Start the Week

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BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday

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Start the Week: Jackie Kay on Bessie Smith

Jackie Kay on Bessie Smith

BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Jackie Kay on Bessie Smith

Kirsty Wark with Jackie Kay, Rosemary Hill and Michael Armitage

Jackie Kay, Rosemary Hill and Michael Armitage discuss cultural heritage and the history of the everyday with Kirsty Wark

Scotland’s former National Poet Jackie Kay celebrates the tempestuous life of the great blues singer, Bessie Smith. Born in Tennessee in 1894 Bessie was a street singer before she made it big at a time of racial violence and segregation. Jackie Kay remembers growing up as a young black girl in Glasgow and she tells Kirsty Wark how she idolised this iconic singer.  

In Time’s Witness the historian Rosemary Hill explores the historical shift in focus from the grand sweeping narratives of kings and statesmen to a new interest in the lives of ordinary people. She argues that the turn of the 19th century and the age of the Romantics ushered in a more vibrant and serious debate about the importance of oral history, clothes, music, food and art.

The artist Michael Armitage is exhibiting his latest work at the Royal Academy in London until September. Born in Kenya in 1984 but based between Nairobi and London, Armitage is influenced by contemporary East African art and politics, as well as drawing on European art history from Titian to Gauguin. His exhibition Paradise Edict showcases 15 of his large scale works painted on lubugo bark cloth, a material traditionally made in Uganda.

Producer: Katy Hickman

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

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