BBC radio gets Easter right

Given the decline of Christian belief in the UK, it’s surprising to discover there’s quite so much about the Easter story on the airwaves this week. You might have assumed that no space would have been found in the schedules for a retelling of the central but yet most difficult Christian narrative. Christmas is easy to sell and to dwell on, with its baby, its joyous arrival, its exotic gifts, but Easter? Who hasn’t as a child in a Christian household bewailed the gloom and doom of Good Friday? Who hasn’t at some point given up on attempting to understand the great paradox of the Passion as it takes us from the triumphant glory of Palm Sunday when Jesus entered Jerusalem to the horrific events of Good Friday fewer than seven days later?

Yet on the evening of Good Friday, Radio 2 gave us an hour-long meditation uncompromisingly entitled At the Foot of the Cross.