Nothing beats Book at Bedtime

There I was trapped in the bathroom at 10.55 p.m., unable to leave for fear of missing anything. The time it would have taken me to get to the bedroom, touch the screen of the digital radio, encouraging it to dawdle its way into life, was just too long, too risky. Vital information in the story might have been lost. The tension, created by that single voice holding me on a thread, would have been dissipated.

It came as a surprise. Book at Bedtime (Radio 4, Monday to Friday evenings) is often such a disappointment these days that the radio gets switched off at 10.51 (after six minutes you know for sure that whatever is being read is not going to get any better). The last few books, in particular, have been too mannered, the writing too stylised, the reading itself too clunky, too raw for this time of night. In some ways that’s a relief.