Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Opening Lines

Ian Sansom, sitting in for John Yorke, takes a look at The History of Mr Polly, the satirical novel by HG Wells. Published in 1910, it tells a story of one man’s comic, sometimes poignant struggle to find his place in the world.

Mr Polly is an ordinary man, with an irrepressible longing for the extraordinary - a man caught in a frustratingly mundane world who finally and magnificently rebels against it. The dreamer mired in the mundane world of a draper’s shop has become a classic, much-loved figure, and Ian explores his timeless appeal.

Ian Sansom is a novelist, journalist and broadcaster. He is the author of more than 20 books, including the Mobile Library and the County Guides series of detective novels and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He has worked as a columnist for The Guardian and The Spectator and currently writes for the TLS, The Irish Times and The Dublin Review. He is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3. He was formerly the Director of the Oscar Wilde Centre at Trinity College Dublin and a Professor and Head of English at Queen’s University Belfast.

Contributors: Dr Caroline Sumpter Senior Lecturer in Victorian Literature at Queen's University, Belfast Stephen Mangan, actor, who narrates the Radio 4 adaptation of The History of Mr. Polly

Producer: Laura Grimshaw Executive Producer: Sara Davies Reader: Stephen Mangan Programme Hub Co-ordinator: Nina Semple Sound: Sean Kerwin A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke looks at Albert Camus’ classic, The Plague. Published in 1947 it’s often thought to be an allegory for the Nazi occupation of Paris where Camus was living during the war. But the huge rise in its popularity during the pandemic speaks to the book’s enduring appeal. A seemingly simple narrative is actually a complex and layered exploration of how man responds to tragedy and finds meaning in an essentially meaningless world. Professor Andrew Hussey and Dr Raj Persaud contribute their thoughts on how the book inspires them professionally and personally.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC 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 BBC 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.

Contributors: Andrew Hussey OBE, Writer and Professor of Cultural History, University of London Dr Raj Persaud, Consultant Psychiatrist, author and broadcaster

Producer: Alison Vernon-Smith Executive Producer: Sara Davies Reader: Matthew Gravelle Sound: Sean Kerwin Production Hub Coordinator: Nina Semple

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Our Mutual Friend was the last novel that Charles Dickens completed, and was written at a point of significant turmoil in the author’s personal life. It's a hugely ambitious and sophisticated novel, drawing the wild complexities of 1860s London life into its purview and marrying realism with mythic symbolism to great effect. Identities shift, deception battles unceasingly with the truth, while the great River Thames continues to flow.

John Yorke attempts to bring shape and light to this disparate, dark and enormously powerful piece of work, with the help of Dickens’ own great-great-great grand-daughter Lucinda Hawksley, novelist and critic Philip Hensher and Professor Phil Davis from the University of Liverpool.

John 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC 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 BBC 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.

Contributors: Philip Hensher, novelist and critic Professor Phil Davis, from the University of Liverpool Lucinda Hawksley, author

Reader: Paul Dodgson Researcher/Broadcast Assistant: Nina Semple Sound: Sean Kerwin
 Producer: Geoff Bird
 Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Little Dorrit, written by Charles Dickens in the 1850s, is among the author’s most ambitious novels containing a massive sweep of themes, characters and locations.

It may be set 30 years before its creation, but the book feels in many ways ahead of its time, exploring themes of freedom and entrapment – both physical and psychological – in ways that would appeal enormously to later figures including Kafka and Tchaikovsky, who regarded it as such a work of genius that he forgave Dickens for being an Englishman.

Little Dorrit is, too, a savage critique of mid-19th Century Britain, more seditious than Marx’s Capital according to George Bernard Shaw, with its brilliant embodiment of overarching bureaucracy in the shape of the Circumlocution Office.

In the second of two episodes concerning the novel, John Yorke is joined by writer and producer Armando Iannucci, Professor Phil Davis from the University of Liverpool, and Dr Emily Bell, who is currently writing a biography of Dickens.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe, and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Contributors: Armando Iannucci, writer and producer Professor Phil Davis, University of Liverpool Dr Emily Bell, University of Leeds

Reader: Chipo Chung Researcher/Broadcast Assistant: Nina Semple Sound: Sean Kerwin
 Producer: Geoff Bird
 Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Little Dorrit, written by Charles Dickens in the 1850s, is among the author’s most ambitious novels containing a massive sweep of themes, characters and locations.

At its heart though is the confined space of the Marshalsea Debtors Prison, where the blameless Amy Dorrit chooses to live with her incarcerated father William, who takes pride in being the longest serving prisoner in the place.

In the first of two episodes focusing on the novel, John Yorke describes how the deeply personal events from Dickens’ own childhood, relating to his own father’s time at the Marshalsea, made the book such an important and personal project for him. Helping John in his analysis of one of Dickens’ truly great books is writer and producer Armando Iannucci, Professor Phil Davis from the University of Liverpool, and Dickens’ own great-great-great-granddaughter Lucinda Hawksley.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe, and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Contributors: Armando Iannucci, writer and producer Professor Phil Davis, University of Liverpool Lucinda Hawksley, author

Reader: Chipo Chung Researcher/Broadcast Assistant: Nina Semple Sound: Sean Kerwin
 Producer: Geoff Bird
 Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times is perhaps best known for its portrayal of school inspector Thomas Gradgrind, who states clearly and repeatedly at the outset that it’s facts that matter, and education should be all about filling children up with these facts as if they were vessels rather than human beings.

In this, the second of two episodes introducing Hard Times, John Yorke looks at how Dickens demonstrates the damage that Gradgrind’s utilitarian approach can have on real people, and offers in opposition to it the colourful spectacle of the circus and the sense of wonder it represents.

Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce points out the ways in which traces of Gradgrind’s approach are still evident in the school room, and how counter-productive that might prove in the modern moment.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe, and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Contributors: Frank Cottrell-Boyce, screenwriter and current Children’s Laureate Dr Emily Bell, University of Leeds Deborah McAndrew, writer, director and actor

Researcher/Broadcast Assistant: Nina Semple Sound: Sean Kerwin Producer: Geoff Bird Executive Producer: Sara Davies A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times is set in a northern factory town at the height of the industrial revolution, far away from the writer’s normal stamping ground of London - but it certainly doesn’t lack the overlapping plots, the wide array of characters and the incorporation of melodrama, humour and tragedy that we associate so closely with the author.

Dickens had travelled north himself as a journalist to cover a cotton strike in Preston and seen first hand the various ways in which the factory system was oppressing the people living and working within it.

