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BBC Radio 4

Producer and writer 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 behind the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised in Radio 4's weekend afternoon dramas.

Opening Lines

In this second episode, John Yorke assesses the criticism levelled against James Fenimore Cooper’s 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans - primarily that it is responsible for the widely held, inaccurate, view that indigenous Americans were inevitably disappearing during the period the novel is set, and that that false narrative was used to justify colonisation. 

Also, John delves deeper into the author’s background to understand his influences, and asks what we should make of The Last of the Mohicans today. 

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 Radio 4.

 
Contributors:
Jordan Abel, Nisga’a writer and academic.
Richard Slotkin, American Cultural Historian.
 
Credits:
Readings by Eric Stroud
Excerpts from The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, 1826.
Excerpt from Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses, by Mark Tawain, 1895.
Film clip from The Last of the Mohicans, 1992 Morgan Creek Entertainment /
Twentieth Century Fox.
Excerpt from Empty Spaces by Jordan Abel, 2023, read by the author.

Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Sound: Sean Kerwin 
Producer: Jack Soper
Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds

The Last of the Mohicans - Episode Two

Published in 1826, the American writer James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans is set during the French and Indian War, in 1750s North America. The story follows a group of British colonists trying to cross frontier land – and examines the complexity of the relationship that existed between the colonialists and the land they were - in essence stealing – the native American’s.

The book, which has been adapted widely for film and TV, mixes fiction with real historical events and has received both huge praise, as one of the foundation stones of American literature, and substantial criticism, for perpetrating a false narrative about the fate of indigenous American people. 

In the first of two episodes, John Yorke asks how Cooper came to write The Last of the Mohicans, why was it successful and what we should we make of it today. 

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 Radio 4.
 
Contributors:
Jordan Abel, Nisga’a writer and academic.
Richard Slotkin, American Cultural Historian.
 
Credits:
Readings by Eric Stroud
Excerpts from The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, 1826.

Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Sound: Sean Kerwin 
Producer: Jack Soper
Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams

A Pier Production for BBC Radio 4 & BBC Sounds

The Last of the Mohicans - Episode 1

Ian Sansom, sitting in for John Yorke, takes a look at Joy In the Morning, the 44th Jeeves and Wooster novel by PG Wodehouse. Published in 1946, it revolves around Bertie Wooster’s attempts to avoid a series of social and romantic calamities. The omniscient Jeeves, of course, remains the great calm at the centre of the novel’s storm, devising ingenious solutions just when disaster seems inevitable. Readings from the book are by Stephen Fry, who also describes why he’s such an enthusiast for Wodehouse so much, and what it is he loves about this adventure in the Jeeves and Wooster canon.

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.

With readings and contributions from Sir Stephen Fry

Archive:
Archive 1961 BBC Interview – Alistair Cooke speaks to P.G. Wodehouse
Archive 1972 BBC Interview – Keith Dewhurst speaks to P.G. Wodehouse

Reader: Sir Stephen Fry
Producer: Laura Grimshaw
Executive Producer: Sara Davies
Programme Hub Co-ordinator: Nina Semple
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Sound: Sean Kerwin

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Joy in the Morning

John Yorke explores the revolutionary techniques developed by Jane Austen in Sense and Sensibility and uncovers why her work is so endlessly adaptable to modern tastes. 

Austen innovated ‘free indirect style’, which blends third person narration with a character’s internal thoughts and feelings. Novelists have been using her creation ever since. She also had a gift for dialogue which allows her to reveal character through idiosyncratic speech habits. The novel is shot through with darkness, but it is also extremely funny. Joh discovers that the main characters, Elinor and Marianne, have ‘comedy double act energy’.

With contributions from Professor John Mullan and poet and dramatist Claudine Toutoungi.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for thirty 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.

Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery
Reader: Rhiannon Neads
Executive Producer: Sara Davies
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
Sound: Iain Hunter

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Sense and Sensibility - Episode Two

John Yorke explores the romantic framework of Jane Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, as well as the reasons for its enduring appeal. It’s a novel that explores the cost of love, and in it, Austen develops writing techniques that revolutionised this new form, which are still in use some two hundred years later.

With contributions from Professor John Mullan, and poet and dramatist Claudine Toutoungi.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for thirty 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.

Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery
Reader: Rhiannon Neads
Executive Producer: Sara Davies
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
Sound: Iain Hunter

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Sense and Sensibility - Episode One

The opening lines of Pride and Prejudice are not only among the most famous in all of literature, they also place marriage front and centre as the key theme within the novel. 

“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” Austen writes, “that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” So many of the characters and their actions are driven by the search for a good marriage - but their motivations and aspirations are both richly varied and illuminating of Regency society at a time when women could find security and status primarily at the altar. 

John Yorke asks whether Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy, two of the most illustrious and quick-witted partners in literary history, can find a love that transcends the strictures of the time. 

