Opening Lines
Producer and writer John Yorke shares his experience from 30 years in television and radio, unpacking the themes and impact behind the books, plays, and stories dramatized in Radio 4's weekend afternoon dramas.
Episodes
Celtic Christie: Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
A dying man’s final, puzzling question - “Why didn’t they ask Evans?” – provides the title for Agatha Christie’s 1934 novel. What singles this book out is that the investigation is not undertaken by Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, but by Bobby Jones and Lady Frances Derwent – childhood friends whose suspicions compel them to try their hand at some amateur sleuthing. All the twists and turns of plot
The Things They Carried
John Yorke explores The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, novelist and veteran of the Vietnam War. Published in 1990 it’s a collection of interlinked stories about a platoon of American soldiers fighting an invisible enemy in the booby-trapped jungles of Vietnam.But Tim O’Brien is not telling a straightforward factual war story, he’s also reflecting on the nature of experience and memory, and th
Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Cowboy, a 1965 novel by the American writer James Leo Herlihy, is best known to most for its film adaptation, starring Jon Voight as Joe Buck – a naïve dreamer from Texas - and Dustin Hoffman as Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, a New York street pickpocket. The novel tells the story of Joe Buck’s childhood in Texas, provides context for his naivety and emotional illiteracy, and explains what drives
Libra - Episode Two
For the 100th title to be explored in Opening Lines, John Yorke picks up the 1988 novel Libra by the heavyweight American writer, Don DeLillo. In this second episode considering the book, he focuses in on the endless conspiracies that surround its central subject - the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Does the fact that DeLillo chooses to feed the conspiracy industry by inserting a seco
Libra - Episode One
For the 100th title to be explored in Opening Lines, John Yorke picks up the 1998 novel Libra by the heavyweight American writer, Don DeLillo. The book centres around the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the event DeLillo says marked ‘a turning point in consciousness’ for Americans. He presents a fragmented portrait of the country at the height of the Cold War, following the misfortunes
Trouble in Mind
Alice Childress’s first major work is set in a world that she knew very well both as a performer and a writer – the theatre. It’s 1957 and rehearsals are beginning for a new Broadway production – Chaos In Belleville – an anti-lynching play written by a white playwright. Veteran Black actor Wiletta Mayer is to star in the play, but after years of compromise she finally finds herself unable to go al
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? takes us into the strange and brutal world of dance marathon competitions dating from the Great Depression in America. It follows Robert and Gloria, a couple who’ve washed up in Los Angeles and whose last hope is to get spotted by talent scouts or win the prize money by being the last dancers standing. The book’s author, Horace McCoy, had first hand experience of th
Anna Christie - Episode 2
In this second episode, John Yorke digs deeper into Euguene O’Neill’s 1921 play “Anna Christie” – about an estranged daughter who is reunited with her sea captain father, and falls in love with a sailor. The play examines identity, family and sexual politics, and asks questions about love, faith, redemption, resilience and forgiveness.John asks how and why the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning dram
Anna Christie - Episode 1
In the first of two episodes, John Yorke looks at “Anna Christie” by Eugene O’Neill - one of American theatre’s founding fathers, and the only American dramatist to have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The play is about a young woman who goes in search of her estranged father, a sea captain, and falls in love with a sailor.Debuting in 1921, “Anna Christie” is one of O’Neill’s early wo
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
John Yorke examines Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, ten semi-autobiographical short stories in which Dylan Thomas looks back and observes himself growing into the artist – the writer – that he became in adult life. The stories highlight Thomas’s contradictory nature. At school he failed every other subject apart from English, in which he came top. He’s a town boy who loves the countryside
Moon Tiger
Writer Penelope Lively’s enduring themes are the connections and interplay between memory, history and time. Nowhere is this more compelling than in Moon Tiger, published in 1987 and widely regarded as one of her best novels. It won the Booker Prize that same year and went on to gain The Golden Booker in 2018 as the stand-out winner of the 1980s.The novel’s protagonist Claudia Hampton is an histor