In the first of two episodes looking at the book, John Yorke considers how Dickens transformed that eye-witness experience into the fictional world of Coketown, with its soot-blackened bricks and serpents of smoke.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe, and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Contributors: Frank Cottrell-Boyce, screenwriter and current Children’s Laureate Dr Emily Bell, University of Leeds Deborah McAndrew, writer, director and actor

Researcher/Broadcast Assistant: Nina Semple Sound: Sean Kerwin Producer: Geoff Bird Executive Producer: Sara Davies A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, is one of the most well-known and influential pieces of writing in Western literature. Initially presented as a true account, this tale of adventure, desert island shipwrecking and survival has been re-told and re-packaged for different audiences, different generations and different times - rom The Swiss Family Robinson to Lost In Space, and Lord of the Flies to Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway. The term ‘Robinsonade’ was even coined to identify the many books that followed the desert island template.

John Yorke examines what makes the story work, unpacks Daniel Defoe’s skill as literary pioneer, and asks how we should view the book today.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters. Contributor: Bill Bell, Professor of Bibliography at Cardiff University and author of Crusoe's Books: Readers in the Empire of Print, 1800-1918 (2022) Readings by Stephen Bent Excerpts from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, 1719 Archive clip from The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, TV adaptation, 1964 Researcher: Nina Semple Sound: Sean Kerwin Producer: Jack Soper Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael Production Manager: Sarah Wright A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Set in the turbulent years of 20th century India, Anita Desai’s novel Clear Light of Day brings us a story of family and political upheaval in the blistering heat of Old Delhi. John Yorke unpicks the threads that hold both family and community together until they fray and fall apart. From an opening in the 1980s we are taken backwards and forwards in time to find loyalties and tensions amongst siblings set against the backdrop of India’s turbulent history.

The most significant event for India was Partition, when India became an independent country and Pakistan was created as a homeland for the Muslim communities. The divisions and ethnic violence unleashed run through the country and the Das family. In the second of two episodes, John Yorke reveals the importance of the historical and political background to the novel. He introduces us to a significant character, Aunt Mira, who symbolises all that has gone wrong as we see the contrast between her strength and resilience in youth to a state of alcohol-induced confusion and despair.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Includes archive clips of Anita Desai from The View from Here, BBC Radio 4 - 18.02.95

Contributor : Kamila Shamsie, author

Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Sean Kerwin Reader: Aarushi Ganju Producer: Mark Rickards Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Set in the turbulent years of 20th century India, Anita Desai’s novel Clear Light of Day brings us a story of family and political upheaval in the blistering heat of Old Delhi. John Yorke unpicks the threads that hold both family and community together until they fray and fall apart. From an opening in the 1980s, we are taken backwards and forwards in time to find loyalties and tensions amongst siblings set against the backdrop of India’s turbulent history.

The most significant event for India was Partition, when India became an independent country and Pakistan was created as a homeland for the Muslim communities. The divisions and ethnic violence unleashed run through the country and the Das family.

Clear Light of Day presents us with two sisters, Tara and Bim, meeting back at home after Tara has returned from Washington DC. One has chosen a path abroad, the other to stay at home and look after her brother who needs constant care. The family is Hindu, but another brother has left to live hundreds of miles away having married into a Muslim family. It’s when we are taken back to their childhood lives that we come to really understand who they are and what binds them together.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Includes archive clips of Anita Desai from The View from Here, BBC Radio 4, 18.02.95

Contributor : Kamila Shamsie, author

Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Sean Kerwin Reader: Aarushi Ganju Producer: Mark Rickards Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke looks at the first in Donna Leon’s hugely successful Venetian police series. Death at La Fenice introduces Leon’s likeable Commissario Guido Brunetti, and establishes the recipe that has made Leon one of the world’s best-loved crime writers, and Brunetti one of the most popular fictional detectives.

Death at La Fenice was published in 1992, and opens with a dramatic interruption to a performance of La Traviata at Venice’s famous opera house. The death of a world-renowned conductor is an embarrassment for the Venetian police department, and the city’s politicians are anxious for a speedy result. As Brunetti embarks on his investigation, he navigates his way around Venice’s high society and its murky alleyways with intelligence and integrity, asking searching questions about the much-romanticised city and its inhabitants. Brunetti struck an immediate chord with readers, who warmed to his basic sympathy and decency, as well as his successful detective work, all set against an atmospheric Venetian canvas.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe, and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Producer: Laura Grimshaw Executive Producer: Sara Davies Readings: Jenny Coverack Contributor: Fi Glover, broadcaster Archive: Donna Leon on This Cultural Life with John Wilson 24/04/2023 Donna Leon on World Book Club with Harriet Gilbert 05/05/2019 Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Sean Kerwin

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke takes a look at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus.

Mary Shelley began the short story that would develop into her Gothic novel in 1816 while she was still a teenager. It was published two years later when she was twenty. Despite her young age the book has mature themes: the perils of unregulated scientific experiment, the responsibilities that come with parenting, how society treats the vulnerable and outcast, and man’s role in the universe. Written at a time when women were largely denied an education, this was an extraordinary feat. At the time the fashion was for novels with prescriptive moral lessons; yet Mary created complex characters and storylines that allowed readers to draw their own conclusions.

The daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, both literary celebrities, Mary should have had the best start possible for a writer. But her mother died a few days after giving birth to her and soon afterwards her father remarried, leaving the education of his daughter neglected. That Mary had the resourcefulness to educate herself, and then to go on to write such a groundbreaking novel was a testament both to her talent and determination.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe, and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Contributor: Dr Anna Mercer, Cardiff University

Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Sean Kerwin Reader: Paul Dodgson Producer: Kate McAll Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke examines Kate Atkinson’s 1995 Whitbread award-winning debut Behind the Scenes at the Museum. An epic tragi-comedy, the novel tells the story of protagonist Ruby Lennox, who is born above a family pet shop in York in the early 1950s and grows up in post-war Britain. Through Ruby, the reader is transported back and forth through the centuries as she recounts the stories of four generations of her family from the 1800s to the mid-1990s.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum was the first in a series of novels by Kate Atkinson to explore the war and its fall-out. In this episode, John explores the themes and structure of a novel praised for its inventiveness, ambition and wit. Thirty years on, it remains a contemporary classic. So why, and how, does it work?

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC 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 BBC 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.

