大象传媒

Paula Byrne's joyous and illuminating new biography of one of the twentieth century's wittiest novelists. Hattie Morahan is the reader.

Philip Larkin regarded her as the era's very own Jane Austen and yet today Barbara Pym is little known. She lived through a period of social and political upheaval, and her novels charted the impact of these changes on women in the public and the domestic realm. In the 1930s she went up to Oxford; spent time in Nazi Germany before WWII; in the 1950s as a single woman she went out to work, and she bore witness to the sexual revolution of the 1960s. By the early 60s she had published six novels, and though she struggled for recognition from 1963 onwards, she continued to write and went on to make a triumphant comeback.

Her diaries are prefaced 'The Adventures of Miss Pym' emulating Henry Fielding's 'Tom Jones', and in turn Paula Byrne as written her shrewdly observed biography of this courageous and funny novelist in the style of a picaresque adventure.

Paula Byrne is the bestselling and acclaimed biographer and novelist. Her non-fiction includes 'The Real Jane Austen', 'The Genius of Jane Austen' and 'Mad World' the story of Evelyn Waugh and Brideshead.

Photo credit: The Barbara Pym Society

Abridged by Julian Wilkinson
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.