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BBC Radio 4 Extra

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama. With recent favourites from BBC Radio 4.

Book of the Week

Audiobooks

Factual

Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 LW

Book of the Week: Stop What You're Doing and Read This

Book of the Week: Stop What You're Doing and Read This: Episode 1: Memories and Expectations

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Memories and Expectations

Episode 1

Episode 1: Memories and Expectations

Stop What You're Doing and Read This

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Stop What You're Doing and Read This, Memories and Expectations

Acclaimed children's author Michael Rosen takes us on a journey back to his youth.

4 Extra Debut. Michael Rosen describes his childhood, family and books and the blurring of the lines in his remembrance of each. From January 2012.

Passionate, funny, revelatory and inspiring, this series is a mission statement about the transformative power of reading; about the way it inspires us, the tangible impact it can have on our well-being and the importance it holds for us now and will continue to hold in the future. 

Stop What You're Doing And Read This! features five of our finest authors and advocates from the world of publishing. Michael Rosen, Jeanette Winterson, Tim Parks, Carmen Callil and Mark Haddon, are all united here in a passionate belief in the distinctive and irreplaceable pleasures and powers of reading. Their essays argue that reading literature is, and must continue to be, a fundamental part of our daily life, as it directly improves our mental health and well-being, enriches our experience and broadens our imaginations. 

As the ways people read, what they read, where they buy their books and in what format are all changing rapidly, this series argues unapologetically for the paramount importance of books and reading in a fast-moving, dislocated, technology-obsessed world.

Today; Michael Rosen reads Memories and Expectations, in which he describes his childhood, family and books and the blurring of the lines in his remembrance of each.


Producer: David Roper
A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Figures from the world of publishing argue for the importance of books and reading

Five authors and figures from the world of publishing argue for the importance of books and reading

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Book of the Week

Stop What You're Doing and Read This

Episode 1: Memories and Expectations

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