Contributors: Alex Clark, Literary Journalist and Broadcaster Armelle Parey, Professor of Contemporary British Fiction at the University of Caen-Normandie Lee Randall, Writer, editor and book festival programmer

Credits: Audio archive clips from Book Club (BBC Sounds), A Good Read (BBC Sounds)

Producer: Lucy Hough Executive Producer: Sara Davies Readings: Clare Corbett Sound: Sean Kerwin Production Hub Coordinator: Nina Semple

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke takes a look at Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Mary Wollstonecraft was a trailblazer, a human rights champion whose personal life defied convention and whose ideas changed the world. Born at a time when girls were encouraged to do needlework and prepare for marriage rather than being sent to school like their brothers, Mary rebelled against the notion and educated herself. As her ideas developed and she found her place among radical Dissenters, she fought for women to be treated as human beings rather than objects for men to admire and own – ideas viewed as outrageous at the time. She travelled to Paris at the height of the Revolution and took her baby around Norway in search of lost treasure. Unlike most 18th century women, Mary’s life reads like the script of a blockbusting Hollywood movie. She left an enduring legacy, not least in the shape of her daughter, the subject of our next episode, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe, and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Contributor: Bee Rowlatt, author of 'In Search of Mary' a travelogue about following in Mary Wollstonecraft’s footsteps and founding Trustee of the human rights education charity in her name, The Wollstonecraft Society.

Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Sean Kerwin Producer: Kate McAll Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke explores Franz Kafka's first and unfinished novel The Man Who Disappeared. Kafka's re-imagining of an innocent's arrival and adventures in New York is, at first glance. the classic tale of rags to riches. Teenage Karl Rossman has been exiled by his parents to a fate unknown across the ocean with just a trunk of mementoes and a slowly smelling sausage.

Millions of Kafka's fellow Czechs had also made that journey but Kafka only ever made his voyage of exploration on the page and in his head. It is a strange America he gives us at once both familiar and utterly strange.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods.

As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Contributors: Professor Carolin Duttlinger - Co-director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre Ed Harris - Playwright who has adapted Kafka's work for a major new season on BBC Radio 4

Readings from Amerika: The Missing Person by Franz Kafka trans. Mark Harman (Schocken Books, 2008)

Reader: Jack Klaff Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound Designer: Sean Kerwin Producer: Mark Burman Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke explores the enduring mystery and power of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.

All Joseph K was expecting when he awoke was breakfast. Instead he is arrested for a nameless crime and finds his life gradually, utterly consumed by the process. Set in a nameless city very like the twisting alleyways and cramped confines of Kafka’s Prague, the book was only published after the writer’s death. Since then, it has become a world famous tale of unending, indefinable bureaucratic unease.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods.

As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters

Contributors: Professor Carolin Duttlinger-Co-director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre Ed Harris - Playwright who has adapted Kafka's work for a major season on BBC Radio 4

Readings from The Trial by Franz Kafka trans. Mike Mitchell (Oxford World's Classic 2009)

Reader: Jack Klaff Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound Designer: Sean Kerwin Producer: Mark Burman Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

In the series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work, John Yorke explores S R Crockett’s forgotten bestseller, a swashbuckling adventure story set in his native Galloway in south west Scotland.

Written in 1894, The Raiders is part romance, part action thriller, and part historical fiction. The action takes place in 1715, during the reign of George I, a time when Galloway was awash with pirates, smugglers, cattle rustlers, gypsies and bandits. John suggests it was the Mission Impossible, if not the Fast and Furious, of its day.

In this second episode, John considers Crockett’s writing career, and tries to find out why an author who was on the bestseller lists for a decade at the turn of the 20th Century has almost completely disappeared from view.

John is joined by Cally Phillips, the founder of the Galloway Raiders website, the home of all things Crockett, and Clara Glynn who has adapted The Raiders for BBC Radio 4. Together they explore how the history of early 18th Century Scotland informs the novel, and how Crockett fits into the wider tradition of Scottish adventure writing.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters. Contributors: Cally Phillips, founder of The Galloway Raiders website Clara Glynn, adapter of The Raiders for BBC Radio 4

Reading by Kyle Gardiner

The Raiders by S R Crockett, from The Galloway Raiders website https://www.gallowayraiders.co.uk/

Produced by Jane Greenwood Executive Producer: Sara Davies Sound by Sean Kerwin Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

In the series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work, John Yorke explores S R Crockett’s forgotten bestseller, a swashbuckling adventure story set in his native Galloway in south west Scotland.

Written in 1894, Crockett’s novel is part romance, part action thriller, and part historical fiction. The action takes place in 1715, during the reign of George I, a time when Galloway was awash with pirates, smugglers, cattle rustlers, gypsies and bandits. John suggests it was the Mission Impossible, if not the Fast and Furious, of its day.

In this first episode, John considers how Crockett’s engaging, humorous, pacy style of writing drives the adventure on, and the appeal of his unusually feisty female characters.

John is joined by Cally Phillips, the founder of the Galloway Raiders website, the home of all things Crockett, and Clara Glynn who has adapted The Raiders for BBC Radio 4. Together they discover that, beneath the fast-paced action, Crockett is shining a light on bigger issues - how a young man tests his mettle, the meaning of leadership and how it is possible to life a moral life outside the law.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters. Contributors: Cally Phillips, founder of The Galloway Raiders website Clara Glynn, adapter of The Raiders for BBC Radio 4

Reading by Kyle Gardiner

The Raiders by S R Crockett, from The Galloway Raiders website https://www.gallowayraiders.co.uk/

Produced by Jane Greenwood Executive Producer: Sara Davies Sound by Sean Kerwin Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

The Man Who Fell to Earth by American writer Walter Tevis was published in 1963. Unlike most sci-fi of its time, it’s not about space, far-off galaxies or a distant future, but set only a decade or so from the time of writing.

When an inhabitant of the planet Anthea comes to Earth in search of the resources to save his world, he uses his knowledge of advanced technology to amass the fortune he needs to save his people from extinction. As Thomas Jerome Newton’s secret project takes shape at a site in rural Kentucky, this extra-terrestrial visitor becomes an all-too-human and troubled figure.

John looks at how deeply the story is lodged in Walter Tevis’ own experience and that of post-war America. He also asks what it is about Tevis’ writing that has made this book, along with his others including The Hustler, The Color of Money and The Queen’s Gambit, so appealing to the film and television industry.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday/Saturday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Contributor: Professor Farah Mendlesohn is the author of several books about science fiction and fantasy literature, including Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008), Children’s Fantasy Literature (co-authored, 2016) and The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein (2019). She has been nominated six times for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work, which she won in 2005 with The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (edited with Edward James)

Walter Tevis audio from an interview with Don Swaim, Ohio University, 1984

Readings by Riley Neldam from The Man Who Fell to Earth (Gollancz 1963)

Producers: Tolly Robinson and Sara Davies Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael Sound: Sean Kerwin Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke looks at Charlotte Keatley’s play My Mother Said I Never Should, written aged just 25 and first premiered at the Contact Theatre in Manchester in 1987. The story explores the lives and relationships of four generations of mothers and daughters born over the course of the 20th Century. Their very different lives reflect the sweeping societal changes of that period, and how each new generation is able to push further than their parents when it comes to pregnancy, careers and romantic love.