Don Quixote - Episode Two
John Yorke explores why Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes has had such a profound influence on storytelling in the 400 years since it was published in 1605.‘Like Shakespeare, Cervantes is inescapable for all writers who have come after him,’ according to literary critic Harold Bloom. He creates a blueprint for the modern novel by shifting from static, infallible archetypes to dynamic, evolving ch
Don Quixote - Episode One
John Yorke explores why Don Quixote has had such a profound influence on storytelling in the four hundred years since it was published. The first European novel, it’s an epic work of comic - and tragic - genius. Quixote embodies an ideal of heroic resilience in the face of a broken reality. And it’s a novel that’s in our bones: familiar even if we haven’t read any of its nearly a thousand pages.Th
Transcription
John Yorke takes a look at Transcription by Kate Atkinson.First published in 2018, Transcription tells the story of three different time periods in the life of our protagonist, Juliet Armstrong. The interweaving timelines take us from 1940 to 1981, telling of her experiences working in wartime for MI5, working in peacetime for BBC Radio, up to the end of her life in the moments between life and de
Celebrating Stoppard
Tom Stoppard was of course best known for his work writing for stage and screen - but the dramas he created for radio were also an extremely important part of his career and his development as a writer. Across five decades he continued to return to a medium that suited him so well; without the constraints of visuals, his deft structural turns, linguistic pyrotechnics and imaginative leaps could fl
Flight - Episode Two
Flight by Walter White, published in 1926, asks questions about race and identity when its central character chooses to ‘pass’ as a white woman. In this second episode about the book, John Yorke asks if this is why the book has largely been forgotten even though it was written by one of the most influential figures in 20th century America.John Yorke has worked in television and radio for over 30 y
Flight - Episode One
Flight was the second novel by one of twentieth century’s America’s most influential figures, Walter White. Published in 1926, it asks questions about race and identity when its central character chooses to ‘pass’ as a white woman. A prime mover in the Harlem Renaissance, White was a celebrated writer and activist but his book has largely been forgotten. John Yorke looks at the man and his work.J
My Antonia
John Yorke explores themes of loss, longing and the founding of America, in Willa Cather’s innovative novel, My Ántonia. A milestone in American literature, the novel’s heroine is - unusually for the time - a Czech immigrant, Ántonia Shimerda, seen through the eyes of her childhood friend, lawyer Jim Burden. Ántonia survives poverty, tragedy and betrayal through her hard work, energy and optimis
The Virginian
Owen Wister’s 1902 novel The Virginian did more than any other single piece of art in establishing the parameters of the Western as a genre. Telling the tale of a charismatic tight-lipped cowboy whose actions always speak louder than his words, it was wildly popular with readers and viewers of its many screen adaptations. The book is a celebration of rugged individualism and frontier spirit that s
Gone with the Wind - Episode 3
In the series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work, John Yorke concludes his exploration of Margaret Mitchell’s epic Civil War romance, Gone with the Wind.In the 90 years since it was published it has sold more than 30 million copies – it was the bestselling American novel of the 20th century - but the book has become increasingly problematic for modern readers.In this t
Gone with the Wind - Episode 2
In the series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work, John Yorke continues his exploration of Margaret Mitchell’s epic Civil War romance, Gone with the Wind.In the 90 years since it was published it has sold more than 30 million copies – it was the bestselling American novel of the 20th century - but the book has become increasingly problematic for modern readers.In this s
Gone with the Wind - Episode 1
In the series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work, John Yorke explores Margaret Mitchell’s epic Civil War romance, Gone with the Wind.It was the bestselling American novel of the 20th century, it has sold 30 million copies and counting, it won the Pulitzer Prize, and the 1939 film of the book remains among the highest grossing of all time. Gone with the Wind is a coming
Walden
During the mid-19th century America was undergoing unprecedented change. New railroads and canals allowed people and goods to criss-cross the country, as the old agrarian economy was replaced by a fast-paced industrialised one. This rapid market expansion was driven by profit and underpinned by slavery. As the lives of Americans began to speed up, Henry David Thoreau took time out to ask himself
