Main content
Sorry, this episode is not currently available

A fully interactive show for all the family, featuring music, special guests and listeners on the phone.

2 hours, 59 minutes

Last on

Fri 28 Mar 2014 06:30

Music Played

  • 补鈥恏补

    The Sun Always Shines on TV

    • Fantastic 80's - 3 (Various Artists).
    • Sony Tv/Columbia.
    • 1.
  • ABC

    The Look Of Love

    • And Then She Kissed Me Vol.1 (Various.
    • Debutante.
  • The Beatles

    Octopus's Garden

    • 1967-1970.
    • Apple.
    • 5.
  • Andy Burrows

    Because I Know That I Can

    • (CD Single).
    • Play It Again Sam UK.
    • 1.
  • Tony Christie

    Avenues and Alleyways

    • Tony Christie - Definitive Collection.
    • Universal.
  • Sammy Davis Jr.

    Talk To The Animals

    • Sammy Davis Greatest Hits.
    • Curb.
    • 1.
  • DJ Cassidy

    Calling All Hearts (feat. Robin Thicke & Jessie J)

    • (CD Single).
    • RCA.
  • Kian Egan

    91热爆

    • (CD Single).
    • Rhino.
    • 001.
  • Elbow

    New York Morning (Live for Radio 2 In Concert)

  • HAIM

    If I Could Change Your Mind

  • The Jimi Hendrix Experience

    All Along The Watchtower

    • The Jimi Hendrix Collection.
    • Universal.
  • John Lennon

    Imagine

    • GIMME SOME TRUTH. (Deluxe).
    • Calderstone.
  • The Lightning Seeds

    The Life Of Riley

    • Sense - The Lightning Seeds.
    • Virgin.
  • Madness

    Baggy Trousers

    • More Greatest Hits Of 80's (Various).
    • Disky.
  • Paolo Nutini

    Scream (Funk My Life Up)

    • (CD Single).
    • Atlantic.
  • The Pierces

    Believe In Me

    • (CD Single).
    • Polydor.
    • 001.
  • Pratt & McClain

    Happy Days

    • Television's Greatest Hits Volume 3 70s & 80s.
    • Silva Screen Records Ltd.
  • Elvis Presley

    All Shook Up

    • Presley - The All Time Greatest Hits.
    • RCA.
  • Chris Rea

    Driving 91热爆 For Christmas

    • (Single).
    • WEA.
    • 1.
  • Cat Stevens

    Morning Has Broken

    • The Very Best Of Cat Stevens.
    • Island.
  • Barbra Streisand

    Evergreen (Love Theme From "A Star Is Born")

    • Barbra Streisand Greatest Hits Vol.2.
    • CBS.

Pause for Thought

Pause for Thought

From: Nick Baines, Bishop of Bradford

I've just been on holiday for a week of culture-free sitting in the sun and reading. It was brilliant. I packed a pile of novels, but in the end spent several days reading a history book called 'Sleepwalkers' - about the origins of the First World War.

Now, I can't read this sort of stuff without being haunted in my imagination by the words of the World War One poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon as they shaped horror with sounds of beauty. Someone once sang, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going," but in the trenches it seems that when the going got tough, the tough wrote poetry.

It sounds a bit weird, doesn't it? We think of the violence of war - especially that war - and feel ourselves bombarded with the power of destructiveness. Yet, amid all that sound and fury, some of these guys refused - in words that echo and linger in the memory - to let the inhumanity of conflict stop the heart of what it means to be human.

I'm not being naive about this stuff. But I am being dead serious about the poetry. The great Canadian songwriter Bruce Cockburn once suggested that "maybe the poet... shows you new ways to see". It is the poets who open our imagination and fire the spirit. Put the poet's words to music and the darkness of your heart gets broken open by the surprise of light.

I'll be reading the poets again as we approach the centenary of the slide into war in 1914. And I fear I will want to defy the destruction and misery as the poets themselves did by daring to believe that love is more powerful than death and toughness is to be seen in a refusal to collude with the idea that might is inevitably right.

Two thousand years ago a Middle Eastern writer quoted a poem: "So, these three remain: faith, hope and love. But, the greatest of these is love." There you have it. What is really tough? It's love actually.

Broadcast

  • Fri 28 Mar 2014 06:30

Farewell Chris Evans: The best bits from his last shows at Radio 2

After eight years of hosting the Breakfast Show, Chris Evans leaves Radio 2.

500 Words

91热爆 Radio 2's story-writing competition for kids.