An evening on the theme of memory, presented by composer Nigel Osborne with guests poet Jo Shapcott and psychologist Professor John Morton. The evening includes Themes and Variations on the Blue Danube by Rex Brough.

5.45 Without Our Memories Who Are We?

5.50 Twinkle, Twinkle....
A collage of music and readings capturing the memory of childhood.

6.05 Now Remember
Writer Christopher Hope knows how remembering is a way of getting your own back. Sean Barratt reads from Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory.

6.25 Messages....
is the subtitle of composer Andrzej Panufnik's second string quartet.

6.45 Garcia's Resurrection
In 1986, The Grateful Dead's guitarist, the late Jerry Garcia, fell into a coma. When he came round, he had forgotten how to play. Men Saunders talks about how he taught Jerry to play again.

7.10 So What Is Memory?
Biologist Professor Stephen Rose teaches chicks how to avoid a blue bead and measures chemical changes in their brains. Has he found memory in a neurotransmitter? Professor John Morton asks children if they are sure it was Mickey Mouse that they saw. Two completely different approaches, and yet they largely agree about what memory is.

8.05 Knoxville: Summer of 1915
James Agee's vivid reflections of his Southern childhood set to music by Samuel Barber.

8.25 Harold Pinter: the Proust Screenplay
Written in collaboration with Joseph Losey and Barbara Bray, Pinter's dramatisation of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past - intended as a film for Losey - is realised for the first time in a production starring Harold Pinter as the voice of the screenplay.
Music Stephen Warbeck
Adapted for radio by Michael Bakewell. Director Ned Chaillet

10.35 Vinteuil: la Petite Phrase
The music from Proust's fictional composer is recreated by Nigel Osborne.

10.40 Miserere
The ornamental passages of Allegri's chant were closely guarded until along came the 14-year-old Mozart, who could transcribe the music from memory.

10.55 They're Coming to Take You Away
About once a month, a person in Britain reports that they have been abducted by aliens. In America, Budd Hopkins believes we are part of a universe-wide genetic experiment perpetrated by aliens. He talks to David Gale about the possibility of false memory and plays a disturbing recording of a woman recalling her abduction by aliens.

11.35 Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier
The tick-tock slows, the clocks come to a halt.

Remembering and Forgetting producer Matt Thompson