Rewind radio: London's Oldest Prison; Oblique Strategies – review - The Guardian

London's Oldest Prison: A History of Criminal Justice (Radio 4) | iPlayer

Oblique Strategies (Radio 4) | iPlayer

Round the corner from our south London flat, just off the busy road towards Brighton, there is a windmill. Brixton has a windmill! A proper one, like Windy Miller's, with lovely shuttered white sails that turn on occasion. It was built in 1816, restored a couple of years ago and won an award. I recommend a visit, by the way: its summer festival is on Saturday.

Close to the windmill, on a different road, is Brixton prison. It opened three years after the windmill first turned, in 1819, as the Surrey House of Correction. In London's Oldest Prison on Wednesday morning, on Radio 4 we heard some of today's prisoners in Brixton reading out the sentences given to the criminals of the early 1800s. Criminals aged seven, 10, 13, boys and girls, sentenced to hard labour for vagrancy (not having anywhere to live). Hard labour, we discovered, meant the treadmill. Prisoners spent long, long hours walking on a stepped wheel which turned a millstone to grind flour. If they refused, or became ill, they were thrown into a "dark cell" – no light, often waterlogged – for days. The treadmill in the Surrey House of Correction was the first in London and became so notorious, so "successful", that songs and satires were written about it.

The treadmill was designed by a man called Cubitt, who also invented Brixton windmill's special sails. (What a strange legacy to bestow upon a town!) His treadmill is long gone, but the original prison mill house remains. It's now an in-prison bakery, called the Bad Boys' Bakery. We heard from an inmate as he lifted some brownies from the oven. "They're the favourites in this place," he said, proudly. "They literally go like hot cakes." These days, Brixton is in the process of becoming a resettlement prison, with the emphasis on reform rather than punishment. Prisoners will soon be able to train in retail, in catering, in kitchen fitting; whatever the local job market demands.

Jerry White, professor of history at the University of London, was our expert presenter. He talked us, and some of Brixton's prisoners, through the changes in attitudes towards criminals in the UK. Before Brixton, jails were mostly for debtors; other criminals were publicly flogged or hanged. Some were sent abroad. But in debtors' jails, inmates were idle, and with an increase in crime driven by an increase in London's population, the public wanted prisoners to be punished, rather than merely contained. Hence the Surrey House of Correction, and the treadmill, an image that still turns in my mind's eye, as do many others conjured up by this excellent programme. Oh, I know I'm getting older; 200 years doesn't seem so long ago.

Part of the joy of London's Oldest Prison was its revelations about what is, to me, a familiar contemporary landmark. A similar delight could be found on Thursday in Radio 4's Oblique Strategies, which gave a new angle on David Bowie's Berlin trilogy albums, also familiar contemporary landmarks. Oblique Strategies are cards with gnomic instructions designed to jolt you out of your usual approach to work and help you create. They were designed by Peter Schmidt, an artist, and Brian Eno, Bowie's producer: Eno and Bowie used them a lot on Low, Heroes and Lodger. Poet Simon Armitage presented a very entertaining investigation of the powers of these cards; cards that ordered him to "be less critical more often" and to use "disciplined self-indulgence". "Is it finished?" they asked him, not five minutes in. How rude.

Carlos Alomar, a guitarist on those Bowie Berlin albums, talked of how strange it was initially to work using the cards; Paul Morley was enthusiastic about their usefulness; and Armitage was eloquent about how artists and writers can have patterns of working, "established paths of least resistance", which sometimes turn into ruts. He wondered if the cards could help with his work. They did, sort of.

Armitage was a lovely, deft presenter, zipping between chat and card-pondering, writing poems and making phone calls with none of the usual Radio 4 documentary cliches. His interviews were funny and revealing, his links personable and clever. A few weeks ago, I banged on about how brilliant US radio documentaries can seem when compared to stodgy, predictable UK fare. Oblique Strategies had a similar feel to those American docs: a light tone that assumes the listener will follow, even if things aren't explained every step of the way; wit and curiosity that get the best out of interviewees; and an insight into something we thought we knew everything about already. Hooray to all that and more, please.