Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Episode 1

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