From Our Home Correspondent 25/08/2020
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 25 August 2020
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mishal Husain presents a range of perspectives on Britain today.
Edinburgh is usually thronged with crowds and alive with performers from around the world at Festival time. But the Scottish capital is in decidedly unfamiliar guise this August. Long-time resident, James Naughtie, experiences a city that is not itself.
Sparked by the shift in living patterns during lockdown, councils in England have implemented low traffic neigbourhoods aimed at cutting the number of vehicles on busy streets. But, as Tom Edwards, BBC London's Transport Correspondent, discovers, while residents like the respite, for motorists the new measures add to already time-consuming journeys.
Deep in the Cotswolds lies an opera house popular with aficionados for miles around. This summer, though, silence - not music - has reigned there. Gillian Powell, part of Longborough Festival Opera's team, reflects on what she has been missing, what's still been possible to do and what she might be able to look forward to next year.
During the Hindu festival of Janmastimi - a time of family reunion and celebration - Harshad Mistry received particularly sad and unwelcome news - the passing of his Motabhai or big brother. It has prompted not only poignant memories but also thoughts about ambition, kinship and community.
And Ian McMillan reveals his youthful attempts with a friend at breaking the time barrier in Barnsley - with the help of a hill of sand and a baked bean tin - and explains why it's something that still preoccupies him.
Producer: Simon Coates
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Thank you for downloading from our home correspondent on BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:09.4 | I'm Michelle Hussein, and in this final edition, we hear from the little known |
| 0:13.8 | Kotswels Opera Venue where the grass has grown long as it waits for live |
| 0:18.1 | performance to return. We have a correspondent looking back on the life of a relative who made a new start in the UK back in the 1960s. |
| 0:27.0 | How Traffic Calming Measures Can Divide Rather Than Passify Local Communities and there's a sterling attempt to time travel |
| 0:36.7 | in South Yorkshire. |
| 0:38.7 | First though, to Edinburgh, which feels fitting given that our debut program opened with a dispatch from there, |
| 0:44.4 | and here we are at the end of the series. |
| 0:47.0 | This is the time of year when the city should be thronged with crowds and performers, |
| 0:51.2 | its festivals in full swing. |
| 0:53.6 | Except it's not. |
| 0:55.2 | James Nokty has however been walking the streets and reflecting on the change. |
| 1:00.3 | They organized a display of ghost lights to mark the start of the international festival this year. |
| 1:05.2 | Hundreds of mysterious beams projected into the dark playing across a city that certainly did seem ghostly. |
| 1:11.8 | Drainned of the life it's used to in the summer. |
| 1:15.0 | A few days later, nature took a hand when a storm of biblical proportions rent the night sky. |
| 1:22.0 | No one could remember anything like it. The |
| 1:24.3 | Edinburgh cityscape turned white with incessant lightning, as if the elements were |
| 1:28.9 | shouting for revenge, for not having festival crowds to drench with rain, as happens most years. |
| 1:35.3 | The old joke being that the festival is such a fine thing, that it's a pity they didn't think |
| 1:39.7 | of holding it in the summer. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.