Radio & TV
RADIO PROGRAMMES
(as writer and/or presenter and/or main guest of one or more programmes)
BBC Radio 4
Adrian Mitchell:To Whom it May Concern (30 mins)
Lord Byron and the Hebrew Melodies (30 mins)
Our Libraries: The Next Chapter (two 30 minute features)
Archive Hour – ‘The Benjamin Broadcasts’ (one hour programme about Walter Benjamin’s pre-Nazi broadcasts for children)
Anne Frank’s Trees: Keeping the Memory Alive (30 minute feature on memorialising the Holocaust)
Word of Mouth (1998-)
Treasure Islands (1989-1997)
Let the Rumpus Begin (5 x 15 mins on ground-breaking children’s books)
Shaking Up The Library (5 x 15 mins programmes on children’s books that were firsts)
When Knights Were Bold (5 x 15 min programmes on history in children’s literature)
Parsing With Passion (2 x 30 mins on history of grammar in schools)
Put Asunder (3 x 15 mins on divorce)
Hearts and Minds (1 x 30 mins) on children’s literature in totalitarian countries
On Being Wrong (3 x 15 mins)
On Saying Goodbye (3 x 15 mins on death and bereavement
Dr Seuss: Who Put The Cat In The Hat? (1 x30 mins, biography)
A Cachery of Ogden Nashery (unpublished poems from Nash’s papers)
Pirates of Cologne – the Edelweisspiraten (German youth who resisted the Nazis)
Testing Times (3 x 15 mins on the testing culture)
The Palace for the People (1 x 30) (Crystal Palace)
The Magic Lantern (2 x 30 mins on children’s films
Losing the Children (30 mins on the origins of the ‘Pied Piper’ story)
On Being Inferior (3 x 15 mins with Dorothy Rowe)
On Being Selfish (3 x 15 mins with Dorothy Rowe)
People in the Playground Revisited (5 x 15 mins) looking at children’s play now
Dons and Dragons (30 min documentary on how Oxford produced the great fantasy writers: Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Philip Pullman)
Home Truths Occasional presenter
Pick of the Week Occasional presenter
My Third Life (exploration of my condition of being hypothyroid) (30 mins)
Accidental Entertainers – the Brothers Grimm (30 mins)
A Blunt Instrument (1 x 30) programme about the poet and anti-imperialist Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Laughter Close to Tears (1 x 30) programme about jokes in totalitarian countries
Winnie the Who? (1 x 30) programme about the Russian Winnie the Pooh, Vinni Pukh
Oh My What a Rotten Song (30 mins) – programme about Weston and Lee, two songwriters who wrote either separately or together songs like ‘Henery the Eighth I am’ and ‘When Father Painted the Parlour’ – contributors included Roy Hudd, Dennis Norden, Billy Bragg, Charles Chilton
Go4it – guest on programme about Dickens
Go4it – guest on programme about bereavement
Quote Unquote – guest
Gerard Manley Hopkins: the First Jazz Poet (30 minute feature on the poetry and musicality of GMH)
Frequent appearances on:
Jeremy Vine Show (including week’s guest as commentator on poll to find best bedtime story book)
Simon Mayo Show (Radio 2)
PM, Today, Front Row (Radio 4)
Nightwaves including review of biography of Isaac Rosenberg; re-opening of Whitechapel Art Gallery (Radio 3)
[Storytelling in Paris] (not actual title) 30 minute documentary of me taking some children from John Scurr Primary to Paris for an international festival of storytelling, produced by Jill Burridge in about 1987
BBC Radio 3
Ronald Dahl at 100, the exuberance of Dahl’s Poetry – The Essay
On the Trail of D.H.Lawrence – The Essay (15 mins)
BBC Proms Family Matinee: The Big Proms Bear Hunt
Zola in Norwood (45 minute feature on Emile Zola’s self-imposed exile in London at the height of the Dreyfus Case)
Best Words – a poetry series I presented and wrote that ran from 1994-1997
An Ugly Duckling? – Hans Christian Andersen
The Brothers Grimm
Maurice Sendak
Joan Littlewood – a profile (30 mins)
In Search of Hans Christian Andersen (30 mins)
Lingua Franca for ‘The Essay’ (12x15mins on history of European languages)
BBC World Service
Poems by Post later becoming specialised editions of ‘The Word’ (1989-)
Art of the Spanish Civil War
Meridian Books> Presenter 1992-1996
Life and work of Bertolt Brecht
Meridian Masterclass – Le Corbusier
Stuff – five programmes about artists working with different materials – glass, clay etc
BBC Schools Radio (1970-2005)
Living Language
Poetry Corner
Stories and Rhymes
Verse Universe
That’d Be Telling
TELEVISION
(as writer and/or presenter of one or more programmes)
SCHOOLS TELEVISION
Channel 4
Readabout
Rosen’s Poetry Attic
Just Write
Eureka: The Secret Life of Schools
Teachers TV
Michael Rosen on Literacy (45 mins)
Reading Aloud (15 x 15mins on enjoying reading)
Schools TV (1972-1985)
Middle English
The English Programme
Talk, Write and Read
WALRUS
CHILDREN’S TV
Channel 4
Everybody Here (30 programmes)
Black and White and Read All Over (6 programmes)
BBC
Cbeebies – guest reader of 5 stories (not by me), can be viewed on YouTube
Blue Peter – occasional appearances including ‘training’ presenters to perform poetry
CITV
Guest on ‘Bookaboo’ reading a story (not by me).
MAINSTREAM TV
BBC 4 and BBC 2
Writer presenter on Heath Robinson: Suburban Subversive (profile) – November and December 2003
Just Read – writer, present: I went to a school in Cardiff to start a ‘reading revolution’. (February 9 2009) Producer Deborah Perkin (1 x 45 mins)
We Need Answers – guest on jokey quiz show, guest with Germaine Greer
Never Mind the Full Stops – guest on quiz show about languag
BBC 4
Mind Games
BBC 1
Contributor and judge in Off By Heart
BBC 2
Critic for Newsnight Review November 2003, January 2004
Channel 5
Michael Rosen’s Treasury of Children’s Literature
(one hour documentary on the Seven Stories Museum of Children’s Literature in Newcastle)
The Wright Stuff
I’ve been appearing on Matthew Wright’s The Wright Stuff programme on Channel Five. Matthew asks me to talk about children’s books and I take phone calls from viewers
And regular appearances or guest slots on:
BBC Breakfast News
News 24
Channel 4 News
Daily Politics Show
Sky Arts Book Show