At the time of its early staging, the work was pioneering for its use of an all-female cast and a non-chronological narrative structure. The play is now one of the National Theatre’s Significant Plays of the 20th Century and is translated in 33 languages. So what makes it so enduring?

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Charlotte Keatley, playwright Brigid Larmour, theatre director and Associate Artistic Director of the Patsy Rodenburg Academy

My Mother Said I Never Should, BBC Studios Audio Director: Nadia Molinari Actors: Lesley Nicol, Siobhan Finneran, Matilda Kent, Isla Pritchard, Mimi-Raie Mhlanga

Produced by Lucy Hough Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Sean Kerwin Research: Nina Semple

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke explores Rosamunde Pilcher’s sweeping family saga, The Shell Seekers.

Published in 1987, this captivating story of life and love is a phenomenon in its own quiet way. It has been named among the best-loved books of all time, selling more than 10 million copies. The novel spans four decades in the life of Penelope Keeling, free-spirited and elegant, a mother of three children that she loves dearly - but does not always like.

Penelope navigates relationships, love and loss against a Sunday supplement backdrop of the cosy Cotswolds, an idyllic Cornish childhood, and the terrors of the Blitz. At its heart is the question of family - the one to which you are bound by blood, and the one you construct along the way.

It’s a lesson in living life well and being true to yourself, no matter the cards you are dealt. But despite its romance and idealism, The Shell Seekers is not a novel to be sneered at - as John discovers.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Alison Flood, Culture Editor at New Scientist. Harriet Evans, bestselling author of 14 novels, most recently The Stargazers.

Credits: The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher, published in Great Britain in 1988.

Readings: Jennifer Aries Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Sean Kerwin Producer: Redzi Bernard Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

The Sportswriter, by the American novelist Richard Ford, is the first of what became a series of five novels following the life of Frank Bascombe – a failed writer of fiction who turns to writing about sport to make a living. Frank’s marriage to a woman only referred to as X is over - although he wishes it wasn’t – and Ralph, one of their three children, has died. Published in 1986, The Sportswriter was named one of Time magazine's five best books of the year and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. John looks at the reasons for its success. John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book, Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone. Contributor: Ian McGuire, Professor of American Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester. He is the author of three novels, Incredible Bodies (2006), The North Water (2016) and The Abstainer (2020), and one critical monograph, Richard Ford and the Ends of Realism (2015). Credits: Excerpts from The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, 1986. Readings and interview clips of Richard Ford from World Book Club, BBC World Service, 12 June 2013. Researcher: Nina Semple Sound: Sean Kerwin Producer: Jack Soper Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael Production Manager: Sarah Wright A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness remains one of the most enigmatic works of 19th Century literature, charting as it does the story of Marlow, the captain of a steamboat heading up an unnamed river in the employ of an unnamed organisation described simply ‘the Company’. He becomes fixated on tracking down the figure of Kurtz, a company agent in charge of a trading post - but this is no action adventure so typical of the time. John asks what the phrase Heart of Darkness - and Kurtz’s famous epigram ‘The horror. The horror’ might actually represent, and also attempts to reconcile the racism many critics have accused the book of containing with its staunch attack on imperial barbarity; Conrad himself had previously worked on a boat going up the Congo river where he witnessed for himself the atrocities carried out by the Belgian colonisers on the local people.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for thirty years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book ‘Into the Woods’. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters (his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone).

Contributors: Anita Sullivan - writer and adapter of ‘Heart of Darkness’ Maya Jasanoff, Professor of History at Harvard University - and author of the much acclaimed book ‘The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World’

Credits: Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1899

Reader: Paul Dodgson Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Producer: Geoff Bird Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier Production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke examines Kate Atkinson’s 1995 Whitbread award-winning debut Behind the Scenes at the Museum. An epic tragi-comedy, the novel tells the story of protagonist Ruby Lennox, who is born above a family pet shop in York in the early 1950s and grows up in post-war Britain. Through Ruby, the reader is transported back and forth through the centuries as she recounts the stories of four generations of her family from the 1800s to the mid-1990s.

In this episode, John looks at how a debut novel from a then-unknown author triumphed over literary giants like Salman Rushdie for the Whitbread accolade. Thirty years on, it remains a contemporary classic. So why, and how, does it work?

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC 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 BBC 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.

Contributors: Alex Clark, Literary Journalist and Broadcaster Armelle Parey, Professor of Contemporary British Fiction at the University of Caen-Normandie Lee Randall, Writer, editor and book festival programmer

Credits: Audio archive clips from Book Club (BBC Sounds), A Good Read (BBC Sounds)

Producer: Lucy Hough Executive Producer: Sara Davies Readings: Clare Corbett Sound: Sean Kerwin Production Hub Coordinator: Nina Semple

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke digs under the surface of two more of Daphne du Maurier’s short stories, both of which once again reveal how deftly she marries psychological understanding with compelling narratives.

The Blue Lenses, published in 1959, and The Little Photographer (1952) are both preoccupied with ‘seeing’ and how a lens can reveal a truth that might have otherwise been hidden. Du Maurier’s characteristic themes of truth, deception, jealousy and obsession thread themselves through these stories and John teases out the experiences in du Maurier’s own life that underpinned her writing.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book ‘Into the Woods’. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Justine Picardie – author and biographer who has written extensively about Daphne du Maurier. Sarah Dunant – best-selling author of thrillers and historical novels.

Credits: (The Blue Lenses) The Breaking Point 1959 collection (published by Virago Classics 2009) (The Little Photographer) The Birds and Other Stories first published as The Apple Tree by Victor Gollancz 1952

Archive BBC 7 reading of The Blue Lenses by Emma Fielding, originally recorded in 2007. Archive clip of 2003 BBC Radio dramatisation of The Little Photographer. Sian Thomas plays the Marquise and John McAndrew the photographer.

Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Producer: Julian Wilkinson Executive Producer: Sara Davies Sound by Sean Kerwin

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

In 1971, Daphne du Maurier published Don’t Look Now and it was to become a landmark in the development of the psychological thriller. Du Maurier was an extraordinarily prolific writer producing a string of bestselling novels such as Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, but it’s in her short stories that we find her darkest and most disturbing work.

In Don’t Look Now, a couple visit Venice trying to come to terms with the grief of losing their daughter. A blind psychic tells them she can see their daughter and she is trying to warn them of danger. Their fragility and the psychic’s premonitions become entangled with real life events on the Venetian backstreets.

Du Maurier’s writing was ground-breaking not only in her brilliant handling of suspense and plot, but because her real interest lay in the internal journey of the characters and what was going on under the surface. John Yorke looks at why Don’t Look Now is such a brilliant example of this. Don’t Look Now also gained a huge international following because it was adapted for cinema by the film director Nicholas Roeg.

This is the first of two Opening Lines that explore the short stories of Daphne du Maurier.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for thirty years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series.

