This week Libby Purves is joined by Professor Chris Rapley, Boyd Clack, Elisabeth Parry and Jamelia.

Professor Chris Rapley MBE is the Director of the Science Museum in London. Before that he was Director of the British Antarctic Survey. The new high tech, interactive 'Atmosphere' gallery opened last week and aims to outline the basics of climate science and explain about human activity and our impact on weather patterns. The Science Museum will be the first and only museum in the UK to display an Antarctic ice core, an object many scientists consider to be pivotal in the study of climate science. The 'Atmosphere' gallery is at the Science Museum, London SW7. 

Boyd Clack is a Welsh actor, writer and musician. In his memoir 'Kisses Sweeter Than Wine' he tells of how an ordinary lad from Tonyrefail via Vancouver learns to cope with the early loss of his father and abandonment by his widowed mother. After leaving the Welsh valleys to seek fame and fortune in Australia and Canada, it was a chance audition at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff that ultimately changed his life and set him on a course to become a cult actor. 'Kisses Sweeter Than Wine' is published by Parthian Books.

Elisabeth Parry sang with the Staff Band of the Royal Army Medical Corps as a soprano soloist during the Second World War and toured with them in Britain and the Middle East. She was voted Forces sweetheart for Paiforce (Pacific and Iraq Force). She went on to launch the Wigmore Hall Lunch Hour Concerts for young musicians, sang for a Glyndebourne First Night and set up and ran her own opera touring company for fifty-six years. Her memoir Thirty Men & A Girl - A Singer's Memoirs of War, Mountains, Travel, and always Music is published by Allegra.

Jamelia is the MOBO award-winning R&B singer songwriter. She features in a new Channel Four series 'The House That Made Me' in which celebrities examine how the past has shaped the person they are today. They visit their former homes, which have been transformed to look as they did when they were teenagers and are reunited with family and old friends and acquaintances, some of whom they haven't seen since they left home. 'The House That Made Me' is on Channel Four. Published on December 15, 2010.

15/12/2010

Midweek: Diverse Conversation

Diverse conversation with Libby Purves and her four guests. The focus of Midweek is personal experience, the story behind the story. A mix of the famous, the infamous, and first time broadcasters. Forty-five minutes of lively conversation to start the day.

15/12/2010

BBC Radio 4: Midweek