One curious thing about the festive radio schedules is how often the same names predominate. Are there certain presenters and performers to whom the commissioning editors’ thoughts automatically turn at this time of the year? At any rate the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, winds her way through the proceedings like tinsel around a yule log, and Private Eye editor Ian Hislop is not far behind. Neither of them, it should be said, is in the least obtrusive, and both of them are, naturally, swamped by a great tide of traditional Christmas fare on whose uppermost wave sits the yet more commanding figure of Charles Dickens.I can remember, some years back, being slightly annoyed by a senior lady novelist, met at a party, who complained that a BBC dramatisation of Martin Chuzzlewit was &ldq
18 December 2014, The Tablet
The usual suspects
Christmas highlights, BBC Radios 2 and 4
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