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
The headless horseman who haunts Sleepy Hollow in Washington Irving’s ghost story has become an iconic figure in American popular culture, thanks to many film and TV adaptations, ranging from a 1922 silent movie to an episode of Scooby Doo. John Yorke looks at how this deceptively simple tale made Irving an overnight literary superstar when it was published in an 1820 collection of short stories t
The Last of the Mohicans - Episode Two
In this second episode, John Yorke assesses the criticism levelled against James Fenimore Cooper’s 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans - primarily that it is responsible for the widely held, inaccurate, view that indigenous Americans were inevitably disappearing during the period the novel is set, and that that false narrative was used to justify colonisation. Also, John delves deeper into the aut
The Last of the Mohicans - Episode 1
Published in 1826, the American writer James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans is set during the French and Indian War, in 1750s North America. The story follows a group of British colonists trying to cross frontier land – and examines the complexity of the relationship that existed between the colonialists and the land they were - in essence stealing – the native American’s.The boo
Joy in the Morning
Ian Sansom, sitting in for John Yorke, takes a look at Joy In the Morning, the 44th Jeeves and Wooster novel by PG Wodehouse. Published in 1946, it revolves around Bertie Wooster’s attempts to avoid a series of social and romantic calamities. The omniscient Jeeves, of course, remains the great calm at the centre of the novel’s storm, devising ingenious solutions just when disaster seems inevitable
Sense and Sensibility - Episode Two
John Yorke explores the revolutionary techniques developed by Jane Austen in Sense and Sensibility and uncovers why her work is so endlessly adaptable to modern tastes. Austen innovated ‘free indirect style’, which blends third person narration with a character’s internal thoughts and feelings. Novelists have been using her creation ever since. She also had a gift for dialogue which allows her
Sense and Sensibility - Episode One
John Yorke explores the romantic framework of Jane Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, as well as the reasons for its enduring appeal. It’s a novel that explores the cost of love, and in it, Austen develops writing techniques that revolutionised this new form, which are still in use some two hundred years later.With contributions from Professor John Mullan, and poet and dramati
Pride and Prejudice - Episode Two
The opening lines of Pride and Prejudice are not only among the most famous in all of literature, they also place marriage front and centre as the key theme within the novel. “It is a truth universally acknowledged,” Austen writes, “that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” So many of the characters and their actions are driven by the search for a good marriage
Pride and Prejudice - Episode One
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has not only captured the hearts of generations of readers, it also helped change the way that novels are written. This most beloved tale of Regency romance, featuring the brilliantly quick-witted Elizabeth Bennett and the haughty figure of Fitzwilliam Darcy, allows us into its characters’ heads and hearts in newly sophisticated ways that set the template for so m
The Princess Bride
According to its introduction, The Princess Bride is a long, sprawling book by the great Florinese writer S. Morgenstern that renowned screenwriter and novelist William Goldman has been obliged to abridge so that his son doesn’t have to struggle through all the boring bits. But as John Yorke reveals, all is not as it seems in this metafictional novel from 1973 that Goldman himself went on to adap
The Wind in the Willows
John Yorke takes a look at an enduring classic of children’s literature, The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Published in 1908, The Wind In The Willows is about nature – both human and animal. It is, on the face of it, a children’s book packed with beloved characters. But hidden beneath the bucolic adventures and Grahame’s beautiful evocation of the landscape, there is a desperate longing
Northanger Abbey - Episode Two
Jane Austen’s novel, Northanger Abbey, was the first full book she wrote. She was in her early 20s at the time and it was accepted by a publisher but the novel wasn’t published in her lifetime. In this second episode John Yorke looks at the story behind the genesis of Northanger Abbey - how a young woman with only three years of formal education came to write such an accomplished work, what prompt
Northanger Abbey - Episode One
