Today's story is "The Magic Tree"
Written and illustrated by James McCrea and Ruth McCrea

with Peter Woods and the BBC's reporters and correspondents at home and abroad
Weather

A weekly programme focusing on people and the situations which shape their lives
Reporters: James Astor, Jeremy James, Jeanne La Chard, John Pitman, Denis Tuohy, Desmond Wilcox, Harold Williamson

This week: The Foreign Legion, Beau Geste - and since...
"Your friends cannot possibly buy you out and your consul cannot help you. For five years nothing but death can remove you from the Legion."

Even before P.C. Wren's Beau Geste signed on, the Foreign Legion has been an endless source of myth, speculation and romance. The reality is even more colourful. Today, 9,000 men drawn from 52 countries wear the kept blanc of this elite fighting force, and are ready to fight and to die for their officers and each other, in the fiercest corners of a troubled world.

The Legion has always discouraged journalists and film crews. But now, a Man Alive team led by Desmond Wilcox has been 'in' the Legion, watching them train and fight, examining its mystique, its traditions, its role as a mercenary army and meeting the legionnaires of today- including a 19-year-old Cockney who signed on during a drinking spree in Paris, a 48-year-old Yorkshire-man, now a Legion NCO, the veterans of Dien Bien Phu, of Narvik and men who once fought for Hitler.
(Life in the Legion: page 10)

Johnny Morris visits the Pacific.

"Less than a third of the land is able to grow anything... Tourism is one of the things that will set it up, and drag it down."
(From Bristol)
(Johnny's Jaunt in the Pacific: Radio 4 next Monday at 8.0 pm)

by Derek Marlowe
A historical documentary series
[Starring] Kenneth Haigh as Richard Burton

In the middle of the last century, at the height of Britain's imperial power, an unsolved mystery lay in the very heart of Africa, the mystery of the source of the Nile. It was a challenge that attracted a handful of extraordinary men; a challenge strong enough to reveal the best, and the worst, in all of them. Before long it was to become an obsession.
("Secret of the Nile": pages 56-58. Repeated: next Saturday, 8.30 pm)

What happens to a factory full of people when faced with a visit from The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Anne?
This is a film about the last-minute preparations in the Board-room and on the factory floor: the rehearsals, and the last-minute changes of plan. The President of the parent American company, his wife and daughter, also happen to be there...
(Colour)

and Weather

Hildegard Knef grew up in Berlin in the 30s, fell in love with a Nazi film director, escaped from the Russians by joining the German army. After the war she went to Hollywood to become a star.
On the eve of the British publication of her autobiography, The Gift Horse, she talks to Michael Dean.