Radio 3’s seventieth anniversary bash – to be accurate, its celebration of the founding of its predecessor, the Third Programme – began at the end of September. The proceedings were inaugurated by Robin Brooks’ play, The Present Experiment, which dealt, by no means unsatirically, with conditions at Broadcasting House in the autumn of 1946.

They went on to offer such tantalising commissions as The Visa Affair, an adaptation of an unpublished Joe Orton short story by the crime-writer Jake Arnott. A spanking new version of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party (like Orton, Pinter was a youthful beneficiary of Third Programme largesse) follows on 20 November.

Entrancing as much of this new material is, my personal favourite so far turns out to be Three Score and Ten, Ian McMillan’s nightly dip into the poetry archive.