By BBC Radio 4
A series documenting the untold dramas of 21st-century Britain.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
Concluding a sequence of stories offering three different perspectives of the cost of living crisis. In Whitehaven, West Cumbria, Neil receives an update on whether a new coal mine will in in the town. He and his son both aspire...
Finding the long-lost pink-headed duck has been Richard's obsession for twenty years.
In 2011 Lindsay McKenna was running corporate workshops from her farm in Ross-on-Wye. An animal lover as a child, when Lindsay came across a raccoon living in squalid conditions she offered to take it. But this was just...
GLOR1A has always dreamed of becoming a singer. Growing up in a Pentecostal Christian family near Blackpool, music was always part of her life and she spent her childhood summers performing on the pier before heading off to university to...
We’ve all done it, at some point: You walk past a shabby, ruined building, with boarded up windows and peeling paint, and you think: 'That could be really beautiful if we could only fix it up'. It’s a very...
When P&O; Ferries suddenly fired its staff on the spot on 17th March, there was an outcry from politicians, unions and the press with widespread scathing condemnation of the company. P&O; claimed it had made huge losses during the...
The covid-19 lockdowns were brutal for small businesses. They were particularly tough for barbers. In an industry when getting up-close and personal is the only way to get the job done, the business of hair-cutting was simply unworkable. Phil, a...
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 -...
Will a woman be elected to the all-male Western Isles Council? Catrìona Murray on the Isle of Lewis is going to try. Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles Council) is the local authority governing the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. 5...
In 2019 Abhi Gotadki came to the United Kingdom from New Zealand to pursue his dream of becoming a GP. This meant leaving behind his wife and daughter but they decided it was best for all of them for...
The staff of Cornwall Airport Newquay prepare to receive President Biden and other world leaders for the G7 summit in June. The stakes couldn't be higher for airport boss Pete Downes. This is President Biden's first foreign trip since...
In 2005 Zoe McQuade and Pat Evans set-up the Little Bramley Farm Sanctuary in Polegate, Sussex, caring for sick, abused and unwanted horses. In 2020 they were told that their lease on the land was coming to an end...
Nick has an unbearable tooth ache and has tried, and failed, to extract the bad tooth himself. He's homeless and, like many others, can't access NHS dental care. When a mobile dentist van arrives at a homeless support centre, Nick...
On 22 March 2017, 25-year-old Will Dyson was walking along Westminster Bridge, when a vehicle mounted the pavement and hit him from behind. The Terror Attack left five people dead and more than 50 injured. Will was one of the...
Bally, a fisherman on the West Coast of Scotland, navigates a year of Brexit, Covid, an environmental crisis and a broken down boat. Bally fishes off Isle of Skye and has been doing so for decades, but this year...
James 33 and Courtney 28 were fed up of struggling to make ends meet and decided on a radical solution: they swapped their rented house for a bright orange sprinter van which they’ve converted and affectionately christened DeeDee. Instead of...
Alex Trenchard is the founder of Standon Calling, a 17,000-capacity festival that takes place every year in Hertfordshire. The festival brings together thousands of music fans and hundreds of talented workers who together are part of putting on something spectacular....
Andrew is a school refuser. He hasn’t done a full day of school since 2019. "He will just refuse to get dressed. He will hide under his bed. And if you physically try and get him out of...
A year of lockdowns has made a lot of us re-evaluate our lives and our priorities. For busy people, especially busy people who actually like their work, it can be a challenging thing to slow down. What happens when the...
Greg and David are desperate to get on the ladder. They rent a small flat together in Greater Manchester and have spent the last year of lockdowns living on top of each other. The dream is to get somewhere with...
Grace Dent follows Cornwall Airport Newquay over the tough pandemic winter. The Untold has been tracking the fortunes of the airport since March 2020, when the regional airline Flybe collapsed. Since then successive lockdowns and travel restrictions have left...
In an unexpected twist of Lockdown 3, sea shanties blew up on social media. Suddenly, everyone was singing ‘Wellerman’, a mid-19th Century whaling song about life on-board a whaling ship. A song of hope and unity which brought people together...
Young entrepreneur Jack needs to earn big this Christmas if he wants to save his global company. Jack is only 27, but he's already CEO of his own firm. He left school to start up an online business, establishing...
