Radio

"I do still see that my nature is not to be quite conquered, but will esteem pleasure above all things," wrote the 31-year-old Samuel Pepys in March, 1665, by which time he had been keeping his now famous diary for five years.

This week's woman's hour drama – the diary of samuel pepys stars Kris Marshall as the 17th century chronicler and Katharine Jakeways as his long-suffering wife in a new adaptation for radio by Hattie Taylor. As a record of the mores, manners and fashions of his day Pepys's writings are invaluable, as well as giving a candid insight into Pepys's own preoccupations and self-confessed failings – despite periodic bouts of contrition, he socialises energetically, overindulges, and can't resist a pretty woman.

Pepys, of course, also recorded major historical events, such as the Plague and the Great Fire of London. Gerry Northam also meets witnesses to history made 50 years ago in the day the wall went up, a two-part examination of the Cold War hostilities which created a divided Berlin, culminating in a barbed wire barrier that was erected across Berlin overnight on the 12-13 August 1961 and which became the infamous Berlin Wall.

For 28 years, the Wall symbolised Germany's partitioning into western capitalist and eastern communist blocs, and Northam traces the planning and construction of the barrier, as well as using archive recordings, diaries and letters left by those on whose lives it impacted, as well as those in the wider world who feared that the East-West standoff would erupt into nuclear war.

Human darkness on a more individual scale is the preoccupation of the internationally acclaimed crime writer Val McDermid, who is Stuart Cosgrove's guest in the last of the current series of my life in five books. Growing up in Kirkcaldy, McDermid read English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, when she was only 17. Today, the lass frae the Lang Toun is the award-winning author of 22 best-sellers, not to mention being a board member of Raith Rovers.

Woman's Hour Drama – The Diary of Samuel Pepys

Mon-Fri, Radio 4, 10:45am, 7:45pm

The Day the Wall Went up

Tuesday, BBC World Service, 9:06am

My Life in Five Books

Thursday, Radio Scotland, 2:05pm

- This article was first published in The Scotsman on August 13, 2011