Sue Brooks writes in memoriam of Radio 4’s ‘A Point of View’. Illustration: Pete Fowler.

Radio 4’s weekly programme on Friday evenings, A Point of View, has vanished: removed to the BBC Archive in the sky. On March 28th, I read in the Schedule, that Howard Jacobson will be presenting the final programme. The last fourteen minutes of an essay, on a topical subject, written and read by the author. A fine BBC landmark which began in 2007 with weekly essays by Clive James. The sadness and shock of what is happening to the BBC hit me hard. Something to reflect on later, but Howard Jacobson has always been my favourite of all the contributors, and I knew he would go out in style.

Reader, he did. An absolutely magnificent performance. Each time I replay those fourteen minutes on the radio, I feel I am in the audience in a vast theatre somewhere, and at the end, thousands rise to their feet and applaud. Some, like me, with tears in their eyes.

Here’s the title and a little taste of the script.

Our revels now are ended.

One of the ideas to shore ourselves up against the deranged certainties of the Internet, is to rejoice in the idea that life is passionate, piecemeal. Brokenness is good.

At a time when we no longer have the concentration to read whole books, we should love the shards of scepticism with which the best essays dazzle us.

I am no Prospero and ‘A Point Of View’ is no bewitched island, but it has often enough bewitched me…it’s still with tears that I abjure my rough magic.

I invite you to listen to Prospero on BBC Sounds and be dazzled.