There's a big difference between a good read and a good Book of the Week (Radio 4). This week's adaptation of John Julius Norwich's The Popes is a fine example of how to add a special radio something to the printed page version.

Firstly, Norwich is reading, his voice all attending-commanding grandeur but with some warm mischievous glints. There are crisp, concise readings from key historical texts and some stirring musical interludes punctuating the text: punchy trumpets and soaring choral music. These elements hand the book over to the listener in a friendly manner, acknowledging the process as separate from reading on the page, but never dumbing down the original. Well done to producer David Roper.

And yesterday's opening programme was a delight in terms of content, too. Norwich explored the legend of Pope Joan, alleged to have been a ninth-century English woman masquerading as a man for two years until she gave birth in a papal procession. Part of the story was that future popes had to have their gender checked. This was done, Norwich explained, on an "unusual chair with a hole in it". A junior cleric would have a feel, calling out: "He has testicles!" Silly and untrue, as Norwich later explained, but it raised a laugh in our house on a morning of grim headlines.