Category: Arts & Culture

Broken Paradise

 

bpAcclaimed translator Lakshmi Holmström introduces some of the most powerful Tamil poetry to emerge from the 26 year long conflict in Sri Lanka in which an estimated 70,000 people were killed as the militant Tamil Tigers tried to establish a separate Tamil state in the north of the island. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast   April 2013        BBC Radio 4

Poets featured include Cheran, M.A.Nuhman, Sivaramani, Shanmugam Sivalingam and Kutti Revathi.

Poem readings by Hiran Abeysekara, Vayu Naidu and Vignarajah

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

 

In a Time of Burning (Arc Publications 2013) is a collection of Cheran poems translated by Lakshmi Holmström

Darwin Songs

 

dsEight top folk singers from Britain and the USA are holed up for 7 days in a remote Shropshire farmhouse at the invitation of the Shrewsbury Folk Festival. Their task: to write new songs inspired by the life and work of the eminent naturalist Charles Darwin in time for a public concert at the new Theatre Severn, near where Darwin was born 200 years ago. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast  March 2009  BBC Radio 4

Contributors include: Rachel MacShane of Bellowhead, Stu Hanna of Megson, Emily Smith, Chris Wood, Mark Erelli, Krista Detor, Karine Polwart and Jez Lowe. Randall Keynes – great, great, grandson of Charles Darwin, Jon King – director, Shrewsbury Darwin Festival

Producer Chris Eldon Lee        

Radio choice: The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Guardian

Like Another Mahabharata: Indian Soldiers in the Great War

 

lam“This is not a war. It is the ending of the world. This is just such a war as was related in the Mahabharata about our forefathers.” – an Indian soldier’s letter from the Western Front

On Remembrance Day Mukti Jain Campion pays tribute to the contribution of over a million men from the Indian subcontinent who volunteered to fight for the British in the First World War. A fascinating insight into the soldiers’ experiences on and off the battlefields of the Western Front comes from the poetic and poignant letters they wrote home. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast November 1999 BBC Radio 4 & November 2000 BBC World Service

 

The message powerfully and feelingly conveyed in Mukti Jain Campion’s documentary is that First World War historians have signally failed to acknowledge the part played by those Indian volunteers who fought on Britain’s side.  -Peter Davalle, The Times

 

Contributors include: Dr David Omissi, Professor Linda Colley, Dominic Rai, and Dominiek Dendooven

Letter readings by Vincent Ebrahim, Rez Kempton and Dev Sagoo.

Soldiers’ songs performed by Baluji Shrivastav and the Man Mela Theatre Company.

Producer  Mukti Jain Campion

Radio Choice: The Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, Daily Mail, The Scotsman, The Observer, Evening Standard, Time Out, Radio Times

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

Photograph: IWM photos Q53887

Dexter and Dodd

 

ddColin Dexter, creator of the Oxford detective series “Inspector Morse” and the Liverpool comedian Ken Dodd are amongst each other’s greatest fans. But the two octogenarians had never met – and had certainly never shared a stage together. Not until the arts interviewer Fiona Lindsay brought them together for the first time… (1 x 28′)

First broadcast December 2011   BBC Radio 4

Producer Chris Eldon Lee

 

Radio Choice: The Radio Times,  The Daily Telegraph,  The Independent, The Times, The  Daily Mail

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

Grandmothers’ Footsteps

gfTwo travel documentaries in which Mukti Jain Campion accompanies her children back to the childhood homes of their two grandmothers – a rural village in India and a remote crofting community in the Scottish Highlands – and discovers that the two women have more in common than just grandchildren. (2 x 28′)

First broadcast November 1997 BBC Radio 4

Original Music by Nick Sargent

Producers Mukti Jain Campion & Chris Eldon Lee

Two documentaries of the kind radio does well: contrasting social histories told by people who have lived them. The moving spirit in more ways than one is the producer Mukti Jain Campion – Peter Barnard, The Times

Radio Choice: The Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Evening Standard, Radio Times

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

Hobson-Jobson

 

hjPoet Daljit Nagra revels in the legendary dictionary of British India which brought hundreds of Indian words such as bungalow, shampoo and dinghy into the English language. With a new edition due to be published in 2013, Daljit looks back at its history and how it has seduced countless writers and poets since it was first published in 1886.

