Google Maps, for some unknown reason,  doesn't show the lovely oasis of the Cluny Gardens Allotments in Southend-on-Sea as green.  Don't they realise that the Benedictine monks of Prittlewell Priory gardened there for 400 years until ...

In Kolkata in India the virus is spreading rapidly through the city.  Many people are out of work and there are many newly homeless families living on the street with nothing to eat.   There have been two catastrophic cyclones and wid...

Education is a human right but one that millions of children are still denied. By providing underprivileged children with an education Future Hope School in Kolkata gives them the key to unlock opportunity; a chance to get a decent job, to esca...

There are 100,000 street children in Kolkata.  At the railway stations children on their own take refuge on lit platforms at night, hoping to protect themselves from abuse. During the day they make a few rupees by rag picking, working as c...

Salt marshes fringe much of the world’s low-lying coasts and they provide the perfect natural defence to the battering of the sea and increasing storm surges as a result of climate change and rising sea levels.  A day doesn't seem to go by...

Petra Potasse is a talented shipwright...a rare female in a male world.  She lives on her beloved 118-year old Dutch barge, the 'Cornelia Anna', and she sails to where the work is.  Since she came over from the Netherlands 13 years ag...

The historic port of Mistley in Essex has been blighted for the past 12 years with a 2-metre high fence which appeared, with no consultation, all along the quay...130 metres.   All the barges and little boats that used to come could no lon...

HMP Warren Hill sits right next to the sea on the Suffolk coast and, in non-pandemic times, it buzzes all day long with activity and purpose.  The prison takes residents serving long-term sentences from the rest of the prison system and ai...

The last in the current series is this Christmas wreath of flowers, rosehips and bramble foliage  entwined together with all the voices, the sounds and the music that have appeared during this extraordinary year.  I had no idea that w...

Jenny Hudson was paralysed in a riding accident four years ago but, despite being told that she would never walk again, she is walking with the help of an exoskeleton and a gifted physiotherapist, Louis Martinelli, from Hobbs Rehabilitation in ...

In a week when a new vaccine for Covid 19 has been unveiled, this is a podcast focussing on Getting Fit.   My doctor daughter broke it to me several years ago that, as we get older, we have to exercise more, and more, and more...it appears...

Bouldering is a relatively new take on an old sport which has boomed in popularity over the past few years. Traditional images of climbing focus on athletic body types, but increasing numbers of people are realising that it offers something for...

At this time when everything is so uncertain around us, it is pure joy to listen to the recordings of Vladimir Kryuchev in his home town of Sergiyev Posad in Russia.  He is an international award-winning audio producer and has just won the...

This first podcast in the 2nd series of 'Changing Lives' is a tribute to a truly remarkable man.  Richard Jameson was a brilliant scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, a fêted young actor and President of the Oxford Experimental Theatre Clu...

(This is the last episode of Series 1 of 'Changing Lives'.  Series 2 will start in September 2020)Children across the world are being taught in a myriad different ways at the moment.  Schools are having to reinvent the very nature...

Vulture populations are being decimated across the world and yet they are essential to the circle of life, disposing of carrion in a matter of minutes and allowing what remains to return to the earth.  In India the vultures are crucial in ...

Albert Camus' philosophical novel, 'La Peste', is being read voraciously all over the world at the moment.  Written in 1947 it resonates with us today in a way Camus would probably never have imagined.  In this podcast we hear excerpt...

Many people are reinventing themselves under lockdown.  So, when an email popped into my inbox 10 days ago inviting me to 15 minutes of smiling, laughing and connecting to boost my immune system and lift my mood for the rest of day, I thou...

In the last week of February the wind blew me in to The Training Flat in Norwich where an eager group of young people were tucking into pizza, some chatting and laughing, some quiet and shy but all engaged.  This was a 3-day Tenancy and In...

These are three interviews with three remarkable people from my previous podcast who I caught up with to find out what their experience of the last few weeks has been as the corona virus has taken hold in the UK and the whole country is under l...

In September 2019, when most of us would hardly have been giving a thought to the functioning of our lungs, I went to record a singing session with Breathe Music in Essex.  It was a beautiful autumn day.  Children were playing in the ...

Darren has the charm of the Devil and Lorraine is the love of his life.  As I edited their story, I realised I was editing 'West Side Story' cut-and-pasted into the heart of East London.  It is a story of love...deep, abiding love, mu...

A stone's throw from the ruins of St. Botolph's Priory in Colchester is an extraordinary shop which bustles with happy people and works some sort of magic on all those who enter there.  Here I met Sheelagh Ross and her favourite client, He...

This is a soundscape from two weeks' travelling in Chile just after the start of the 18 October revolution in 2019.  They are all sounds recorded on my iPhone in the street, in bars, in Santiago, Valparaíso and the Atacama Desert.  Th...

Music from 'The Pinnacle' in rehearsal and interviews with band members in their dressing-room after a performance at The South Bank Centre in London.  Frank speaking about what music means to them on their journey through prison and now o...