Northanger Abbey was Jane Austen’s first book, although it wasn’t published until after her death. It tells the story of Catherine Morland, an impressionable young woman who is introduced to fashionable society when she’s taken by a wealthy neighbour to Bath. There, Catherine’s imagination catches fire when she’s initiated into the thrills of Gothic fiction by new friend, Isabella Thorpe – a prett
The Castle of Otranto
When Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto in 1764, novels as a form were still in their infancy. Many tended to be long-winded works, instructing readers on how to live a moral life. With this short and fast-paced rollercoaster of a book, Walpole blew that idea out of the water, introducing his audience to a completely new kind of fiction, featuring supernatural happenings, suspense, and
Star of the Sea
In the winter of 1847, the Star of the Sea sets sail from Ireland for New York. Among the refugees are a maidservant, a bankrupt aristocrat, an aspiring novelist and a maker of revolutionary ballads. It reads like a Victorian gothic novel, with murder and intrigue at its heart.Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor was published in 2002 and attracted multiple plaudits as well as literary awards. O’Con
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
John Yorke looks at the background to A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian and assesses the appeal of this worldwide best seller by Marina Lewycka. Two feuding sisters unite to thwart their newly widowed father’s impending marriage to Valentina - a voluptuous gold-digger from Ukraine who loves green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine and who’ll stop at nothing in her single-minded pur
The Cherry Orchard - Episode Two
John Yorke looks at The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov’s final play and a landmark in 20th century theatre.It’s 1903 and Liubov Andryeevna Ranyevskaya has returned to the family estate in southern Russia. As the head of this aristocratic household she faces a dilemma. The family is in serious financial difficulty and they have the choice of either selling the entire estate, or accepting the proposa
The Cherry Orchard - Episode One
John Yorke looks at The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov’s final play and a landmark in 20th century theatre.It’s 1903 and Liubov Andryeevna Ranyevskaya is returning to the family estate in southern Russia. As the head of this aristocratic household, she faces a crisis. The family is in serious financial difficulty and it seems inevitable that the estate will have to be sold to pay their debts. A loc
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin’s ideas changed our understanding of the world perhaps more than those of any other British scholar. His famous voyage on HMS Beagle ended in 1836, and he had developed his findings into his theories on evolution and natural selection within six years. It was not, however, until 1859 that he shared these revolutionary ideas with the public in On The Origin of Species, a book far dif
Treasure Island
John Yorke looks at Treasure Island, the great swash-buckling adventure by Robert Louis Stevenson that inspired almost every pirate tale to follow. Stevenson wrote the story to amuse his stepson on a wet holiday in the Scottish Highlands, with the original title The Sea Cook. Looking back at his time as a boy, narrator Jim Hawkins recounts his thrilling adventures on land and at sea in the pursuit
Hiroshima
In the months that followed the end of the Second World War, very few people in the West knew the true power of the atomic weaponry that had forced the Japanese surrender. John Hersey’s article Hiroshima would change that.Released a year after the bombs were dropped, the New Yorker piece was journalistic dynamite and sold out in hours. Published in one instalment - taking up the whole edition of t
The Girls of Slender Means
John Yorke takes a look at The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark. Published in 1963, two years after the success of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, it’s set in the summer of 1945. A group of young women live, love and lodge together in the shabby but respectable May of Teck Club in the months between VE Day and the ending of the war 99 days later with the final victory in Japan. It’s a rivetin
King Lear - Episode Two
John Yorke looks at King Lear, the brutal tragedy that some claim is Shakespeare’s greatest achievement.When Lear, the 80 year old king of ancient Britain, decides that the time has come to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, he unwittingly sets in motion a catastrophic chain of events that will tear apart both his family and his realm. He banishes his faithful youngest daughter, Cordeli
King Lear - Episode One