From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book ‘Into the Woods’.

As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Sarah Dunant – best selling author of thriller and historical novels, and broadcaster Peter Bradshaw – film critic

Credits: Don’t Look Now and other stories by Daphne du Maurier, Penguin Classics 2006. Archive clip from 2001 BBC Radio dramatisation with Michael Feast playing the part of John. Venice sound bed from BBC Radio 3’s Slow Radio: Venice Between the Bells.

Readings: Julian Wilkinson Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Producer: Julian Wilkinson Executive Producer: Sara Davies Sound: Sean Kerwin

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

In the series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work, John Yorke looks at Jean Toomer’s Cane about African American life in 1920s America.

Jean Toomer, born and raised in Washington DC, wrote Cane after a three month trip south to Georgia in 1921. Cane has a unique structure. Divided into three sections, the book is a series of vignettes, poems and short stories and concerns the lives of African Americans in the deep South and those that made the journey up to the northern states. John hears how the book was written at a critical period in American history – during the ‘Great Migration’. He also hears how the work was critically acclaimed when it was published and claimed as a part of the Harlem Renaissance, but how Toomer, of mixed racial heritage himself, eschewed all labels and wanted just to be known as an ‘American’ writer.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series.

From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributor: Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Assistant Professor of Writing at the Pratt Institute in New York and author of Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America.

Credits: Cane by Jean Toomer Publisher (Penguin Classics) (8 Jan. 2019) Kindle Edition Archive of Toni Morrison from Roots Of Cane, Broadcast on Radio 3 on the 2nd April 1993 Readings by Eric Stroud

Producer: Alison Vernon-Smith Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael Sound: Iain Hunter Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke examines Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha.

Hermann Hesse was an established writer by the time he wrote Siddhartha and didn’t live to see its lionisation by the 60s counterculture. But even in his own time Hesse’s writing appealed to young people, particularly young men, in a way that he found irritating. John looks at why this book so appealed to younger generations, especially to the one that emerged in the 60s and at how Hesse’s own background actually had parallels to their experiences.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series.

From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Nicolas Jackson, Director and Producer of Radio 4’s dramatisation of Siddhartha Mick Brown, Journalist, writer and author of The Nirvana Express

Readings by Matthew Gravelle

Credits: Siddhartha CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015. Translated by Hilda Rosner Produced by Alison Vernon-Smith Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael Sound by Sean Kerwin Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke explores Robert Burns’s only long form narrative poem, Tam O’Shanter. He discovers Tam’s wild ride through a stormy Scottish night where witches and warlocks are at play.

Robert Burns was born in 1759, one of the children of a tenant farming father and a mother who was a great singer and storyteller. He found fame with the publication of Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect and it was the Scots language that gave his poetry such energy and vigour.

Tam O’Shanter tells the story of a wild ride through a stormy Scottish night where witches and warlocks are at play. Having finishing drinking in the pub, Tam must venture out into the night on his horse Meg and pass the haunted church where the ghouls are out dancing in the graveyard. The poem has a quote at the beginning that comes from a medieval Scots translation of Virgil's epic poem, the Aeneid, where the hero goes into the underworld, into the dark world of spooks and terrifying imaginings. And that's where Tam O'Shanter takes its listeners, along with humour and a tongue-in-cheek attitude to Tam’s foibles.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone

Contributors Kirsteen McCue Professor of Scottish Literature and Song Culture at the University of Glasgow, home of the centre for Robert Burns Studies. Robert Crawford Poet and author of The Bard, a biography of Robert Burns

Readings: Brian Cox, Robert Crawford

Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Sean Kerwin Producer: Mark Rickards Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

In the series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work, John Yorke explores Graham Greene’s dark, comic classic, Our Man in Havana.

Set in pre-revolutionary Cuba, Our Man in Havana is a comic spy caper with a dark heart. In this the second episode on the novel, John considers what impact the place had on the work, and how Greene’s fictional locations became known as ‘Greeneland’. He also examines how Greene’s attitude to the question of loyalty, a recurring theme in his writing, is central to this book.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series.

From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Christopher Hull, Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American studies at Chester University and author of Our Man Down in Havana Sarah Rainsford, BBC Foreign Correspondent, author of Our Woman in Havana: Reporting Castro’s Cuba Reading by Matthew Gravelle

Credits: Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene Publisher - Vintage Digital; New Ed edition (2 Oct. 2010) Archive - Radio 4’s A Writer At Work on 15/8/1969.

Produced by Alison Vernon-Smith Executive Producer: Sara Davies Sound by Sean Kerwin Researcher Nina Semple Production Manager Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

In the series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work, John Yorke explores Graham Greene’s classic dark comedy, Our Man in Havana.

Greene was already an established and successful novelist and screenwriter by the time he wrote Our Man in Havana and, in this first of two episodes about the book, John looks at the plot of what became a classic comedy thriller and at how deftly Greene outlined his characters. The book is set in pre-revolutionary Havana and John also hears how the political situation coloured his writing and how the target of Greene’s work was an organisation that was very familiar to him - British Intelligence.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series.

From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Christopher Hull, Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American studies at Chester University and author of Our Man Down in Havana Sarah Rainsford, BBC Foreign Correspondent, author of Our Woman in Havana: Reporting Castro’s Cuba Reading by Matthew Gravelle

Credits: Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene Publisher - Vintage Digital; New Ed edition (2 Oct. 2010) Produced by Alison Vernon-Smith Executive Producer: Sara Davies Sound by Sean Kerwin Researcher Nina Semple Production Manager Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke looks at the short story The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern. It’s Christmas Eve and George Pratt is contemplating suicide when a stranger appears almost by magic, and grants George a wish, that he’d never been born.

When Stern wrote the story in 1943, he could find no one who wanted to publish it so he sent it out to friends as a Christmas card. One of those cards found its way to Frank Capra, one of the great film directors of the 1940s, and became a film that now defines Christmas for many people.

John shares a lifetime of experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the secrets behind the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. He has been working in television and radio for nearly 30 years. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Contributors: Award winning writer Lucy Caldwell, former winner of the BBC Short Story Award, and winner of the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for her novel, These Days. Readings by Eric Stroud

Credits: The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern, published by Transworld Digital. The Name Above the Title, An Autobiography by Frank Capra, published by Da Capo Press. It’s A Wonderful Life Started as the By-Product of A Shave by Philip Van Doren Stern, New York Herald Tribune, December 15th, 1946. Marguerite Stern Robinson: YouTube

Produced by Caroline Raphael Executive Producer: Sara Davies Production Manager: Sarah Wright Researcher: Nina Semple Sound by Shane O'Byrne

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke takes a look at Tove Jansson's magical 1946 novel Comet In Moominland.

