Lives In A Landscape

Alan Dein visits a Hastings allotment and finds that a plot of land means a lot more to people than a place to grow vegetables. He joins various allotmenteers as they tend their plot and hears how differently they use it. A young family have created a haven where the children learn about nature; a teacher who tended the land as a means of combatting depression and two friends meet under a full moon to await the wild original inhabitants of the allotment. Produced by Sarah Bowen and Neil McCarthy.

Burdiehouse is a council scheme on the outermost tip of Edinburgh and it's here, hidden away from the world outside, that Alan encounters the pigeon, or doo men, locked in a constant battle to capture each other's birds. These men are neighbours but when it comes to pigeons the battle lines are drawn. This is an old game: 'doo flying' has been practised in Scotland since Victorian times. Hundreds of doo men fly 'horseman thief' pigeons from lofts, bedrooms and sheds. The aim being to lure and capture the pigeons of their rivals.The doomen's pigeons mean a lot to them - they are groomed, their feathers dyed and combed to make them look their best. Some families have kept doos for generations. It's a passion passed on from father to son. In Burdiehouse Alan talks to Paul who comes from a long line of doo men. Paul gave up the birds and moved away from the scheme when he got married, but since separating from his wife has moved in with his mother Anne and built a doo hut in the garden. Central to his new life

The Longest Commute in Britain Geoff picks up a copy of "Horse and Hound" for his wife and strides toward Euston Station; Angus heads for the lounge car, where a whisky is ready and waiting; Mary leaves the offices of 'Country Life', and joins the London rush hour crowds wearing sturdy walking boots; meanwhile Ann Marie has taken up her position at the end of the platform 15, to await the longest train in the UK - it will be her job to unlock the doors, and ready the train for departure. This is arguable the longest commute in the UK - the Caledonian Sleeper - which at a quarter of a mile long, is also the longest train. Walkers, climbers, shooting-parties and Americans tourists are regular fare, but week in week out, the same faces return, the band of commuters who live in the Scottish Highlands, but work in London. Would you, given the choice, choose to spent two nights a week on a train? Two nights of camaraderie in the lounge car; two nights of friendly exchanges, unwinding with late night whiskies;

Alan Dein goes in search of stories from Britain today. 1. Gone Astray. Maureen's black and white cat Rosie has gone missing and the pensioner is scouring the neighbourhood to find her. Little does she know that further down the same Portsmouth street, the Fletcher family have had a visitor. Last Sunday night a black and white cat wandered into their house, sprawled herself out and showed every indication she wanted to stay. The cat has brought the family back together after a nightmare summer holiday with their teenage children. But does their feline peacemaker actually belong to Maureen? Alan Dein finds out in a tale of lost and found cats, aided by Joy Wilson of Portsmouth and District Cat Rescue, who has devoted her life to the welfare of cats. Producer: Laurence Grissell.

Steel Spring. In 1990 Alan Dein travelled the length and breadth of Britain to document lives in steel- already an industry in decline. His then employer British Steel is, itself, now history. Decline, closure and layoffs have been the depressingly familiar litany of modern British industry. When they mothballed the blast furnace at Redcar, on the iron coast of Teesside, in 2010 it felt like just another death. "Like killing a creature" one worker says but this Easter Redcar witnessed a remarkable and fiery resurrection. A billion and a half dollars from Thailand brought back steel making and now the new blast furnace belches smoke and fire as the grey waves crash against the sands of Redcar. Alan Dein returns to a landscape he hasn't visited for a quarter of a century to journey from the iron shore where dark grey waves complement the coils of pale smoke beyond before trailing the black path to the steelworks and its fiery heart, the blast furnace. Dein picks his way through the vast metal realm of 'Queen Be

Golf has put Portrush on the map once again. The seaside town in Northern Ireland is home to two stars of the sport, Graeme McDowell and Darren Clarke. Their names are proudly displayed on the 'Welcome to Portrush' road signs. Along with fellow Northern Ireland player, Rory McIlroy, the two men have reinvigorated the local sports scene, so much so that the Irish Open golf tournament is coming to the Royal Portrush Golf Club at the end of June 2012. For four days the town will turn into a golf lover's paradise. Most of the hotels are booked out and people are renting out their houses. The Irish Open was last held at Royal Portrush in 1947 when the town was a popular holiday resort. But the advent of package holidays and affordable foreign travel eventually lead to a slow-down in the local tourism trade. For this Lives in a Landscape Alan Dein is in Portrush as it carries out a major spring-clean. Derelict buildings, described as 'eyesores', are one legacy of the recent property boom and bust. Now an inject