In March this year the musical 'City of Angels' was about to open in the West End. Sadie-Jean Shirley was one of the youngest members of the cast. As well as a key role in the ensemble she'd...
24 year old Khady Gueye loves the area of Gloucestershire she lives in but doesn't want her young daughter to grow up facing the same prejudice she has encountered over the years. In June, she and her close friend set...
Grace Dent follows a parent-led campaign to stop Ocado from opening a new distribution depot next to a primary school in North London. Yerbury Primary School in Upper Holloway backs onto a light industrial estate. Over the past year,...
Grace Dent follows Cornwall Airport Newquay as it fights for survival during one of the most difficult periods in aviation history. The Untold first visited the airport earlier in the year when the regional airline Flybe collapsed. Then the...
Grace Dent follows two young Hong Kongers over a crucial two weeks in their bid to make the UK home. Friends and housemates Chris and Louise have been living in the UK for the past two years. After the...
A year ago, when Sam graduated with a masters in Modern History, and headed back to his hometown near Bristol, he had no idea what the year would bring. But it wasn’t this. Suddenly, something Sam’s done has...
In the first of a new series, we hear the stories of people on different sides of isolation in the midst of the Coronavirus. OnHand is an app set up not long ago. Its purpose was to match older adults...
Grace Dent follows the story - through the autumn - of the owner of a family business at the crossroads over Brexit uncertainty. For John Shirley the stakes are high: he's put his house up for sale because he believes...
Niyi's eating disorder has stopped him coming home for Christmas. This year, after nearly losing his mother to a brain tumour, he wants to change that. Niyi is a young, successful Cambridge student with a bright future ahead of him....
The Alabama 3 singer and co-founder Jake Black died in May: as the next tour date draws near band members must decide whether they can continue without him and how they mark his absence on stage. The decisions on a...
In a community centre in inner city Bristol, next to the nursery, and the café and the hall for local meet-ups and yoga, sits a very special place. The BCfm – Bristol Community FM – radio station. From their studio...
This Christmas Eve, for the first time, Croydon Minster's midnight mass is being broadcast to millions. But when you're a choirboy whose voice is about to break, there's no guarantee you'll make it. In the edition of The Untold, two...
In 2017 Jay-Z phoned Hannah… three times… and she missed the calls because she was surrounded by fifty of her music students on a coach back from Leeds. For a decade, Hannah had been making soul music – juggling being...
Hazel loves her job. She is very good at. But there is pressure on her to leave. An impressive career has led Hazel to a perfect job at The University of Chichester: it’s stimulating, she loves...
Lacey is a drag queen. Her drag persona is Lacey-Lou, a pink, over the top, ultra fem with lots of feathers, pearls and lace. Lacey is also a woman and although she's been doing drag for seven years, she's been...
Selina Medford grew up in Port Talbot, South Wales, where people of West Indian heritage were in a minority. Now she takes her daughter back to relive her experiences. Touring around the town, they delve into the good, the bad...
Three survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire - Alison Moses, Emma O’Connor and Antonio Roncolato - recount the hardships they have endured since that fateful night in June 2017. Starting with memories of the disaster, the survivors then describe...
Fran De’ath is a retired UN Election Organiser who now lives on a houseboat in Bristol, but the voyage of her life is extraordinary - a true story of an ordinary person rising to meet extraordinary circumstances. She was a...
This documentary-drama presents a binaural experience which follows two very different true stories of abduction - one without long-lasting consequences, the other, devastatingly fatal. The feature asks if we are we blind to the possible risks in our everyday lives...
While Grace and The Untold team are busy prepping the next series, we’ve got a treat for you. Five fantastic short documentaries from five fantastic new audio producers. The story of one family told through one object - a...
As Stanley Lane approaches his 81st birthday he's looking for someone to take over his letterpress printing company. After a small article appears about his search in The Telegraph newspaper, applications start pouring in from all over the world. Grace...
Fifteen years ago Anna was diagnosed with cancer, and eventually had to have a double mastectomy. Now, as she turns 50, she returns to hospital for full reconstructive surgery. Presented by Grace Dent Produced in Bristol by Polly Weston For support...
