Radio

Published on Wednesday 24 June 2009 14:53

The Grandfather of Self-Help Thursday, Radio 4, 11:30am A Decade of Devolution Wednesday, Radio Scotland, 1:15pm There Shall be a Scottish Parliament Sunday, Radio Scotland, 10:30am Book of the Week: The Last Champion Mon-Fri, Radio 4, 9:45am

FROM THE Little Book of Calm to Teach Yourself Yak Farming, you may have had your fill of self-help books, but 150 years ago, the granddaddy of them all was published – Samuel Smiles's Self Help. A million copies sold in Japan alone.

Radio 4's The Grandfather of Self-Help celebrates a largely forgotten hero of upwards bootstrap pulling, the Haddington-born Samuel Smiles, newspaper editor and author of the first popular self-help book, which in 1859 outsold both Darwin's Origin of the Species and John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Kate Williams investigates whether its ethos of self-improvement through application holds good today, speaking to Michael Portillo, who recalls how Margaret Thatcher swore by the tome.

Ten years ago this Wednesday, the Queen re-opened the Scottish Parliament after a hiatus of almost three centuries. In A Decade of Devolution, BBC Scotland's political editor Brian Taylor hosts live debate about how a devolved Scotland has fared and where it should go from here, while on Sunday, Colin Mackay completes his trilogy There Shall be a Scottish Parliament and, again, looks to the future.

If you've had enough of the ricochet of political crossfire, there's always the twang of rackets from Wimbledon, and even Book of the Week goes tennis daft with The Last Champion, about the life of Fred Perry, the international star who dominated the game in the 1930s and shocked his British fans twice over by turning pro then emigrating to the United States – just not tennis, old chap.