Alan Dein delves into the deaths of two Labradors, Moz and Chloe and three Jack Russell Terriers, Monty, Poppy and Murphy, living in different families on the same street. Following the latest death, pork steak laced with pesticide was found in a garden and a local vet is in little doubt that this was a deliberate. For Georgina and her husband Darren the attacks have unleashed mistrust and fear in their once close knit community. Their home on the sprawling council estate now hosts a shrine around the fireplace and the cremated remains of their loved pets are buried in the garden. Just weeks later Monty's mother, Poppy, was out in the garden when Emma spotted her eating something: "I rushed out and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw her with more meat. It was too late to stop her and she died later that afternoon." For PC Charlie Banks, from the Pontefract and Knottingley neighbourhood policing team, the case is proving difficult to solve. There is no history of dispute between neighbours and he has found

In the first of a new series of documentary stories from contemporary Britain, Alan Dein captures the dramas of young families just moving into Cardea: a brand new housing estate on the outskirts of Peterborough. Just two years ago, Cardea was just open fields - now it's a burgeoning community. Two families in particular attract Alan's attention. Sara Jane and Stacey are both expectant mums in their early twenties. Together with their partners, they're about to embark on a new life on a new-build estate. Cardea represents a fresh start for both women after an often difficult past. Sara Jane was brought up on council estate and vowed that she wanted a different upbringing for her own children. At the same time, Stacey hopes that her ambitions to become a midwife - thwarted through ill-health - might yet bear fruit as she starts out in a new home. Alan follows the young families up to and beyond moving day, talking to them about their hopes and fears for the future. Producer: Laurence Grissell.

5. Readers' Lives. Every six weeks a group of women in affluent Putney by the Thames in south-west London meets to discuss a book they've all been reading. This is no casual club open to the public but a close knit circle of friends and bibliophiles whose group is exclusive. As Boat Race Saturday - spring highpoint of the social calendar - approaches, Alan Dein joins the women as they go about their daily lives to hear about their relationship with Putney, with each other and the meaning the book club has for them. Producer: Neil McCarthy.

Alan Dein follows the fortunes of Iraq veteran turned wedding photographer Stefan Edwards as he contends with the difficulties of life on civvy street and tries to cut himself a slice of the increasingly competitive wedding market. It's a March wedding for Lorraine and Richard from Newport and photographer Stefan Edwards exudes an air of military authority as he helps to chronicle the pair's big day. On the inside, though, Stefan's every bit as nervous as the couple anxiously awaiting the exchanging of vows. For Stefan's a newcomer to the wedding photography business - six months previously, he'd been out in Iraq using his camera to chronicle the war ravaged country, first for the British army and then for a private security contractor. Having visited virtually every corner of Iraq, Stefan eventually decided to return to the UK to be with his Newport-based family who'd grown increasingly concerned at his absence. With steady work hard to find, Stefan has decided to go into the photography business, swappi

On the wall above the Val D'Oro, one of the oldest fish and chip shops in Glasgow hangs a painting of the Crucifixion, painted to commemorate the residents of one of the poorest areas of the city. Completed in 2010 David Adam's stark image of a crucified Christ in a street scene at Glasgow Cross places Christ in the midst of the city. At the foot of the cross where Christ's grieving mother Mary traditionally stands, is another Mary, Mary Paterson, a valued customer and local character, now in her nineties, huddled over the basket in which she carried her dog Sheba. To the left of the cross, Luigi Corvi, owner of the shop, stands poised to sing, bearing a plate of fish and chips. In his innocence, a small boy offers up the remains of his Irn Bru to Jesus while a woman to his right attempts to pick the pocket of a passer-by and a man nearby injects heroin into his thigh. But as Alan Dein discovers in the first of the new series of Lives in a Landscape, exploring offbeat aspects of contemporary Britain, th

Millie is about to reach the astonishing age of 104; at 94, Lily is a mere youngster, while 95-year-old Hetty is still as voluble and lively as she was when she worked in a football factory or ran her own business... Alan Dein visits Vi and John Rubens House in Ilford, Essex, where elderly residents of the old East End Jewish community in London now spend their days. Talking to them about how they spend their time now he discovers a rich landscape of experience in the lives of these entertainingly lively and thoughtful old people. Producer: Simon Elmes.

St Peter's church, a 13th century jewel, is empty. Inside, the workings of the clock tick ominously, moving the hands towards midnight. On the street outside a group of people, maybe a hundred, huddle against the cold, waiting for the clock to strike. This is the scene on the second Sunday in December, every year, in the village of Broughton, near Kettering in Northamptonshire. This is a quiet village, the bypass takes traffic away, the few commuters leaving town early in the morning. The few pubs are jolly, but not rowdy, and the Co-op acts as an unofficial meeting point for the locals. Not much to distinguish it from the other villages nearby; flat, farmland stretching from one village to the next, with the odd superstore or garden centre between them. But come midnight something different happens; something unique, ancient, mysterious; something rather noisy. For every year for as long as anyone can remember, and even further back, the devil is beaten out of Broughton, by the tin can band - a collect