Comet In Moominland is the second Moomin book and it’s a classic children’s tale. A comet is heading straight for earth, indeed to Moomin valley - so Moomintroll and his best friend Sniff head off on an adventure to try and do something about it. Their journey is eventful; they meet lots of new people and make lots of new friends but remain focussed on their mission to find out more about these faceless dangers, and get back home to Moominmama and Moominpapa and the warmth, safety and cake they offer.

Tove Jansson was an acclaimed author, artist and illustrator. She was prolific in all these forms, writing 12 adult novels, many short stories, and producing illustrations throughout her life, but it is the Moomin characters and stories that endure. They are one of Finland’s biggest literary exports - translated into over 50 languages. In this episode, John Yorke asks where these fantastical characters come from, what is it about them that struck such a chord, and why do they remain so popular today.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: John Finnemore, British writer and actor who pays Moomintroll in Radio 4's dramatisation of Comet In Moominland. Tuula Karjalainen, Finnish art historian and writer, the author of Work and Love, A Biography of Tove Jansson.

Producer: Laura Grimshaw Executive Producer: Sara Davies Readings: John Finnemore Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Sean Kerwin

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke takes a look at A Grain of Wheat, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s groundbreaking book about the lead up to Kenyan Independence. Published in 1966 as part of the Heineman African Writers Series, A Grain of Wheat offers an authentic insight into Kenya’s Land and Freedom Army rebellion (better known in Britain as the Mau Mau) and its brutal suppression by British colonial authorities. Told from the perspective of various Kikuyu characters living in Kenya’s central highlands, it is set in the four days leading up to the hard-won Uhuru, or Independence celebrations. But through flashbacks, we also learn of what has happened in the decade prior to that; how characters have been sent to detention centres, or held in concentration camps, resisted British authorities, or collaborated with them. Now, on the eve of change, it is time for reflections and recriminations.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Njambi McGrath, author of Through the Leopard’s Gaze, award-winning comedian and political commentator.

Credits: Abridged readings from A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, published by Penguin Modern Classics in Association with Heinemann African Writers Series. Archive recordings from World Book Club, 9th March 2019, BBC World Service

Readings: Patrick Gatua Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Sean Kerwin Producer: Redzi Bernard Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

In the series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work, John Yorke takes a look at Rumer Godden’s children’s book Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, with the help of Dame Jacqueline Wilson.

We meet two tiny Japanese dolls - Miss Happiness and Miss Flower – delivered as a Christmas present. They are strangers in a strange land, subject to social forces and customs they don’t recognise, desperately trying to find a way to fit in. The same is true of Nona – the eight-year-old protagonist who receives the dolls and takes them into her care. For all of them it’s a tale of not belonging, of wishing and hoping, and working out just how to fit in.

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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC 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 BBC 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.

Contributors: Dame Jacqueline Wilson, legendary children’s author and former Children’s Laureate. Rumer Godden, author, discussing her work and writing process in an archive interview

Credits: Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden, 1961 Desert Island Discs, 1996. Desert Island Discs was presented by Sue Lawley and created by Roy Plomley. Rumer Godden: International and Intermodern Storyteller, 2010

Producer: Laura Grimshaw Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael Readings: Ruth Sillers Production Hub Coordinator: Nina Semple Sound: Sean Kerwin A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke shines a light on the dark, claustrophobic pages of Manuel Puig’s classic 1976 novel Kiss of the Spiderwoman, that went on to become a play, a musical and an Oscar-winning film.

Puig wrote the novel, which focuses on the relationship between a gay window dresser and a revolutionary political prisoner, having fled the ruling military dictatorship in Argentina. John shows how the book celebrates the power not only of human connection but also the imagination, as the two central characters - stripped of so much by way of physical comfort - escape the gloom of their cell through lengthy retellings of classic Hollywood films.

The novel itself couldn’t escape censure, and was banned in Argentina until 1983.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Laurie Sansom – Theatre director Suzanne Jill Levine - Puig’s biographer and translator

Credits: Kiss of the Spiderwoman Pub 1976 (Spanish edition) Vintage 1991 translated by Thomas Colchie (English Edition)

Reader: Luciano Dodero Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Producer: Geoff Bird Executive Producer: Sara Davies Sound by Sean Kerwin

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

A Many-Splendoured Thin’, by the Eurasian author and doctor Han Suyin, was an instant hit in Britain and the States on its publication in 1952. Set in Hong Kong between 1949 and 1950, it’s a lightly fictionalised account of the author’s own passionate and transformative love affair.

The protagonist mirrors Han Suyin, herself – a Eurasian doctor originally from mainland China, born to a Chinese father and a Belgian mother. In real life, Han Suyin fell in love with an Australian war correspondent who, in the novel, becomes an Englishman, Mark Elliott.

In the second of two episodes, John explores Han’s other love affair, with China itself. He explains that A Many-Splendoured Thing is no longer in print and that this can be seen in the light of Han Suyin having been, for a long time, a passionate advocate of communism in China, which she saw as an improvement on the brutalities she had witnessed in feudal China. This resulted in her and her books falling out of favour as the horrors of the Cultural Revolution became fully apparent .

However, John believes it’s well worth tracking down a copy, as the novel tackles both the complexities of a cross cultural affair in 1949, and offers us a personal and nuanced portrait of a period of extreme political upheaval.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe, and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Credits: A Many-Splendoured Thing by Han Suyin, published by Jonathan Cape, 1952 (currently out of print)

Contributors: Ming Ho, writer, who adapted the book for BBC Radio 4 Alex Tickell, Professor of Global literatures in English at the Open University

Reader: Chipo Chung

Producer: Penny Boreham Executive Producer: Sara Davies Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound Engineer: Iain Hunter

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

The novel A Many-Splendoured Thing, by the Eurasian author and doctor Han Suyin, was an instant hit in Britain and the States on its publication in 1952. Set in Hong Kong between 1949 and 1950, it’s a lightly fictionalised account of the author’s own passionate and transformative love affair. The protagonist mirrors Han Suyin, herself – a Eurasian doctor originally from mainland China, born to a Chinese father and a Belgian mother. In real life Han Suyin fell in love with an Australian war correspondent who, in the novel, becomes an Englishman, Mark Elliott.

The book was quickly snapped up by Hollywood and released as Love is A Many Splendoured Thing in 1955.

In the first of two episodes, John Yorke urges us to read the book as, in his opinion, the film misses the nuance, subtlety and interest of the novel.