John Yorke looks at King Lear, the brutal tragedy that some claim is Shakespeare’s greatest achievement.When Lear, the 80 year old king of ancient Britain, decides that the time has come to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, he unwittingly sets in motion a catastrophic chain of events that will tear apart both his family and his realm. In this first of two episodes, the focus is on the
Next Season
The series that examines books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke looks at the 1968 theatre novel Next Season by Australian writer and director Michael Blakemore. Based on Blakemore’s lived experience as an actor in English repertory theatre in the late 1950s in Stratford-upon-Avon, the novel has been described as one of the true great theatre novels.The novel follows young Australia
Underfoot in Show Business
The series that examines books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke looks at the 1962 theatre memoir Underfoot in Show Business by Helene Hanff. The text is a comic account of Hanff’s attempts to break into New York theatre in the early 1940s, which found a new audience after the success of Hanff’s later epistolary memoir 84, Charing Cross Road.Underfoot in Show Business is a dispatch
Casino Royale
John Yorke looks at Casino Royale, the novel by Ian Fleming that introduced James Bond to the world. First published in 1953, Fleming’s thrilling novel plunges us immediately into the murky underworld of high stakes gambling. Today we may be more familiar with Bond as portrayed in the movies, but here we discover a more nuanced character. James Bond is vulnerable and at times filled with self-doub
London Belongs to Me
Ian Sansom celebrates the evocative portrait of London on the brink of war that Norman Collins paints in his 1945 novel London Belongs to Me.The book centres around the lives of the inhabitants of 10 Dulcimer Street, a down-at-heel south London boarding house, and spans the two years from December 1938 to December 1940. Deftly mixing comedy and tragedy, Collins invites us into the lives of these d
Kramer Versus Kramer
The novel Kramer Versus Kramer was published in the US in 1977 and was an instant bestseller. Its story of a marriage, a divorce and a fierce custody battle tapped into the highly charged debates of the time about changing sex roles, marriage and parenting. It was immediately optioned by Hollywood, and the film came out in 1979 starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep. Attitudes to custody at the
Brat Farrar
Patrick Ashby died nine years ago. Now, out of the blue, he returns home to claim his inheritance. Except, of course, it’s not Patrick but an imposter, Brat Farrar. In this episode of Opening Lines John Yorke examines Josephine Tey’s classic 1949 novel that set the standard for so many crime writers to come. He examines the themes of the book and Tey’s life, itself a story of multiple identities a
Spring Awakening - Episode 2
John Yorke examines the radical 1891 play Spring Awakening by German dramatist Frank Wedekind. A cautionary, nightmarish portrait of teenage angst and rebellion against oppressive social structures and family pressures, the play’s explicit content was so shocking that it was not performed for 15 years after its publication. In the decades since, it has often been cut or censored. Wedekind’s origin
Spring Awakening - Episode 1
John Yorke examines the radical 1891 play Spring Awakening by German dramatist Frank Wedekind. A cautionary, nightmarish portrait of teenage angst and rebellion against oppressive social structures and family pressures, the play’s explicit content was so shocking that it was not performed for 15 years after its publication. In the decades since, it has often been cut or censored. Wedekind’s origin
That Hideous Strength - Episode 2
John Yorke looks at C.S Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength, the third in a trilogy of science fiction works. Published in the aftermath of World War Two it offers a bleak vision of a world where unchecked scientific research is masking much more sinister aims. A couple, Jane and Mark Studdock, are set on different paths, both threatened by external and internal forces on a dark journey into a dys
That Hideous Strength - Episode 1
John Yorke looks at CS Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength, the third in a trilogy of science fiction works. Published in the aftermath of the Second World War, it offers a bleak vision of a world where unchecked scientific research is masking much more sinister aims. A couple, Jane and Mark Studdock, are set on different paths, both threatened by external and internal forces on a dark journey int
The History of Mr Polly
Ian Sansom, sitting in for John Yorke, takes a look at The History of Mr Polly, the satirical novel by HG Wells. Published in 1910, it tells a story of one man’s comic, sometimes poignant struggle to find his place in the world. Mr Polly is an ordinary man, with an irrepressible longing for the extraordinary - a man caught in a frustratingly mundane world who finally and magnificently rebels again