It was a chance encounter with the President himself which saw Zimbabwean musician, Wilson Magwere, become a well rewarded propagandist for Robert Mugabe's regime. While he and his fellow musicians from the band Storm were asked to perform at pro-government rallies and events, all around them they witnessed their friends, neighbours and family members suffer at the hands of the same repressive regime. It was soon too much for Wilson to bear. Leaving his wife and baby daughter behind in Harare, he ran away from the band, from Mugabe and from Zimbabwe. Eight years later, he has found himself living alone in Belfast, a city synonymous with its own set of political complexities. There he continues to wait for his political refugee status to be reviewed and prays that one day his wife and child will be able to join him. But for now Wilson has been trying to make a success of 'Magwere,' the new band he's formed with a disparate group of Belfast based musicians hailing from a hotchpotch of different countries around

Alan Dein meets Arthur Lowe, a 75-year-old life model and former financial adviser, from Shipston-On-Stour who poses for art students as a contribution to society. Arthur puts his trim physique down to the lengths he regularly swims in his local pool - training which helped him win a gold medal at last year's world master's swimming competition in Sweden. Alan visits an art class and observes the students at work as they capture the essence of the man at the front of the class. Although, he is physically naked before them, many know little of the life within and the issues that concern Arthur. Away from the studio, Alan explores exposure, vanity and the ageing process with Arthur who is acutely aware that his days as a model may be numbered.

With the trauma surrounding the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan and the increasing urgency of the debate about Britain's future use of nuclear power, Alan Dein joins a group for whom the nuclear industry has been an uninterrupted staple of their daily lives. But the golfing members of SASRA, the Sellafield Area Sports and Recreation Association, have a life away from the pressure of working at one of the most recognisable nuclear establishments in the world. Alan Dein joins Don Gash, the treasurer, fixtures secretary and - in his own words - general dogsbody for the SASRA golf society and a small group as they play their weekly competition round on the old golf that hugged the Cumbrian coast between Seascale and Calder Hall long before the nuclear industry arrived to dominate the landscape. The talk is of dry fairways, short rough and the business of working for an industry that was once seen as heroic and pioneering before entering a period of intense critical scrutiny. And Alan also wonders how th

Alan Dein follows the lives of two brothers - Alex, searching for a fresh start away from London gangs and his adopted brother JJ, who is poised for success on the London stage. Alan charts the lives of Alex, JJ and parents Liz and Andreas as they cope with changes which will fundamentally shift the balance of their family life. As JJ approaches 16 he must make decisions about his life and is preparing for auditions which could see him relaunch his acting career. This was put on hold five years earlier when the woman he knew as his 'mum' died and he was taken in by best friend Alex and adopted by Alex's parents, Andreas and Liz. Before this he had toured with productions like the King and I and his teachers believe he has the talent, drive and determination to succeed. These are characteristics in short supply for Alex who is preparing to move to the Philippines to live with his maternal grandmother. He has been selling Cannabis and now owes money to a local gang. Excluded from school he sees little prosp

Alan Dein goes to Northern Ireland to talk to former Royal Ulster Constabulary officers who have formed a writing group. The Maryfield Writers meet once a month to share and discuss their work. Alan spends time with three of them to understand why they write about their chosen subjects and finds that each of them deals with the past in different ways. Bob has made a clean break with his police past. He served for 22 years, was shot at, had bombs placed under his car and was forced to move house a number of times. He chooses to write children's stories about fantasy and escape and has had a number of books published. Keith is working on screenplays which fall into the police-procedural genre but avoid autobiographical references. Not entirely at ease with modern Northern Ireland, Keith spends a lot of time at home, writing. Teresa spent 20 years in Juvenile Liaisons and, as a Catholic, was in a minority in the RUC. Her poetry has allowed her some catharsis as years of difficult experiences during the Troubles

In the first ever Lives in a Landscape, the Ancient and Honourable Society of Ratters leave London clubland behind and head for Yorkshire to experience the excitement of a real rat-hunt, masterminded by ex-miner Brian Oliver. But when he invites them back to his council semi, it's not quite what they're expecting. Alan Dein has presented the programme since 2008 - before then, most editions were audio montages without a presenter. Producer: Laurence Grissell

Alan Dein travels to Elsecar Park, Barnsley.For the past 4 years it has been home to Francis McDonald who both runs the cafe and acts as unofficial park keeper. This was once called 'Elsecar by the sea'. Day trippers from Sheffield and hordes of local children from the pit village would play and swim in its reservoir. There's a wrought iron bandstand, a modern playground and the water still laps against the shore. In the last of the golden autumn sun, with eddies of brown leaves skittering around, it is a place of quiet beauty. It seemed like a paradise when McDonald opened the doors on a world he had known since his childhood. But gradually it became a kind of lonely hell. Now this will be his last autumn and the house on the hill will fall silent and shuttered. Producer: Mark Burman.