This, he says, is because the book, through a huge and complex array of secondary characters and vivid descriptions, reveals so much about a pivotal point in history – a time when scores of refugees were making their home in Hong Kong, leaving mainland China to escape the inevitable defeat of the national government by the communists. John also explores the way Han Suyin’s honest revelations about her contradictory feelings within the love affair give the novel a huge emotional charge and offer a window into her own journey towards self-determination.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe, and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Credits: A Many-Splendoured Thing by Han Suyin, published by Jonathan Cape, 1952 (currently out of print)

Contributors: Ming Ho, writer, who adapted the book for BBC Radio 4 Alex Tickell, Professor of Global literatures in English at the Open University

Reader: Chipo Chung

Producer: Penny Boreham Executive Producer: Sara Davies Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound Engineer: Iain Hunter

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke looks at The Manxman by the Sir Thomas Hall Caine, a love story set on the Isle of Man. The novel broke sales records and changed the book industry forever when it was published in 1894. Hall Caine was globally famous, hugely successful, adored by readers and feted by royalty. The story was adapted for film by Alfred Hitchcock, translated into 12 languages and performed on stage. Yet today, The Manxman and Hall Caine are almost completely forgotten.

John looks at this hugely successful Victorian melodrama, to discover a curiously powerful story, set in a location rarely found in literature, that has plenty of resonance for audiences today.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Contributors: Mary Hammond, professor of English and Book History at the University of Southampton. Catherine Harvey, writer, actor, and broadcaster, who adapted The Manxman for BBC Radio 4.

Readings by Stephen Bent. Excerpts from The Manxman by Hall Caine, 1894. Excerpt from My Story by Hall Caine, 1908. Excerpt from The Manxman - Manx Life and Manxland, by T.E. Brown, 1894.

Researcher: Nina Semple Sound: Sean Kerwin Producer: Jack Soper Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael Production Manager: Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke explores a work that every Italian will know – I Promessi Sposi by Alessandro Manzoni, known in English as The Betrothed.

In this the second of two episodes, John looks at the context for the story told by Manzoni in The Betrothed. Written in the early 19th century, and set in the 17th century, at a time before Italy became a unified country, Manzoni deliberately used a historical period to comment on the political situation of his time. When he was writing, the Italian peninsula was under Austrian rule, and to criticise those in charge meant a likely jail sentence. So he wrote about a time when the rulers were Spanish, with obvious parallels.

The novel deals with the issues of war, failures of leadership, conflict between classes, social unrest, religion, and gives a vivid description of a plague which devastated the population.

It’s a novel which had resonance for readers in the 19th century when it was first published and, as John discovers, also for contemporary readers today.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for thirty years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Tim Parks Author of A Literary Tour of Italy Eileen Horne, Adapter Dr. Francesca Benatti, Research Fellow in Digital Humanities, Open University

Reader: Marco Gambino

The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni, translated by Michael F. Moore, The Modern Library New York The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni, translated by Bruce Penman, Penguin Classics

Produced by Mark Rickards Executive Producer: Sara Davies Sound by Charlie Brandon-KIng Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke explores a work that every Italian will know – I Promessi Sposi by Alessandro Manzoni, known in English as The Betrothed.

A classic of Italian literature, The Betrothed follows the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, who plan to marry, only to be thwarted by a Spanish noble, Don Rodrigo, who has his eye on Lucia.

Told against a backdrop of 17th century Lombardy, before Italy became a unified country, The Betrothed is a call for national unity as well as a compelling love story.

In this first of two episodes, John looks at the rich cast of characters which makes The Betrothed such a powerful read. He meets the local priest, Don Abbondio, who is supposed to wed Renzo and Lucia but is easily dissuaded under pressure from Don Rodrigo, the Nun of Monza whose life in a convent is not the one she would have chosen, and the ‘Nameless One’, a thug straight out of a Mafia playbook.

It's a novel with many twists and turns, and at times even the author admits that he may be giving his readers too much detail. But as John finds, there’s good reason to stick with the story and enjoy a novel which every Italian is likely to have encountered at school.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for thirty years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Tim Parks, Author of A Literary Tour of Italy Eileen Horne, Adapter

Reader: Marco Gambino

The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni, translated by Michael F. Moore, The Modern Library New York The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni, translated by Bruce Penman, Penguin Classics

Produced by Mark Rickards Executive Producer: Sara Davies Sound by Charlie Brandon-KIng Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke looks at the 1952 psychological suspense novel from French crime-writing team Boileau-Narcejac. The plot centres around travelling salesman Ferdinand Ravinel who conspires a plot with his mistress Lucienne to murder his wife. After the icily dark bathtub murder, Ravinel’s wife Lucienne’s body strangely disappears- and so begins Ravinel’s psychological unravelling.

Noted for the ingenuity of their plots and narrative twists, this was the first novella from duo Boileau-Narcejac. The pair are credited with creating an authentically French subgenre of crime fiction and a number of their works were adapted for the screen - She Who Was No More became the 1955 cinematic classic Les Diaboliques, followed by Alfred Hitchcock’s adaption of Vertigo in 1958.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to the Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book ‘Into the Woods’. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Claire Gorrara, Professor of French & Dean of Research and Innovation at Cardiff University, specialised in post-war French crime fiction Ginette Vincendeau, Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London

Readings by Matthew Gravelle

Credits Les Diaboliques. 1955 film by Henri-Georges Clouzot, produced by Arrow Films

Produced by Lucy Hough Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael Sound by Sean Kerwin Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Originally composed about 2000 years ago, the Mahabharata is one of the world’s greatest pieces of storytelling, as well as a foundational Hindu text. Woven through its central account of a great dynastic family conflict and bloody war is the story of the gods and their relationship to humankind, as well as spiritual, philosophical and practical instruction about how to live one’s life in the best possible way.

In the second of two episodes about the Mahabharata, John asks why and how this 2000 year-old epic still resonates so strongly, what makes it such rich territory for modern re-tellings, and looks at some of its universal themes.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Credits: Mahabharata, A Modern Retelling by Carole Satyamurti (W.W.Norton & Co. 2015) The Mahabharata, abridged and translated by John D. Smith (Penguin Classics 2009)

Contributors: Dr Arti Dhand, Department of Religious Studies, University of Toronto https://www.themahabharatapodcast.com Jatinder Verma, founder of Tara Arts, theatre director and Director of Mahabharata Now, BBC Radio 4

Readers: Nadir Khan: Mumbai-based actor and director, producer of Mahabharata Now, BBC Radio 4 Shernaz Patel, Mumbai-based film and theatre actor, Gita in Mahabharata Now, BBC Radio 4

Producers: Sara Davies & Tolly Robinson Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound Engineer and designer: Sean Kerwin

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

Originally composed about 2000 years ago, the Mahabharata is one of the world’s greatest pieces of storytelling, as well as a foundational Hindu text. Woven through its central account of a great dynastic family conflict and bloody war is the story of the gods and their relationship to humankind, as well as spiritual, philosophical and practical instruction about how to live one’s life in the best possible way.

