the cow. It’s a part of everyday life and forms the connective tissue of the community.

For Paris-based singer Luna Silva, these songs bring her the comfort and sense of togetherness of her childhood circus home. Since first hearing the music as an ethno-musicology student in London, she has made several trips to the Georgian mountains to immerse herself in the musical tradition, and now teaches polyphonic singing to her French choir. She even took them with her to Lakhushdi. Now, the French choir has invited their Georgian hosts to attend their first Supra in Montreuil, Paris.

In the pauses during the Supra, as people talk and eat, we hear from singers and diners what makes the Supra so important in Georgia. Luna and Levan also dissect the polyphonic singing style, as voices are added and removed to demonstrate how individual pitches and harmonies are brought together. They are layered over each other, surrounding the listener in a bath of sound which touches the soul.

As the Supra draws to a close, everyone joins together to sing a song to life.

You can hear more from the musicians at https://adilei.ge/en/about-us/

You can also find Lakhushdi, the Singing Village on various music streaming websites. Search for ‘The Singing Village Lakhushdi’.

Presented by singer and ethno-musciologist Luna Silva

A Bespoken Media production for BBC Radio 4

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.

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 Hollis

A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4

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.

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

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)

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

Over 80% of people in Britain choose to be cremated rather than buried after death and the scattering of a loved one's ashes is a ritual that's increasingly familiar to many of us.

In a lyrical and bittersweet meditation on grief and memory, writer and producer Tim Dee reflects on a West Country road trip to scatter his father’s mortal remains in places of significance to both of them. Each stop has a unique story and forms part of a revealing and poignant commemoration.

In the car, the cardboard tube of John Dee's cremated remains travels in the passenger seat, safely buckled up. Then at each place, some of the contents are decanted into an recycle Indian Takeaway container for the act itself.

They are cast into the wind from the top of Dunkery Beacon on Exmoor, from a bridge over the River Horner nearby. A pot of ashes is put into a paper boat as an attempt to sail John out to sea from Madbrain Sands in Minehead.

Then to Bristol. To the family home on Sion Hill to remember domestic rancour between father and mother. And below the bridge over the Avon Gorge, a place of profound early trauma for son Tim.

All this is set to a soundtrack of remembrance on the car stereo with songs from The Beach Boys, Julie Andrews, Taylor Swift and the recorded memories of Tim's father from a conversation they had 20 years before his death.

Presenter: Tim Dee

Memory is fragile. We are driven to capture it. But is this possible when the memories of the person we love have fragmented?

Julian’s mother has no memory. Both her long and short term memory were destroyed by different viruses. His mother still has an emotional memory of Julian. She recognises him - his personality, his manner. But she doesn’t know how old he is, what he does for a living, or that he has a partner. And she doesn’t realise that she can’t remember. So their relationship is stuck in a loop, consisting of repeated conversations and activities.

But Julian’s found a way to connect with his mother. He is a photographer and he is constantly trying to capture his mother’s image. His sister thinks he’s trying to catch glimpses of their mum as she would have been had she not got ill. Julian isn’t so sure. For him, taking photographs of his mum is simply a way for them to pass time together - to connect.

Chatting in her care home, going to the café for tea and cake, listening to music in the car, celebrating a birthday - the lens of Julian’s camera brings us into the relationship between a mother and a son, divided by a loss but bound together by love.

The Memory Catcher takes us on a journey into their relationship but also our relationship with memory. Who are we when we cannot make memories, even as simple as who has just said hello? When memory is faulty, fading, or lost altogether, what can be captured by another?

Recorded by artist and writer Julian Lass

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

Siblings Sam and Bon Stone are angry. Sam directs her anger inwards while Bon’s anger can be explosive. Through sharing parts of their lives with each other for the first time, they explore how we process anger and whether we can change it.

With contributions from Noel Oganyan of Forrest Flowers (recorded at the New Cross Inn, London in November 2024) and Ronnie Turner, founder of The Anger Clinic.

Original music by Jennifer Walton