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Last week the British doctor Abbas Khan died in a Syrian jail only days before he was expected to be released. He went to Syria last year to treat badly injured children, according to his family. Upon arriving he was arrested and had been in prison for the last 13 months. Syrian authorities claim that Mr Khan committed suicide. His family strongly contests this and a Foreign Office minister has said that the doctor had  "in effect" been murdered by the Syrian authorities. His younger sister Sara Khan speaks to Jane about her family’s struggle to release her brother from prison, and come to terms with his death.  

Jane talks to Masha Lipman, Political analyst for the Carnegie Moscow Center, about the release of  Maria Alyokhina of punk band Pussy Riot.

is the only woman shortlisted this year for the Fourth Plinth. If chosen, she will be the 3rd female artist to exhibit, following Rachel Whiteread and the incumbent artist Katharina Fritsch. The announcement will be made in January, and the decision is made by a panel of experts. She is also the author of the piece Moonmeme, which will be showing in London in the New Year. She joins Jane to talk about her work.

Photo courtesy of Liliane Lijn, Moonmeme, Republic of the Moon, London January 2014 

Moonmeme will be on show at , Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, South Bank, London SE1 9PH, 10 Jan – 2 Feb 2014 

Fern Britton is the sort of television presenter who we think we know.  She and her TV chef husband Phil Vickery are regularly in our homes on our TV screens and her accessible style makes us think she is or could be a friend. But in fact she fiercely protects her private life and rarely lets the media into her home.  She's been especially sensitive after the media frenzy that followed the leak that she'd had a gastric band fitted. But she allowed Woman's Hour into her country farmhouse for our series In My Kitchen where Henrietta Harrison discovered one kitchen isn't actually enough for her family.

Christmas is very nearly upon us and time to open the penultimate window on the Radio 4 comedy advent, and this morning it is French and Saunders.

A new series of returns to Radio 4 today. It features an all-star cast including Sheila Hancock, Penelope Wilton, Felicity Montagu and Geoffrey Palmer and has been described as ‘the bleakest sit-com ever’. Katherine Jakeways, joins Jane to explain why she’s written about the bittersweet adventures of the residents of a small, fictitious market town.