First broadcast  July 2012   BBC Radio 4

Contributors include: Dr Kate Teltscher, Professor Javed Majeed, Tom Stoppard and Amitav Ghosh.

Readings by Tim Pigott-Smith and Vincent Ebrahim

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

Radio Choice: The Mail on Sunday, The Sunday Telegraph, The Scotsman, The Daily Mail, The Times, The Independent

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

Read BBC News article

 

How Folk Songs Should Be Sung

 

flk

Ewan MacColl

Singer Martin Carthy listens to long-lost recordings that reveal the rise and fall of Ewan MacColl’s “Critics’ Group”, a controversial driving force of the 1960s folk revival.

First broadcast  January 2012  BBC Radio 4

Contributors: Peggy Seeger, Richard Snell, Frankie Armstrong, Sandra Kerr, Brian Pearson, Phil Colclough

Producers Genevieve Tudor and Chris Eldon Lee

How good it was to hear Carthy as narrator, someone who really knows the subject, the people, the factions, the history. – Gillian Reynolds, The Daily Telegraph

 

Read Gillian Reynold’s full review in The Daily Telegraph

Imperial Gardens

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Garden historian Caroline Holmes explores how former empires transplanted their plants and garden designs to the countries they ruled.  (3 x 28′)

First broadcast    April 2000  BBC Radio 4

Producer  Mukti Jain Campion

1: The Roman Gardens at Fishbourne Palace, England

2: The Moorish Gardens of the Alhambra, Spain

3: Nuwara Eliya, the Garden City of Sri Lanka

Sheer, unadulterated pleasure for the listener – Martin Hoyle, Financial Times

Radio Choice: The Independent, The Observer, Daily Mail, The Evening Standard, The Financial Times, Radio Times

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

Crossing the Black Waters

 

ctbwFrom the first sailing of its ships to India in 1607, the English East India Company began a movement of people, goods and ideas that has linked the imaginations and fortunes of the people of Britain and the Indian subcontinent for 400 years. Mukti Jain Campion explores the extraordinary social legacy of the Company and of the early travellers who crossed the kala pani, into the unknown. (3 x 28′)

First broadcast January 2002 BBC Radio 4

Contributors include: Dr Huw Bowen, Dr Kate Teltscher, Rozina Visram, Professor Om Prakash, Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Dr Laxshmi Subramanian, Dr Indira Ghose and Tapati Guha Thakurta.

Readers: Vincent Ebrahim, Christopher Holmes & Malindi O’Rorke

Producers Mukti Jain Campion & Chris Eldon Lee

 

A compelling listen – Paul Donovan, The Sunday Times

 

 1: Identity  How the Company changed the way Indians and Britons looked at themselves, and each other.

2: Sex  The Company’s role originated many of the enduring myths about each country’s sexual behaviour.

3: Wealth  How the Company changed the fortunes of millions of Indians and Britons.

Radio Choice: The Guardian, The Mail on Sunday, Time Out, The Sunday Times

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

 

Man vs God

 

iqbalStoryteller Seema Anand explores Muhammad Iqbal’s epic poem Shikwa, one of the most famous and enduring works of Islamic literature. The poem is an extended and heartfelt complaint in lyrical Urdu about all the many ways in which God has let Muslims down. When it was first recited by Iqbal at a public gathering in Lahore in 1911, a fatwa was issued by Islamic scholars who were shocked by its seemingly outrageous impudence. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast March 2011 BBC Radio 4

Contributors: Professor Javed Majeed and Navid Akhtar

Readings by Sagar Arya, Saeed Jaffrey and Pervaiz Alam

Producer Mukti Jain Campion