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Two hours later I feel my muscles relaxing.22 July: A raiding party of Governors led by paramount chief Sir Christopher Bland himself is to be briefed – not on the schedule, but on the process and results of audience research I receive a rigorous but courteous going over. I have to phone and ask Lindsey to run along the corridor with a pencil and a copy of the Radio Times I don’t know I thought I needed both I run over the allotted time doing my presentation Board members look inscrutable. I’m asked to wait in the anteroom of the historic Council Chamber. Convinced that I have a malignant lump under my arm.16 July: I’ve consulted as many people as I can about the dilemmas for Radio 4 inherent in the research.

The schedule is at version 49.17 July: The BBC Executive Committee: The entire Radio 4 team assembles in my office Even the editors are laughing nervously Under my arm is the new schedule Will the Executive Board be supportive? I walk downstairs. I ignore it.Both the fateful day with the Governors and the wedding are approaching The clock speeds up I fly to Edinburgh for the weekend. We begin to worry about our planned changes leaking out.July: After the Radio Academy, a Sunday programme prints a story saying that I will “axe 30 programmes” It’s a dreadful mish-mash and causes alarm. The story is wrong.The Commissioning Editors complete their work and the Strategy Conference is a success The other networks look equally impressive. By 1951, China was suffering serious reverses and heavy casualties Still Stalin told Mao: “… the Korean War should not be quickened, because Chinese troops can learn about modern war in a lengthy one”.By the July 1953 truce, Peking had won none of its demands and any chance to retake Taiwan had evaporated. The historical reminder on offer from the authors would seem to be that hopes for reunification with Taiwan are ill-served by bad Sino-US relations – then and now..

Miserable and soaked by incessant rains, there is an overriding sense of despair amongst the thousands of Cambodians who have escaped the terror of renewed fighting in their country. At Thai “reception” camps, set up to embrace an influx of beleaguered and frightened civilians, mothers fan the weak flames of makeshift stoves fuelled with damp wood. Their children, seemingly oblivious to suffering, play and dance in the torrents of rain beating down on tents of leaky plastic sheeting. There are few men, bar the elderly, or women without children amongst these muddy refugees.
They have escaped to Thailand but have left family behind to work the land in the paddy fields of northwestern Cambodia: a harsh but pragmatic line drawn between the possibility of death or injury from a stray bullet fired by one rival Cambodian government faction at another, and the certainty of starvation without a dry-season rice harvest.”We packed our belongings two days ago because our loved ones wanted us to be safe,” said Aim Lem, a 35-year-old Khmer woman who crossed over two days ago on Saturday night into Thailand with her six young children. “But now we are wet and hungry, and I cannot stop worrying about the safety of the rest of my family,” she said, clasping a small baby, naked and screaming, to her breast.The camps are filling up by the day with refugees. More than 6,000 arrived over the weekend, carrying what belongings they could manage to drag through the mud.

Some 15,000 more are poised to enter Thailand further north in the province of Surin, as rival Cambodian forces lock in a bitter stand- off, firing barrages of artillery and rockets across the jungle.Already, according to aid workers at the border, more than 70 per cent of the displaced civilians are affected with illness. There are fears that without adequate sanitation the water-logged ground on which the refugee camps have been sited may prove prone to malaria and cholera.The United Nations’ refugee agency, and other aid groups, have been struggling to provide everyone with just the bare minimum: food, basic medical care and sufficient shelter from the weather.No one is comparing this crisis to the calamity of the late 1970s, when as many as 500,000 starving Cambodians, shattered by war and the genocidal Khmer Rouge, lingered on Thailand’s long border. But although the numbers are smaller this time, the people are fleeing for similar reasons, and with no less fear for their lives.”We all thought the shelling would kill us,” said Sok In, a 63-year-old carpenter. “We are sad to leave our land, but for our children’s sake we had to come here,” he added.Cambodia’s problem was, and still is, conflict.