Radio 4 bags William Boyd's James Bond - and a licence to thrill Solo, William Boyd's new James Bond novel, is Radio 4"s Book at Bedtime this week and next, a great coup for the network. Published only last week, the book has been covered enthusiastically even by Bond scholars with doubts about how a mid-20th-century drinking, smoking, sexual adventurer would fit into today. It fits like a hand into a glove, of course, since Bond is a classic fantasy whose genesis goes back to ancient myth and whose currency will hold strong as long as men dream of being licensed to kill while knowing exactly where to find the best of everything, from a suit to a car, a cocktail to a concubine. Paterson Joseph in this radio version gives him a good voice, slightly smoky, just detached enough to make the shifts between Bond's Second World War nightmares and such 1969 realities as a honey blonde in navy blue catsuit (with crotch to cleavage gold zip, of course) seem as if we are seeing it all ourselves. If you want to, that is, as I have never had the urge to drive a Jensen, twist the heel off my shoe to find a blade, observe (unseen) said honey blonde in her (red) undies and stare death in the face for a living, all of which packed Monday's opening episode. In its company, I was content to watch James doing it. I bet it sends the iPlayer figures through the roof. Sword of Honour (Radio 4, Sunday) is the new Classic Serial, Jeremy Front's nimble adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's war trilogy, novels so steeped in observant anger, bitter amusement weighed with black melancholy, that the tone is hard to transpose to its vast cast of English archetypes. The pity of it is that, here, so few of the voices (and the cast is impressive) sound right. They all shout and bluster, whine or reflect as the script bids them but they sound as if they are putting on accents as they would their grandfathers" suits. Maybe, over the next six weeks, I'll stop noticing the badly shaped vowels, the just-off intonations. On Sunday, though, I felt like jumping through the radio and giving them all a tweak. There are bigger things to fret about, however. Radio 3"s new schedule has arrived and last weekend it was like one of those dreams where you go into your house and nothing is as you left it. Where was the Sunday play, Shaw's You Never Can Tell with a brilliant cast (Jamie Bamber, Ian Ogilvy, Julian Holloway, Sophie Winkleman)? Gone north, into late night waters, starting at 10.00pm, finishing at midnight. Yes, there's a new live concert to make up for it and a wonderful one it was this week, with Alison Balsom playing Haydn and Piazzolla with the Halle and finishing with an encore, Gershwin's Someone to Watch Over Me, and on three different trumpets too as announcer Stuart Flinders told us. But it's a shame that the last radio slot for full length classic plays is now shunted further towards what could be its exit. Exit? Surely not, I hear you say but in my other ear, the Cassandra one, I can just imagine some future explanation... smaller audiences, budget cuts, can't justify, etc etc. Hope I'm wrong, Radio 2"s Sunday night will change next weekend which made Russell Davies's show this week his last in the 9.00-10.00pm slot. He'll be back, as he said, in December, on a Monday, at 11.00pm for 13 weeks. But he will be sorely missed at this more sociable time. He began his farewell with Billy Strayhorn's I'm Checkin" Out in a version by Rosemary Clooney which led neatly into a story about the Gershwins" house and how she moved into it when they left, and before you could remember all the words of The Song Is You or when you first heard Joan Regan sing Ricochet, the show was over and Peggy Lee, at the very end, was singing "too soon..." to George Shearing's piano accompaniment as elderly parties all over the UK nodded our grizzled heads in agreement. There are, of course, other shows available. Paul Barnes is on Radio Norfolk on Saturdays and, if you have DAB radio, there's always Swingtime, which originates in the USA and is carried here by Wireless from Age UK if only, so far, in London and Yorkshire. Sheila Tracy (once of Radio 2) is a Swingtime DJ as is Graham Dene, to whom I gave his first radio job at Radio City in Liverpool in 1974 which goes to show, you don't have to be ancient to like Ellington and Basie, Sinatra, Peggy Lee and Nat King Cole. You just have to be grown up.