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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 Pursuit of Love in 1945 and Love in a Cold Climate in 1949 but Christmas Pudding shows very clearly the direction in which she was heading as the witty chronicler of a vanishing world.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years and shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised in ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Drama Production he has worked on some of the most popular shows in Britain - from EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless.  As creator of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Writers Academy, he's trained a generation of screenwriters - now with over 70 green lights and thousands of hours of television to their names.  He is the author of Into the Woods, the bestselling book on narrative, and he writes, teaches and consults on all forms of narrative - including many podcasts for R4.

Contributor:
Laura Thompson, author of ‘The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters’ and ‘Life in a Cold Climate - Nancy Mitford: A Biography’

Archive from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Television, The World of Nancy Mitford 1970

Reader: Esme Scarborough
Producer: Alison Vernon-Smith
Production Hub Coordinator: Nina Semple
Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael

A Pier Production for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4