If you look out to the horizon from the coast of South Wales or North Somerset, you see two bumps on the horizon - one tall and one flat. These are the islands of Steep Holm and Flat Holm - the former is English, the latter Welsh.  Since 2018, Mat Brown has been the warden of Flat Holm - an island of just 500m across, mainly populated by gulls. He is responsible for the island's nature reserve, its buildings (which include a lighthouse, a foghorn cottage, a Victorian barracks and a ruined cholera hospital), its tiny museum and its tinier pub. With the help of a team of volunteers, he welcomes daytrippers and conservationists to the island and maintains the natural and built environment.  After four years of island life, he's decided that it's time to return to the mainland. Who will take on this very unique job and how will they fare? Produced by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio

Island Warden Wanted

A series documenting the untold dramas of 21st-century Britain.

Personal Journals

Society & Culture

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

The Jago is one of the few black-owned clubs left in Dalston, East London. When Kwame took it over in 2018 his idea was to make it a space for community – whether giving grassroots musicians and DJs a place to start nights or providing a food bank for local residents. But as the cost of living starts to bite, a noise complaint that could cost thousands to resolve makes Kwame wonder whether he can afford to keep the club open while staying true to his values. Produced and presented by Emily Dicks

Can Kwame keep his club open?

Zoe’s not entirely sure how to make sense of the last couple of years. But she’s going to give it a go.   This is her story of the good, the bad and the ugly everydayness of life with Long Covid. Via life-saving phone calls, cloud-gazing park walks, homeschooling squabbles, summer holidays that don't feel like summer holidays, and lots of lying in bed.  And now it's December 2022, over two and a half years after Zoe first got ill. Life is not all Christmas chocolate boxes and Ding Dong Merrily on High. It’s still really hard sometimes. But it is getting easier. There is singing and music-making again. There is hope. Programme image by Zoe's daughter Clara, age 9. 
Produced by Becky Ripley.

Life After Long Covid

Richard Gamble believes God has given him a mission: to build a huge national monument, made from a million bricks, each representing an answered Christian prayer.  It seems an impossible task for a sports chaplain who has no experience of construction. And yet over the past eight years, he's managed to pull together a project team, raise thousands of pounds and launch a global design competition with the Royal Institute of British  Architects (RIBA). But before a single brick can be laid, they need to secure a site to lay it. Richard hopes lie in the Edmistons - a family multimillionaires and evangelical Christians, who own extensive land in the West Midlands. Will his hopes be realised? Will he find a home for the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer? Producer: Becca Bryers

The Prayer Wall

Over the coming weeks, the Untold follows three individuals as they experience the cost of living crisis this autumn.  We hear from a barrister in Manchester who is stepping out on strike action for the first time. We visit a pawnbroker's and her customers as they part with their belongings to pay the bills; and a father praying for a coal mine to open in Cumbria and provide jobs for his community to rely on. Producers: Sam Peach, Sarah Bowen and Neil McCarthy

Three Sides of a Crisis: Part 1

Continuing three parallel stories of the cost of living crisis. Join a striking barrister, a miner hoping to work again and the customer of a pawnbroker's as they make ends meet.

Island Warden Wanted

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