Opening Lines

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 DaviesA 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 4Readings 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 RaphaelA 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 4Readings 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 DaviesA 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 4Reading by Kyle GardinerThe 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 4Reading by Kyle GardinerThe 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, 1984Readings 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 WrightA 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 MhlangaProduced by Lucy Hough Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Sean Kerwin Research: Nina SempleA 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 DaviesA 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 DaviesA 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 1952Archive 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 KerwinA 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 criticCredits: 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 KerwinA 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 WrightA 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 GravelleCredits: 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 WrightA 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 aloneContributors 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 BurnsReadings: Brian Cox, Robert CrawfordResearcher: Nina Semple Production Manager: Sarah Wright Sound: Sean Kerwin Producer: Mark Rickards Executive Producer: Caroline RaphaelA Pier production for BBC Radio 4