Robert McCrum's BBC Radio 4 shows include Shakespeare and the American Dream (two episodes), The Life in My Head: From Stroke to Brain Attack (two episodes) and America Rewritten (six episodes).

He has also appeared on Sue Lawley's Desert Island Disks on BBC Radio 4, following his stroke and the year he spent recovering and writing his memoir about that process.

As Michael Berkeley's guest on BBC Radio 3's Private Passions, Robert introduced his musical passion, American musicals, with choices by Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Frank Loesser and Colin Matthews.

He presented a portrait of writer Jan Morris on BBC Four. Before changing sex in 1972, James Morris scored a major scoop with the news of the conquest of Everest.