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 Radio 4 Autumn season
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Autumn highlights and the new Spring schedule on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4
Drama programmes
October
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Saturday 1 October
The Last Adventure 1/1
2.30 to 3.30pm
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Sir John Mortimer has written a new play especially for Radio 4.
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Michael Sheen plays Lord Byron in this play about the poet's last months spent fighting for Greek independence from the Ottoman rule, right up to his death on 18 April 1824.
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John Mortimer was at school with Byron (that's how he puts it) and since those Harrow days he has read avidly of the poet's life, his letters, and the sad story of his death at Missolonghi.
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Byron went to Greece much as the young poets of the Thirties went to the Spanish Civil War to fight for the good liberals against the fascist tyrants.
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Of course, it didn't turn out like that. The Greek politicians and leaders were self-seeking and unreliable. The brave Suliote soldiers, whom Byron expected to be heroes, turned out to be capable of murder but anxious to avoid real battles.
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All the same, Byron poured his money and his soul into this last adventure.
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He was at his most sensible best, organising funds and trying to get the decidedly unheroic Greeks to fight as if they were their glorious ancestors.
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Byron caught a fever in the unhealthy and foul-smelling swamps of Missolonghi. He lay in his elaborately curtained bed dying of the fever and from the leeches the doctors attached to various parts of his body to suck his blood.
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The play deals with the disappointments and fallibility of liberal ideals, and how realistically they were dealt with by a great romantic writer who had an unexpected quantity of common sense.
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The cast also includes Nicky Henson, Owen Teale and Gerard Murphy.
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Producer: Jeremy Mortimer
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Monday 10 October
Book of the Week: Untold Stories 1/5
9.45 to 10.00am
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Alan Bennett reads five extracts from Untold Stories, the extended essay that gives this book its name.
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The untold stories he tells us are about his family – and in particular, his mother, his father, and his two favourite aunts.
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His mother and father were devoted to each other; a devotion sustained through the regular bouts of chronic depression from which his mother, Lilian, suffers – and which leads to her spending much of her later life in and out of hospitals.
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But though intensely shy – as is her husband – Lilian is also a woman of great generosity and fun – with modest, but deeply-held, social ambitions.
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She longs to go to coffee mornings and cocktail parties, even though she has no idea what a cocktail is, and thinks a sausage on a stick an emblem of extraordinary sophistication.
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Her husband, Walter, is a gentle and caring man, whose dream of retiring to the country, and pottering away in his garden, is rudely shattered by his wife's ill-health.
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Lilian's two more outgoing sisters, Kathleen and Myra, bring both gaiety and confusion to the Bennett household; one aunt impossibly garrulous, the other deliciously pretentious.
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Aunty Myra's insistence on scattering the ashes of her dead husband on Ilkley Moor, in the middle of the holiday season, is one of the great comic moments in the book.
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But these untold stories also reveal some deep and painful family secrets: why there are no photos of Lilian and Walter's wedding; what is the secret of Grandad Peel's death, and why does everyone lie about it?
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Reader: Alan Bennett
Producer: Gordon House
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Monday 31 October
Woman's Hour Drama - Gunpowder Women 1/5
10.45 to 11.00am
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It is the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. The roles of the 13 men involved are well documented. But what about the women?
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These five linked pieces examine the effects of the Gunpowder Plot and its failure on wives, mothers, servants and a princess caught up in the drama - willingly or not.
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By a strange quirk of fate, one of this week's writers, Deborah Catesby, is a direct descendant of the chief conspirators.
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The gunpowder plot was the brainchild of young and headstrong Robert Catesby, who was attempting to re-assert the Catholic Church in Britain.
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The plot involved blowing up Parliament, killing the King and kidnapping young Princess Elizabeth, who would be proclaimed Queen and brought up a Catholic under a Regent.
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Many of the rich and influential Catholic families were connected and were held together by the strength of the women at their heart.
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In these five plays the women are Anne Catesby - mother of plot leader Robert Catesby; Martha Bates - servant of Anne Catesby and wife of Robert Catesby's retainer; Lady Mary Digby - wealthy and beautiful, she and her husband were caught up in the plot through their naivety; Princess Elizabeth - the nine year-old target of a kidnap attempt at the heart of the plot; and Catherine Wright - a midwife delivering a baby at Hindlip Hall.
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1) The Servant's Story by Theresa Heskins. Martha Bates is serving dinner to Anne Catesby at Ashby St Ledger when Martha's husband, Robert, bursts in telling of the unsuccessful Gunpowder Plot and how the plotters are all fleeing.
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2) The Lady's Story by Stephanie Dale. A Lady prepares for the arrival of a little Princess but gets an unexpected visitor instead. At Coughton Court near Stratford Lady Mary Digby is saying goodnight to her two little boys.
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3) The Midwife's Story by Kate Shaw. A midwife delivers a baby into the world and a priest to safety.
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4) The Princess's Story by Louise Ramsden. Blowing up Parliament was only a part of the plot - the major ambition was to kidnap James I's nine-year-old daughter and proclaim her Queen with a Catholic regent. For her own safety Princess Elizabeth is given to a rider who gallops with her to Coventry and safety.
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5) The Mother's Story by Deborah Catesby. As she buries him, Anne Catesby is reconciled with her wayward son. Robert (or "Robin") Catesby died when cornered in Staffordshire after fleeing from London.
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The Writers Deborah Catesby is a direct descendent of plot leader Robert Catesby and lives in Worcestershire. Theresa Heskins is a writer and director based in Shropshire. Stephanie Dale is a graduate of the Birmingham University MA in Playwriting, and director of Theatreworks, the Birmingham-based educational touring company. Kate Shaw is a poet and playwright based in Worcestershire. Louise Ramsden is a former Sparks writer who has written two plays for Radio 4.
