THE British Legion’s philosophy is “Remembrance for All”. The Festival of Remembrance (Radio 2, Saturday) grappled with presenting an event rooted in Christianity to a radio audience more secular than the one in the Albert Hall.
God was in the house, but mentioned lightly. The Bishop of London prayed, and the South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha spoke of “all of the people who have passed and hope God, our almighty, will give them eternal peace” after she sang Fauré’s Pie Jesu. The pastor’s son and Greenbelt performer Jake Isaac sang a slow setting of “Great is thy faithfulness”. “Rise up”, written by the American Andra Day after a friend’s cancer diagnosis, became an anthem for Black Lives Matter, and Alexandra Burke sang it between gospel music and a personal-resilience show tune.
Paddy O’Connell’s commentary held together the fusion of pomp and pop culture, spirituality, and sentiment. He painted word pictures, describing a formation spelling out “80” on stage, transforming itself into a propeller, and how the Corps of Drums’ “white drumsticks rippled like the legs of a centipede”, and “the flickering and fluttering of thousands of poppy petals from the arena roof.”
Pre-recorded interviews with a D-Day veteran, Arthur Oborne, about his friend Walter Gummerson’s saving his life, and then being killed in action, and 25-year-old Anna Marie Luave, who lost her father, aged 25, to an IED, were interleaved with “cheeky” observations from Chelsea Pensioners that their combined age of 1214 made them older than Tony Blackburn. O’Connell and production magic kept listeners in the moment, preserving the essence of Remembrance, rendering it meaningful, not mothballed.
As host of The Archers podcast (BBC Sounds, last Friday), Emma Freud also brings fresh interpretations to a national institution, but her three studio guests proved unrulier than the thousands in the Albert Hall. In a recording made too early to mark the death of 105-year-old June Spencer, who played the vicar-baiting traditionalist Peggy Woolley, Freud had to restrain the actor James Cartwright, Ambridge’s adult-baptised Police Sergeant Harrison Burns. “Will you stop using their real names: people won’t know who they are!” Freud reprimanded him, as he recalled his script rustling with nerves in his first scene with “Patricia” (Greene). Of course, he meant her character, Jill Archer.
Contributions from the real-life West Midlands Police officers Sally and Julian, who advise The Archers on crime, further blurred the fact-and-fiction line.
We now know that George Grundy’s prison sentence was engineered by storyliners to be as severe as possible. The poor lad never stood a chance. “Pressure can burst a pipe,” Cartwright said, gnomically, as Freud’s blood vessels looked likely to follow suit.
Dead Ringers (Radio 4, last Friday) found religion through the appeal of American presidents not facing criminal charges to born-again Russell Brand, and Liz Truss marking a political comeback with the name-change “Lizarus”.