The Plague
John Yorke looks at Albert Camus’ classic, The Plague. Published in 1947 it’s often thought to be an allegory for the Nazi occupation of Paris where Camus was living during the war. But the huge rise in its popularity during the pandemic speaks to the book’s enduring appeal. A seemingly simple narrative is actually a complex and layered exploration of how man responds to tragedy and finds meaning
Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Episode 2
John Yorke examines Kate Atkinson’s 1995 Whitbread award-winning debut Behind the Scenes at the Museum. An epic tragi-comedy, the novel tells the story of protagonist Ruby Lennox, who is born above a family pet shop in York in the early 1950s and grows up in post-war Britain. Through Ruby, the reader is transported back and forth through the centuries as she recounts the stories of four generation
Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Episode 1
John Yorke examines Kate Atkinson’s 1995 Whitbread award-winning debut Behind the Scenes at the Museum. An epic tragi-comedy, the novel tells the story of protagonist Ruby Lennox, who is born above a family pet shop in York in the early 1950s and grows up in post-war Britain. Through Ruby, the reader is transported back and forth through the centuries as she recounts the stories of four generation
Miss Happiness and Miss Flower
In the series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work, John Yorke takes a look at Rumer Godden’s children’s book Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, with the help of Dame Jacqueline Wilson.We meet two tiny Japanese dolls - Miss Happiness and Miss Flower – delivered as a Christmas present. They are strangers in a strange land, subject to social forces and customs they don’t reco
Christmas Pudding
John Yorke looks at Nancy Mitford’s depiction of the lives and loves of the English upper classes as a group of friends and acquaintances gather in the Cotswolds for Christmas. It’s a sharply observed, mostly gentle, satire of the aristocratic type that Mitford herself knew so well. This was her second novel, written in 1932. She became, and remains, famous for her subsequent bestsellers The Purs
The Girl of the Sea of Cortez
John Yorke looks at Peter Benchley’s environmentally themed novel The Girl of the Sea of Cortez.Peter Benchley is best known for his debut novel Jaws which become a huge global bestseller when it was published in 1974 and was further seared into the public consciousness by Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation the following year. His next two novels – The Deep and The Island – were also thrillers se
The Lay of the Land
The Lay of the Land, by the American novelist Richard Ford, is the third of what became a series of five books about Frank Bascombe. Now in his mid-50s, Frank has left sports writing behind and works in real estate in coastal New Jersey. But life is not settled - Frank is in remission from cancer and, previously divorced, his new marriage is facing problems of its own and relations with his grown-
Berlin Alexanderplatz
As we approach its hundredth anniversary, John Yorke explores the long-vanished world of German writer Alfred Döblin’s Expressionist masterpiece, Berlin Alexanderplatz. Set in 1928 at the height of the Weimar Republic, the novel centres around Franz Biberkopf - ‘transport worker, housebreaker, pimp, manslaughterer’ - who is determined to go straight following his release from prison. Weather repor
Our Mutual Friend - Episode 2
“I have made up my mind that I must have money,” says the character Bella Wilfer in Charles Dickens’ last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend – and she is one of many characters in the book for whom “money, money, money, and what money can make of life” is an overriding concern. Dickens was deeply concerned with the increasing levels of inequality he saw around him in 1860s London, a city at the he
Our Mutual Friend - Episode 1
Our Mutual Friend was the last novel that Charles Dickens completed, and was written at a point of significant turmoil in the author’s personal life. It's a hugely ambitious and sophisticated novel, drawing the wild complexities of 1860s London life into its purview and marrying realism with mythic symbolism to great effect. Identities shift, deception battles unceasingly with the truth, while the
Little Dorrit - Episode 2
Little Dorrit, written by Charles Dickens in the 1850s, is among the author’s most ambitious novels containing a massive sweep of themes, characters and locations. It may be set 30 years before its creation, but the book feels in many ways ahead of its time, exploring themes of freedom and entrapment – both physical and psychological – in ways that would appeal enormously to later figures includin
Little Dorrit - Episode 1