The programme features Dr Lucy Powell, lecturer in English at the University of Oxford, and Professor John Mullan from University College London. 
 
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 dramatized 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 Radio 4.
 
Contributor: Dr Lucy Powell, lecturer in English at the University of Oxford, and John Mullan, professor of English Literature at University College London 
Sound: Sean Kerwin
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
Producer: Geoff Bird
Reader: Rhiannon Neads
Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael 
 
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Pride and Prejudice - Episode Two

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has not only captured the hearts of generations of readers, it also helped change the way that novels are written. This most beloved tale of Regency romance, featuring the brilliantly quick-witted Elizabeth Bennett and the haughty figure of Fitzwilliam Darcy, allows us into its characters’ heads and hearts in newly sophisticated ways that set the template for so much of the fiction that followed. In this, the first of two parts focusing on Austen’s most popular novel, John Yorke examines how a book she described as ‘too light, and bright, and sparkling’ retains a special place and a special importance in the history of English literature. 

The programme features leading Austen expert John Mullan, professor of English Literature at UCL, and Dr Lucy Powell, lecturer in English at the University of Oxford. 
 
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 Radio 4.
 
Contributors: John Mullan, professor of English Literature at UCL and Dr Lucy Powell, University of Oxford
Sound: Sean Kerwin
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
Producer: Geoff Bird
Reader: Rhiannon Neads
Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael 
 
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Pride and Prejudice - Episode One

According to its introduction, The Princess Bride is a long, sprawling book by the great Florinese writer S. Morgenstern that renowned screenwriter and novelist William Goldman has been obliged to abridge so that his son doesn’t have to struggle through all the boring bits. 

But as John Yorke reveals, all is not as it seems in this metafictional novel from 1973 that Goldman himself went on to adapt into a screenplay for a much-loved film. The Princess Bride may ostensibly be a fairy story, but there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface. 

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.

Natalie Haynes is a classicist, broadcaster and author of books including A Thousand Ships and Stone Blind.
Stephen Keyworth is a writer and director who has adapted two of William Goldman’s novels – The Princess Bride and Marathon Man – for Radio 4. 
Interview with William Goldman, BBC Radio 3 Third Ear, March 1988 

Reader: Riley Neldam
Music: Torquil MacLeod
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
Sound: Sean Kerwin
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

The Princess Bride

John Yorke takes a look at an enduring classic of children’s literature, The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Published in 1908, The Wind In The Willows is about nature – both human and animal. It is, on the face of it, a children’s book packed with beloved characters. But hidden beneath the bucolic adventures and Grahame’s beautiful evocation of the landscape, there is a desperate longing to escape the stresses of wide world into the peace and freedom of the natural world - a longing that ran through Kenneth Grahame’s life. His life was claustrophobic, the story – like the countryside - offers space to breathe. 

Kenneth Grahame said of his own writing, “You must please remember that a theme, a thesis, is in most cases little more than a sort of clothes line on which one pegs a string of ideas, quotations, allusions and so on, one’s mental undergarments of all shapes and sizes, some possibly fairly new but most rather old and patched; and they dance and sway in the breeze and flap and flutter, or hang limp and lifeless; and some are ordinary enough, and some are of a private and intimate shape, and rather give the owner away, and show up his or her peculiarities.”

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.

Producer: Laura Grimshaw
Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael 
Reader: Toby Hadoke
Guests: Elisabeth Galvin and David Gooderson
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Programme Hub Co-ordinators: Nina Semple and Dawn Williams
Sound: Sean Kerwin
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

The Wind in the Willows

Jane Austen’s novel, Northanger Abbey, was the first full book she wrote. She was in her early 20s at the time and it was accepted by a publisher but the novel wasn’t published in her lifetime. In this second episode John Yorke looks at the story behind the genesis of Northanger Abbey - how a young woman with only three years of formal education came to write such an accomplished work, what prompted her to write a satire of Gothic fiction, and why the book is also a hymn of praise to the novel form itself.

Jane may not have spent much time in school but her voracious love of reading, her prodigious memory and understanding of other writers’ techniques meant that she was entertaining the family with her own stories and plays from an early age. After leaving school at 11, her real education began - self-education. With the encouragement of her father, the availability of subscription libraries which made reading possible for all purses, and a lot of writing practice, she would develop into one of Britain’s finest writers.

Sadly, her story is also one of disappointment and neglect. Despite the publisher’s promise, Jane’s novel, finished when she was 24, would have to languish for nearly 20 years before it finally saw the light of day, six months after her death.

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: Emma Clery, Literary Critic and Cultural Historian, Professor of English Literature at the Uppsala University, Sweden, and author of Jane Austen: The Banker’s Sister.

Rebecca Romney, author of Jane Austen’s Bookshelf.

Reader: Esme Scarborough
Production Hub Coordinators: Nina Semple, Dawn Williams
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Sound: Iain Hunter
Producer: Kate McAll
Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Northanger Abbey - Episode Two

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

Kafka's The Trial

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