THE perfect British - or rather English - hero was revealed in Midweek

(Radio 4, Wednesday). The passive voice of ''revealed'' is appropriate, since Pete Goss is the most modest of men. His bravery, and sheer niceness, emerged only under persistent grilling by Libby Purves.

He was the round-the-world-race sailor who, foregoing dreams of victory, turned back in mountainous seas in the Southern Ocean to attempt to rescue a stricken French fellow competitor - and against overwhelming odds did so. Then, in spite of a damaged elbow on which he had to operate himself, he still managed to come fifth in the race.

Astonishingly, 150,000 French people turned out to greet him on landfall. No doubt he single-handedly did more for the cause of Anglo-French amity than all the dyspeptic politicians on both sides of the Channel lumped together. It probably helped, of course, though the radio programme didn't say so, that the guy also looks like a storybook hero.

There was an element of moral heroism, as well as physical, in the choices Goss made. That element of moral heroism, though in a different setting, emerged also in the testimony of John Taylor, now Lord Taylor of Warwick, in On the Ropes (Radio 4, Tuesday). This is the series in which John Humphrys talks to successful people who have weathered storms in their careers.

Taylor, it will be recalled, was Tory candidate for Cheltenham in the 1992 General Election. As a successful barrister with a GP wife, he had impeccable credentials. There was only one unusual factor. He was black.

The story of the rearguard fight against him within his party was recalled in all its sad and demeaning detail. Taylor looked back on the time with a lack of rancour. Humphrys got perilously close to insulting his interviewee with the implication he had somehow betrayed the black cause by not being angry enough. To be fair, Taylor as a lawyer must be well used to cross-examination and was quite able to defend himself.

He brushed off the suggestion he was a token successful black and argued the importance of offering a positive role model for others. In his reluctance to take the whole weight of his fellow blacks' future on his shoulders, he echoed the sentiments of Nobel Prize-winning black novelist Toni Morrison, talking recently at Glasgow University. As for Taylor, anyone who could call an offending Tory minister a little squirt must be OK. Cheltenham's loss is the House of Lords's gain.

In a week of portentous events, creative writers offered their own longer-term insights. President Clinton's pep-talk to young Russian intellectuals reminded them (somewhat patronisingly) that their society had produced the likes of Pasternak and Chekhov. He didn't include Turgenev in his list. Perhaps he should have.

Turgenev's First Love is this week's Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. It's territory is the classic Russian one of country houses stocked with emotionally fraught persons of both sexes. But there's a lucidity and warmth about Turgenev's writing that communicates his humanity as well as illuminating the tragicomic business of being in love in any place or century.

In contrast, Scots novelist Ronald Frame's The Hydro (a Radio Scotland production for Radio 4, Tuesday) failed to electrify. Though the script was pointed and polished beyond the expectations of most radio (or indeed TV) soap opera, that genre did seem to be its spiritual home.

Perhaps this episode was uncharacteristically corny, with ''Wee Effie'', an actress with split-personality tendencies, returning to the hydro-hotel town of her evacuee past. Part of the trouble seemed to be the phony Scots accents. But then, disconcertingly, it emerged the central part was played by Una McLean. Do Scots have a tendency to self-parody?

Lesley Duncan