Radio Reviews: Airwaves: Lost Heroes and Missionary Zeal

Summary

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THE best heroes are the ones who die young. They will be in the prime of life forever. They will never grow old and bad tempered, or get bunions. And we can speculate endlessly about the heights they might have reached. One such is the prodigiously gifted singer, songwriter and guitarist Jeff Buckley, whose short life is celebrated by Chrissie Hynde, below, in Mystery White Boy (Radio 2, today, 9.30pm). The son of Tim Buckley (a tragic early death was one of many things father and son had in common), he had made only one album when he died swimming in the Wolf River in Memphis in 1997. His music, and his cult following, live on.

Heroes, of course, are a tricky thing. They change according to fashion. In the 19th century, Scotland's missionaries were among its heroes. Now we are careful not to speak of them at all. But the issues which trouble us in the politically correct West never bothered most of the countries where they did their good work, as a new series, The Scottish Mission (Radio Scotland, Sunday, 8.30am), reveals. Mary Slessor, a slip of a girl from the jute mills in Dundee, is still a heroine in Nigeria for bringing life-saving health advice and forcing an end to barbaric customs. The first episode tells the story of Jane Haining, from Dumfriesshire, who taught Jewish children in her "Scotch School" in Budapest and paid for it with her life at the hands of the Gestapo.

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Radio Reviews: Airwaves: Lost Heroes and Missionary Zeal

Meanwhile, Switzerland was...

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