Hard lines

As if in defiance of the BBC’s current obsession with programming designed to entice in that elusive young and modish audience, Radio 4 has set us an Easter challenge. Each afternoon over the weekend Jeremy Irons is reading a chunk from The Psalms for half an hour, without illustration (except a bit of music), explication or deviation. It’s a discomfiting listen, at times harsh, unrelenting. The supple but rigorous language of the King James Version of the Bible is both daunting and uplifting. ‘Keep me as the apple of the eye’ is one of my favourite images, and ‘hide me under the shadow of thy wings’ has helped me through many a long night. But there’s so much about the fate of the ‘ungodly’, for whom there is no forgiveness, and for which passages Irons seems to have a particular relish, savouring the archaic phrases, ‘they are enclosed in their own fat’ or ‘Thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies; that I might destroy them that hate me’.

The word ‘necks’ leapt out from the radio. I wanted Irons to pause so that we could linger on what the poet-psalmist meant. But the words kept tumbling on, and on. It’s so dense, I wonder how many listeners will stick with it. Yet the presence of The Psalms (produced by Sue Roberts) in the schedule suggests that Radio 4 is still in fine fettle, its church broad enough to give us that extraordinary prose delivered at full throttle by Irons. Shorter episodes, though, might have been more encouraging.