Cosmic Quest

Radio 4, 3.45pm

And quite a quest it is - 30 episodes in which the astronomer Heather Couper considers the history of people's understanding of the Universe and our place in it. Today's episode zips around the millennia, going back to the ancients and forward to the Moon landings with the aid of quotable quotes from everyone, it seems, who has looked at the heavens and come up with something more profound than “Hey, look at that - a shooting star”, but from tomorrow she begins the quest in earnest, with Man's earliest dealings with our own Sun. Couper does have a tendency to oversell the product - her archness could become wearying after a while - but there's enough here to make the next 30 episodes an afternoon delight.

James Bond, the Last Englishman

Radio 4, 8pm

After a weekend of Ian Fleming centenary madness (OK, a Saturday Play of Dr No, and a sift through his letters by his neice), the historian David Cannadine argues that the Bond novels are a fantastic (as in fantasised) response to a time when Britain had lost an empire and was still struggling to find a role in a new world. This requires a certain amount of discussion about Fleming himself, who had enjoyed an exciting war in the intelligence services and found himself after it in a dreary, rationed, dull Britain that many felt had won the war but come off second best in the peace. Bond was the response - a throwback to a time when Britain had ruled the world, and could still make a difference, if only in the imagination. Fleming's biographers Andrew Lycett and Ben Macintyre - both of The Times, to a greater or lesser extent - bring their own acute observations to bear.

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