Category: Arts & Culture

Bengal to Baker Street in 80 Paintings

Mukti Jain Campion discovers the story of pioneering Indian modern artist Jamini Roy (1887 – 1972) and how the largest collection of his work came to hang in a private apartment in central London. (1 x 28′)

See Slideshow of the paintings discussed in the programme.

First broadcast March 2014  BBC Radio 4

Contributors include: Professor Nirmalya Kumar (pictured), Collector of Jamini Roy’s paintings; Richard Blurton, Curator of South Asian Art at the British Museum; Partha Mitter, Emeritus Professor of Art History, University of Sussex; Sona Datta, art historian, curator and author of book on Jamini Roy “Urban Patua”; Artist Sir Howard Hodgkin

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

This is a fascinating programme about art, its collection, its inspiration, its social value and how attitudes of critics and art historians change over time – Gillian Reynolds, The Daily Telegraph

 

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

Digital Folk

 

dfMusician John Kirkpatrick shares the delights of  The Full English, a newly digitised online collection which brings together a vast archive of early 20th century English folk music. ( 1 x 28′)

First broadcast August 2013  BBC Radio 4

Contributors include: Billy Bragg, Lee Hall, Malcolm Taylor, Mary Keith, Nell Leyshon, Fay Hield and Nancy Kerr.

Producer  Chris Eldon Lee

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

Visit The Full English Website

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

 

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

My Heart is in the East

 

MiriMedieval historian Miri Rubin explores the rich history of the most famous of Hebrew poems and the extraordinary journey made by the poet Yehuda Halevi from Spain to the city he yearned for in his work: Jerusalem. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast August 2013 BBC Radio 4

Contributors: Professor Nicholas de Lange, Dr Ben Outhwaite and Dr Tamar Drukker.

Readings by Vincent Ebrahim

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

Radio choice: The Daily Telegraph