Radio Listener: Great Lives | Walking with Attitude | The People’s Post

Do the titles We Can Remember It for You Wholesale or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? mean anything to you? If not, you’ll probably recognise the films based on them, Total Recall and Blade Runner. Both tales emanated from the fertile if sometimes tortured mind of science-fiction writer Philip K Dick, who is celebrated in the first of a new series of great lives on Radio 4.

Dick, who died in 1982, is championed by the actor Michael Sheen, who tells the show’s presenter, Matthew Parris, how the writer’s explorations of multiple realities struck a chord with his own experience of mental health problems within his family, and also how he influenced his recent, Freudian take on Hamlet at the Young Vic. Having seen the film Blade Runner, says Sheen, he became increasingly fascinated by Dick, whose stories also provided the basis for the films Minority Report and The Adjustment Bureau.

A different way of looking at things is also a prerequisite of what’s become known as “psychogeography”, a heightened awareness of landscape or townscape that imbues even the most familiar scenes with atmospheric, the surreal or even magical elements. Adopted by the French Situationists, in recent years psychogeography has been popularised by British writers such as Will Self and Ian Sinclair, both of whom assist travel writer Ian Marchant along the way in sunday feature: walking with attitude.

Meanwhile, as the postman’s bag starts to swell with Christmas mail, Dominic Sandbrook sets off on a journey of his own in the people’s post: a narrative history of the post office. His five-part exploration of the service we take for granted traces the origins of the post in 1516, the development of the London Penny Post in the late 17th century and how the advent of a cheap and dependable mail service impacted on literacy, commerce, free speech and even relationships.

It starts on Monday shrouded in suspicion, however, as it delves into a secret room where, during the Civil War, letters sent by suspected dissidents were opened by Government agents.

Great Lives

Tuesday, Radio 4, 4:30pm

Sunday Feature: Walking With Attitude

Sunday, Radio 3, 7:45pm

The People’s Post: A Narrative History of the Post Office

Mon-Fri, Radio 4, 1:45pm