My Year Off
In 1995 at the age of 42, the then chief editor of Faber and Faber, Robert McCrum, suffered a stroke. This is a bold and intimate account of what happened next.
In 1995 Robert McCrum was an admired novelist and editorial director at Faber and Faber. He was also a reporter who had travelled to some of the most dangerous war-torn places in the world. 42 and married barely two months to New York Times journalist Sarah Lyall, the future looked great.
But overnight his world shifted. With a war correspondent's intrepidness and a writer's desire to communicate his experience to others, Robert chose to chronicle what quickly became a surreal and extraordinary new journey into a parallel world of the sick and helpless.
This programme is a bold and intimate account of McCrum's experience of having a stroke. In this adaptation McCrum's narrative is interpolated with extracts from diaries that he and Sarah Lyall kept during his long and difficult convalescence. What follows is terrifying, heartbreaking, intimate, funny and ultimately life affirming.
Cast:
Robert McCrum ..... Alex Jennings
Sarah Lyall ..... Madeline Potter
Doctor/Dentist/Occupational Therapist ...... Richard Laing
Paramedic/Speech Physiotherapist ..... Rachel Atkins
Sound Design ..... David Thomas
Adapted by Karen Rose
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk Production for 大象传媒 Radio 4.