In the first of two episodes about the this epic poem, John looks at how the central story of the conflict between two branches of the great Bharata family gives the work its extraordinary and gripping dramatic impact.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters.

Credits: The Mahabharata, abridged and translated by John D. Smith (Penguin Classics 2009) Mahabharata, A Modern Retelling by Carole Satyamurti (W.W.Norton & Co. 2015)

Contributors: Dr Arti Dhand, Department of Religious Studies, University of Toronto https://www.themahabharatapodcast.com

Jatinder Verma, founder of Tara Arts, theatre director and Director of Mahabharata Now, BBC Radio 4

Readers: Nadir Khan: Mumbai-based actor and director, co-producer of Mahabharata Now, BBC Radio 4 Shernaz Patel, Mumbai-based film, TV and theatre actor, Gita in Mahabharata Now, BBC Radio 4

Producers: Sara Davies and Tolly Robinson Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound Engineer: Sean Kerwin

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke continues his exploration of Lark Rise to Candleford, Flora Thompson’s much-loved account of rural life.

Lark Rise to Candleford is one of our best loved evocations of rural England, but it is also an evocation of rural poverty, and of the emerging opportunities for young women as a new century dawned.

It tells the story of a girl growing up in a poor rural hamlet in rural Oxfordshire in the 1880s. Eventually she moves to the village of Candleford Green to begin her adult life working in a post office, and her story frames the larger one of Britain at the end of the 19th century, facing seismic social change.

In this second episode, John explores how the journey made by the central character in the book, Laura Timmins, reflects Flora Thompson’s own journey from a country childhood to the world of work and wider society. He wants to know how Lark Rise to Candleford echoes the rapid social changes taking place at the end of the 19th century, specifically the growth of towns and the opportunities they offered for new forms of employment and leisure. Flora Thompson’s book is unusual because it gives a female perspective to life at the turn of the 20th century; John is keen to find out how poor women’s horizons broadened as they started to glimpse the possibility of lives beyond marriage, motherhood or a job in domestic service.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for thirty years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone. Contributors: Emma Griffin, Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London Richard Mabey, nature writer Reading by Emma Griffin

Credits: Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson, Oxford University Press, 1945

Produced by Jane Greenwood Executive Producer: Sara Davies Sound by Sean Kerwin Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC 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 BBC 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 BBC 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 BBC Radio 4

John Yorke explores Lark Rise to Candleford, Flora Thompson’s much-loved account of rural life.

Lark Rise to Candleford is one of our best loved evocations of rural England, but it's also an evocation of rural poverty, and of the emerging opportunities for young women as a new century dawned.

It tells the story of a girl growing up in a poor rural hamlet in rural Oxfordshire in the 1880s. Eventually she moves to the village of Candleford Green to begin her adult life working in a post office, and her story frames the larger one of Britain at the end of the 19th century, facing seismic social change.

In this first of two episodes, John is keen to explore the puzzle of what sort of book Lark Rise to Candleford is. It appears to be an autobiographical social history of rural England at the close of the 19th century, but at the heart of it is a fictional character, Laura Timmins. And he wants to find out more about how Flora Thompson, a woman who left school at 14 after a rudimentary education, went on to write an instant bestseller which has become one of the 20th century’s most enduring classics.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for thirty years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone. Contributors: Emma Griffin, Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London Richard Mabey, nature writer Reading by Emma Griffin

Credits: Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson, Oxford University Press, 1945

Produced by Jane Greenwood Executive Producer: Sara Davies Sound by Sean Kerwin Researcher Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke takes a look at If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, a novel by one of the most translated Italian writers of the 20th century, Italo Calvino. Published in 1979, this dizzying work of metafiction takes you on a journey into the very nature of reading.

The novel begins with you, the Reader, going into a bookshop to buy a copy of If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You start reading, and you're just getting gripped by the story when there seems to be a printer's error. You take the book back to the shop for a replacement, but the replacement seems to be a totally different story.

In fact, every time you try to find the story you started reading, you end up with a completely different one, in a completely different genre - from noirish detective story, to romance, adventure, political intrigue and Gothic horror. The one thing that all these stories have in common is that they end at a cliffhanger moment. It's a literary puzzle, which challenges conventions at every turn, and constantly seeks to engage the reader's imagination.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe, and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Tim Crouch, Writer and Theatre Maker Merve Emre, Shapiro Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University, and contributing writer at The New Yorker Magazine.

Readings: Paul Dodgson Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Martyn Harries Producer: Kate McAll Executive Producer: Sara Davies A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke takes a look at Alexis de Tocqueville’s seminal work, Democracy in America. First published in 1835, it is arguably one of the most influential books ever to pervade American public discourse, quoted by almost every political leader - both from the red side and the blue.

It’s a two-volume work (the second volume was published in 1840) that explores American society through the eyes of a young aristocrat from revolutionary France. He was convinced that democratic rule was as inevitable as the march of time, and looking to the American democratic project - then still in its infancy - for lessons to take home.

De Tocqueville explores the notion of equality - its advantages and potential pitfalls - through the lenses of philosophy, of literature, of religion, of politics, wringing ideas out of them as he holds them up to the light.

And what he finds holds relevance for those of us trying to understand America today. Its praise and its criticisms help remind us that, for all its fault-lines at its worst, at its best America is still a shining ideal.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised on BBC Radio 4. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Sarah Woods, award-winning playwright of a drama inspired by Democracy in America for BBC Radio 4 Nell Irvin Painter, leading historian of the United States, and the author of The History of White People.

Credits: Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, with an introduction by Isaac Kramnick. English translation by Gerald E Bevan published in 2003 by Penguin Classics. George W Bush Presidential Remarks, 21st May 2005 - C-Span.org Bill Clinton, Between Hope and History - C-Span.org President Obama & President Hollande of France - The Obama White House, Youtube Hillary Clinton at New American Foundation, May 2014 - C-Span.org

Readings: Tom Glenister Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Sean Kerwin Producer: Redzi Bernard Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke considers Alexander Dumas' great swashbuckler, The Three Musketeers, and his creation of a classic hero in D'Artagnan and an unforgettable villain in Milady de Winter.

In the second of two episodes about the book, John examines how Dumas created this enduring page-turner. He also looks at aspects of the novel that are sometimes overlooked - its wit and humour as well as some very dark passages.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he 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 BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy John has trained a generation of screenwriters - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors: Dr Edmund Birch – Lecturer in French Literature at Cambridge University. Adrian Hodges – TV and film Director of 'The Musketeers' BBC TV 2014 Maimie McCoy – actor and 'Milady' in 'The Musketeers' Reading by Matthew Gravelle

Credits: Produced by Alison Vernon-Smith Executive Producer: Sara Davies Sound by Iain Hunter Researcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4