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D-DAY PROGRAMMES |
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Radio 4 gets to the heart of D-Day through a mixture of documentaries, epic dramas and lively discussions. The prgramme schedule is listed below.
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D-DAY PROGRAMMES 2004
 Saturday 5 June 7.00-9.00pm.
The People's D Day is an ambitious collaborative production by teams from Bristol Features and Documentaries, London which explores what it was like to be part of the civilian build-up to the invasion of Normandy.
Libby Purves presents this two hour sequence, charting the build up to the invasion of Normandy as seen from the homes and harbours of Britain.
Click here to listen again and for more information and images.
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Monday 31 May - Friday 4 June
Book Of The Week - Most Secret: Countdown to D Day
9.45-10.00am
Throughout this week in the Book Of The Week slot, Radio 4's is broadcasting five extracts from journals and memoirs of the key military and political players who were responsible for developing and executing what Winston Churchill described as 'the most difficult and complicated operation ever to take place'.
Follow this link to listen again
Woman's Hour Drama
10.45-11.00am (rpt 7.45-8.00pm)
Five Woman's Hour Dramas set the scene in the week before the invasion, a series of snapshots of life in Britain and France which take place in the six days leading up to D-Day. The plays are:
Mon 31 May: D-Day minus 6 - Putting You Through.
Tue 1 June: Taking Leave - D-Day minus 5 - Taking Leave.
Wed 2 June: D-Day minus 4 - Harry and Gloria.
Thu 3 June: D-Day minus 3 - Lilly's Mum.
Fri 4 June: D-Day minus 2 - Drop Zone.
Follow this link to listen again
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Friday 4 June
Any Questions?
8.00-8.45pm (rpt Saturday 1.15-2.00pm)
A special edition of the programme comes live from the Hotel de Ville in Caen at the heart of Normandy only a few kilometres from the beaches that became the main arena for the D Day allied landings in June 1944. Jonathan Dimbleby is in the chair and the panel, which includes the historian Andrew Roberts,
Follow this link to listen again after broadacast
Saturday 5 June
Any Answers?
2.00 -2.30pm
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Any Answers? comes live from France, as Jonathan Dimbleby takes calls from listeners offering their views on the subjects previously discussed on Any Questions?
Follow this link to listen again after broadacast
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From Dunkirk To D Day
2.30-3.15pm
 Charles Wheeler, the doyen of foreign correspondents, and himself a D Day veteran, is joined by three historians to analyse the Allies' resurgence in 1944 from their nadir in 1940/41. The experts are:Sir Max Hastings, Professor David Reynolds of Cambridge University (author of a major new study of Churchill and the war coming out this autumn) and Professor Richard Overy, author of Why The Allies Won.
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D Day Drama - The Biggest Secret
3.15-5.00pm
Mike Walker's play is an epic journey across England poised on the edge of a historical moment. It is set on June 5th the day before the invasion.
It is a portrait of England waiting for the invasion that will change the course of history, but an invasion only a very few know that is about happen.
Follow this link to listen again after broadacast
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Back Row
5.30- 6.00pm
 In Back Row, the film writer and historian Jeffrey Richards brings alive the cinema experience of the Second World War, focusing on 1944. What were audiences being offered at the local Gaumont? Was it endless morale-boosting propaganda?
Follow this link to listen again after broadacast
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Loose Ends
6.15- 7.00pm
Ned Sherrin and his guests take a look back at the entertainers, songs and jokes that were keeping people happy in the summer of 1944.
Follow this link to listen again after broadcast
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The People's D Day
7.00-9.00pm
 The People's D Day is an ambitious collaborative production by teams from Bristol Features and Documentaries, London which explores what it was like to be part of the civilian build-up to the invasion of Normandy.
View more information at the top of this page.
Follow this link to listen again after broadacast
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Drama - The Long Wait
9.00-10.00pm
The second play on Saturday evening by Sarah Daniels, starts as the time sequence of Afternoon Play finishes and is set in Normandy.
A German army band is throwing a jazz concert in a hall in Caen when the singer, Mitzi, is called away on urgent business by Father Pierre. He is the blind elderly padre (first encountered in Friday's Woman's Hour Drama) who realises that his cover as a double agent has been blown ...
Follow this link to listen again
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What If… D-Day had Failed
10.30 - 11.30pm
A special edition of Radio 4's long-running counterfactual history series, What If..? imagines the consequences had the D Day landings failed on 6 June 1944, taking over from where From Dunkirk To D Day left off.
As General Dwight Eisenhower knew only too well, the Normandy landings were an enormous gamble. On the eve of D Day he even wrote a communiqué that he would have released had the landings failed. It's far from beyond the bounds of possibility that the Allies might have met considerably greater German opposition than they did.
Follow this link to listen again after broadcast
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Act Of Remembrance
9.55-10.45am
Over two thousand Normandy Veterans gather at the Commonwealth War Graves, Bayeux, to honour their fallen comrades.
They are joined by Her Majesty the Queen and President Chirac for a service led by the Chaplain General, the Revd David Wilkes and the Normandy Veterans Association National Chaplain, the Revd Kenneth Ward.
The commentator is Nicholas Witchell.
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