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Producer: Peter Leslie Wild
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November
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Monday 14 November
Shakespeare Stories 1/5
3.30 to 3.45pm
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As part of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Shakespeare season, Radio 4 goes back to the stories that inspired the plays.
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Simon Russell Beale reads from source for Othello; Prunella Scales reads an extract from source for Romeo And Juliet; Claire Skinner reads an extract from source for Measure For Measure; Stephen Boxer reads an extract from source for Macbeth; and
Gerard Murphy reads an extract from source for The Winter's Tale.
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All extracts are introduced by Carol Rutter (Shakespeare Professor at Warwick University).
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Producer: Claudine Toutoungi
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Sunday 20 November
Classic Serial - The Glittering Prizes 1/4
3.00 to 4.00pm
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Frederic Raphael narrates his novel The Glittering Prizes, which he has adapted for the Classic Serial.
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The new series has an outstanding cast including Jamie Glover, Jemma Redgrave, Benedict Cumberbatch, Damian Lewis, Geoffrey Palmer, Henry Goodman, Malcolm Sinclair and Robert Bathurst.
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The Glittering Prizes follows the lives and relationships of a disparate group of undergraduates from their time at Cambridge in the early Fifties to the mid-Seventies.
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Some of those who shone brightly as students turn out to have less than brilliant careers, while all of them are compelled to face up to the pressures of the 'real' world in strikingly different ways.
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The central character, Adam Morris (Jamie Glover), becomes a novelist and screenwriter whose marriage to Barbara (Jemma Redgrave) is one of the few constants; Dan Bradley (Benedict Cumberbatch), the star actor of his undergraduate generation, becomes a dedicated schoolteacher, the basis of whose marriage to Joyce (Serena Evans) proves unexpectedly vulnerable.
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The TV journalist Alan Parks (Robert Bathurst) and the stage and film director Mike Clode (Dominic Hawksley) pursue their media ambitions ruthlessly and the working class Bill Bourne (Anton Lesser) achieves a professorship at a new university which involves him in some uncomfortable student politics.
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Through it all, Adam confronts his Jewishness with increasing ambivalence, through an encounter with a legendary British "fascistic brontosaurus" (Geoffrey Palmer) and not least in his relationship with his father (Henry Goodman).
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Producer: Pete Atkin, Above The Title
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Monday 28 November
Woman's Hour Drama – David Copperfield 1/20
10.45-11.00am
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Charles Dickens regarded David Copperfield as his "favourite child", as the book mirrored aspects of his own less-than-happy childhood.
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And it is little wonder, given its vast array of memorable characters and its brilliant treatment of the quest for self-knowledge, that Copperfield is Dickens' most quoted novel.
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Michael Legge plays David Copperfield with Deborah Findlay as Betsey Trotwood, Adrian Scarborough as Mr Dick, Eve Best as Rosa Dartle, Diana Quick as Mrs Steerforth and Nicholas Le Prevost as Mr Spenlow.
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Robert Glenister narrates as Charles Dickens.
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Producers: Jeremy Mortimer and Mary Peate
Ìý January 2006
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Monday 2 January
Woman's Hour Drama - Ladies Of Letters Go Global 1/5
10.45 to 11.00am
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At the end of the last series, Ladies of Letters Spring Clean we left Irene and Vera at loggerheads with their respective families.
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Everyone needs a bit a space to calm down. Reflecting on their lives, Irene and Vera feel that they haven't seen enough of the world, and decide to set out together on a grand tour abroad.
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Funding a long trip is a problem, so they come up with various grandiose schemes, like trying to get sponsored by GAGA magazine, and writing articles along the way for National Geographic - which is why they both take their laptops.
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Once again, however, disaster is never very far away. They inevitably fall out, get separated, get into individual scrapes in different countries, appeal to each other for help, and have to chase round the world to rescue each other - all the time being short of cash, having to take casual work along the way, and having to sort out various family crises back home, on the hoof, and from a distance.
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Grappling with unfamiliar accents and unusual foods, upset by timetables and travel sickness, the intrepid ladies find themselves launching into battle with customs officials and cooks, tour-guides and ticket-collectors and - of course - with each other.
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How will the rest of the world cope with the indomitable Ladies of Letters?
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Grandmothers Irene Spencer and Vera Small are once again brought to life by Prunella Scales and Patricia Routlege.
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Ladies of Letters Go Global is by Lou Wakefield and Carole Hayman.
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Producer: Claudine Toutoungi
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Monday 9 January
Afternoon Play - To Serve Them All My Days 1/5
2.15 to 3.00pm
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All this week Radio 4 broadcasts a five-part dramatisation of of R.F.Delderfield's modern classic about life in a public school between the wars.
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To Serve Them All My Days tells the story of Davy Powlett-Jones – a young Welshman who returns from the carnage of the trenches in 1917, shell-shocked and wounded, feeling utterly displaced.
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He is persuaded to take a temporary job as a schoolmaster in a remote Devonshire school – a setting he will never again leave for long.
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At first the boys in his charge are barely his juniors. He feels, keenly, the responsibility of helping to shape and guide their destinies.
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As the years pass, he becomes a schoolmaster of rare talent, able to adjust to the changing currents of society and, finally, facing up to the prospect of another terrible war.
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It has been dramatised by Shaun McKenna.
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Producer: Marc Beeby
Ìý February 2006
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Tuesday 28 February
Small Gods 1/4
11.00 to 11.30pm
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Death is missing... presumed... er... gone.
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Which leads to the kind of chaos you always get when an important public service is withdrawn.
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Robin Brooks follows up his very successful dramatisation of Mort with another Terry Pratchett favourite.
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Producer: Claire Groves
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