Arcade Fire are that rare combination of things - a popular, critically-acclaimed Canadian band. As they release their third album and gear up to headline the Reading and Leeds Festival, Radio 1 heads to Montreal to spend time with frontman Win Butler and his troupe of multi-instrumentalists.

Published to coincide with the thirty-fifth anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death, Room Full of Mirrors gives full voice to the music that continues to enthrall each successive generation of rock fans. Hendrix's colorful, tumultuous life is brilliantly detailed in Charles Cross's latest rock bio

Despite the number of claims in publishers blurbs, not many people actually achieve the status of legend in their own lifetime. Fewer still actually deserve that status. John Peel is the exception which proves that rule, a Great Briton whose contribution to British culture is undeniable, without whom popular culture would never have become popular. Beloved by millions - whether for his unstinting championing of musical talent on Radio 1 or for his wildly popular Radio 4 show "Home Truths" - this is the astonishing book he began to write before his untimely death in October 2004, completed by the woman who knew him best, his wife Sheila.

Londoner Brockes, a 29-year-old playwright who writes for the Guardian, expounds on her love of musicals.

He charts how Goebbels, Hitler\'s propaganda minister, led a process designed to purify all German culture, including books, music, paintings and pottery.

Melvyn Bragg discusses the Baroque - a term used to describe a vast array of painting, music, architecture and sculpture from the 17th and 18th centuries. His guests this week are Tim Blanning, Professor of Modern European History and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge; Nigel Aston, Reader in Early Modern History at the University of Leicester; and Helen Hills, Professor of Art History at the University of York

Melvyn Bragg considers the celestial harmonies of the planets, a Pythagorean concept which fascinated astrologists, artists and mathematicians for centuries. He is joined by Peter Forshaw, Postdoctoral Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London

A timely investigation into the loss of cultural, public and historical records, both analogue and digital, as a result of deterioration or advances in technology. Richard Hollingham investigates specific examples of what is now unplayable or unreadable. For example, he can reveal for the first time, that the UK population census data from 1951 are lost, as are significant parts of the 1961 and 1971 census data. And he hears from the long-term percussionist of The Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart, why the Grateful Dead, unlike other leading touring bands, still have all their master tapes intact. He also finds out about successful efforts on both sides of the Atlantic for preserving and recuperating sound and music.

Why does the music of Mozart create as much excitement in the laboratory as it does in the concert hall? This programme investigates the myths and reality of Mozart's mind and his music.

In Berlin Daniel Barenboim argues that we have lost the ability to make value judgements about public standards - all because of political correctness and bad education

In the first of his lectures from Jerusalem Daniel Barenboim will talk about how music is the great equaliser as he discovered in his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra which brings together young Arab and Israeli musicians

Music has shown Barenboim that there is a fundamental difference between power and strength which could map a new journey for our politics

Concentrates on 6000 subjects from the conscious memory of living inhabitants of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The book includes facts about history, politicians, pop musicians and business leaders, sports, literature, art, scandal, disasters, battles and current affairs