Little Dorrit, written by Charles Dickens in the 1850s, is among the author’s most ambitious novels containing a massive sweep of themes, characters and locations. At its heart though is the confined space of the Marshalsea Debtors Prison, where the blameless Amy Dorrit chooses to live with her incarcerated father William, who takes pride in being the longest serving prisoner in the place. In the
Hard Times - Episode 2
Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times is perhaps best known for its portrayal of school inspector Thomas Gradgrind, who states clearly and repeatedly at the outset that it’s facts that matter, and education should be all about filling children up with these facts as if they were vessels rather than human beings. In this, the second of two episodes introducing Hard Times, John Yorke looks at how Dicken
Hard Times - Episode 1
Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times is set in a northern factory town at the height of the industrial revolution, far away from the writer’s normal stamping ground of London - but it certainly doesn’t lack the overlapping plots, the wide array of characters and the incorporation of melodrama, humour and tragedy that we associate so closely with the author. Dickens had travelled north himself as a jo
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, is one of the most well-known and influential pieces of writing in Western literature. Initially presented as a true account, this tale of adventure, desert island shipwrecking and survival has been re-told and re-packaged for different audiences, different generations and different times - rom The Swiss Family Robinson to Lost In Space, and Lord
Clear Light of Day - Episode 2
Set in the turbulent years of 20th century India, Anita Desai’s novel Clear Light of Day brings us a story of family and political upheaval in the blistering heat of Old Delhi. John Yorke unpicks the threads that hold both family and community together until they fray and fall apart. From an opening in the 1980s we are taken backwards and forwards in time to find loyalties and tensions amongst sib
Clear Light of Day - Episode 1
Set in the turbulent years of 20th century India, Anita Desai’s novel Clear Light of Day brings us a story of family and political upheaval in the blistering heat of Old Delhi. John Yorke unpicks the threads that hold both family and community together until they fray and fall apart. From an opening in the 1980s, we are taken backwards and forwards in time to find loyalties and tensions amongst si
Death at La Fenice
John Yorke looks at the first in Donna Leon’s hugely successful Venetian police series. Death at La Fenice introduces Leon’s likeable Commissario Guido Brunetti, and establishes the recipe that has made Leon one of the world’s best-loved crime writers, and Brunetti one of the most popular fictional detectives.Death at La Fenice was published in 1992, and opens with a dramatic interruption to a pe
Frankenstein
John Yorke takes a look at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus. Mary Shelley began the short story that would develop into her Gothic novel in 1816 while she was still a teenager. It was published two years later when she was twenty. Despite her young age the book has mature themes: the perils of unregulated scientific experiment, the responsibilities that come with parenting
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
John Yorke takes a look at Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Mary Wollstonecraft was a trailblazer, a human rights champion whose personal life defied convention and whose ideas changed the world. Born at a time when girls were encouraged to do needlework and prepare for marriage rather than being sent to school like their brothers, Mary rebelled against the notion and e
Orwell vs Kafka: The Man Who Disappeared
John Yorke explores Franz Kafka's first and unfinished novel The Man Who Disappeared. Kafka's re-imagining of an innocent's arrival and adventures in New York is, at first glance. the classic tale of rags to riches. Teenage Karl Rossman has been exiled by his parents to a fate unknown across the ocean with just a trunk of mementoes and a slowly smelling sausage. Millions of Kafka's fellow Czechs h
Kafka's The Trial
John Yorke explores the enduring mystery and power of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial. All Joseph K was expecting when he awoke was breakfast. Instead he is arrested for a nameless crime and finds his life gradually, utterly consumed by the process. Set in a nameless city very like the twisting alleyways and cramped confines of Kafka’s Prague, the book was only published after the writer’s death. S
The Raiders - Episode 2
In the series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work, John Yorke explores S R Crockett’s forgotten bestseller, a swashbuckling adventure story set in his native Galloway in south west Scotland.Written in 1894, The Raiders is part romance, part action thriller, and part historical fiction. The action takes place in 1715, during the reign of George I, a time when Galloway wa
