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Kate Dickens concludes the story of her father’s final and unfinished novel, a fast-moving thriller set in the cathedral town of Cloisterham.

It’s Christmas and all is fine until Edwin - the young man who appears to have it all, a beautiful and charming prospective bride, the promise of an engineering job in Egypt - disappears. Presumed murdered.

Could it have been impetuous Neville Landless? Or Edwin’s Uncle Jasper?

Rosa has an upsetting meeting with John Jasper, while a mysterious white-haired gentleman appears in Cloisterham and forms an alliance with young Deputy Winks.

Dickens’ last, unfinished, novel is set in a phantasmagorical drug-fuelled landscape where nobody is who or what they say they are.

Whilst writing it, Dickens was driving himself towards exhaustion and death through obsessive public performances of the most lurid parts of Oliver Twist - revisiting his first successful novel whilst struggling with his last, fearful that his creative well is drying up and that this story would never be brought to a close.

Dickens’s daughter Kate was witness to her father’s final weeks. Her fascination with this story leads her to look into its unsolved conclusion to find clues about her father’s character.

Written by Charles Dickens and first published in 1870.

Omnibus of the first five of ten parts dramatised by Mike Walker.

Kate Dickens .… Pippa Nixon
John Jasper .… Joel McCormack
Rosa Bud .… Isabella Inchbald
Reverend Crisparkle …. Damian Lynch
Neville Landless .… Maanuv Thiara
Helena Landless .… Halema Hussain
Deputy Winks …. Aaron Gelkoff
Hiram Grewgious .... Peter Davison
Stony Durdles .... Ian Conningham
Edwin Drood …. Iwan Davies
Princess Puffer .… Rachel Atkins
Cabby/Station Master/Joe .... Wilf Scolding

Director: Jeremy Mortimer

A ´óÏó´«Ã½ Cymru Wales production for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4, first broadcast in December 2020

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