A gaping hole in the week

This is a gem of a book for Radio 4 lovers, particularly those of us who work out which day of the week it is by who’s speaking on the station at 9.02 a.m. Published the week that Midweek was abolished for ever, it is Libby Purves’s story of the programme she presented for 33 years. In this brief memoir she has not only immortalised the distinctive flavour of the ‘And now for some lively conversation’ Wednesday-morning 45 minutes. She has also reminded us that Radio 4 is ‘basically, a marvel’: for many people, it is ‘their university and their friend’.

All presenters, Purves writes, are aware that they are obsolescent. ‘One day, you know perfectly well, the management will look at you with the kind of amazed horror that one feels on opening a forgotten kitchen drawer, bin bag in hand.’ But it came as a shock that both she and the programme were to be axed at the same time.