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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 was Jane Austen’s first book, although it wasn’t published until after her death. It tells the story of Catherine Morland, an impressionable young woman who is introduced to fashionable society when she’s taken by a wealthy neighbour to Bath. There, Catherine’s imagination catches fire when she’s initiated into the thrills of Gothic fiction by new friend, Isabella Thorpe – a pretty, charming but devious gold digger.

Another great reader of Gothic novels is ‘not quite handsome but very near it’ Henry Tilney, whom Catherine finds enchanting. When Henry invites Catherine to stay at Northanger Abbey, the home of his father, General Tilney, she imagines secret passages, haunted catacombs and an evil secret. Catherine does indeed find something wicked at the Abbey but not in the way she expects.

In this first of two episodes John Yorke explores the dual nature of the book - part satire on Gothic fiction and part celebration of the novel form.

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 and Dawn Williams Researcher: Henry Tydeman Sound: Iain Hunter Producer: Kate McAll Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

When Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto in 1764, novels as a form were still in their infancy. Many tended to be long-winded works, instructing readers on how to live a moral life.

With this short and fast-paced rollercoaster of a book, Walpole blew that idea out of the water, introducing his audience to a completely new kind of fiction, featuring supernatural happenings, suspense, and a young woman fleeing an evil villain down a dark corridor with a candle that blows out at the vital moment - all the elements of what we now call Gothic fiction.

Prompting both a moral panic and a rush on sales, The Castle of Otranto would prove inspirational to many future writers, including Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein and Jane Austen who would both parody and celebrate the Gothic in her novel Northanger Abbey.

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.

Contributor: Emma Clery, Professor of English Literature at the Uppsala University, Sweden. Editor of The Castle of Otranto (1996), and author of The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762 -1800

Reader: Paul Dodgson Production Hub Coordinator: Nina Semple Researcher: Henry Tydeman Sound: Iain Hunter Producer: Kate McAll Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

In the winter of 1847, the Star of the Sea sets sail from Ireland for New York. Among the refugees are a maidservant, a bankrupt aristocrat, an aspiring novelist and a maker of revolutionary ballads. It reads like a Victorian gothic novel, with murder and intrigue at its heart.

Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor was published in 2002 and attracted multiple plaudits as well as literary awards. O’Connor talks about the shocked response from his publishers when he proposed writing a novel about the Irish Famine and we learn how real facts are woven skilfully into fiction.

Novelist Colm Tóibín explains how there are elements of pastiche in Star of the Sea and how it’s written like a 19th century novel. He also states that, at a time when the Irish narrative was being re-imagined, even the great Irish playwrights such as Sean O’Casey didn’t write about the Famine.

At the heart of the story is the threatening figure of Pius Mulvey – the balladeer and adventurer. Known as ‘The Monster’, Mulvey stalks the decks of the ship like some kind of embodiment of the tragedy that has overtaken the old country. We hear about the tragic and human stories within this novel into which O’Connor is also able weave humour and a propulsive narrative.

John Yorke explains that the skill of this novel is that, with the aid of eyewitness accounts, historical documents, letters home, passenger manifests and Captain’s logs, O’Connor unravels the extraordinary relationships at the book’s heart by re-stitching them into a grander tapestry – that of a terrible horror, long hidden, central to a nation’s heart.

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.

Contributor: Colm Tóibín, bestselling writer

Extracts from: The Arts Show, BBC Radio Ulster with Marie Louise Muir, 16 August 2007 Reading from Star of the Sea by Peter Marinker, from the audiobook of the same title published by W.F. Howes Ltd, 2011

Star of the Sea published in 2002 by Secker and Warburg

Sound: Sean Kerwin Researcher: Henry Tydeman Production Hub Coordinator: Nina Semple Producer: Belinda Naylor Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke looks at the background to A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian and assesses the appeal of this worldwide best seller by Marina Lewycka. Two feuding sisters unite to thwart their newly widowed father’s impending marriage to Valentina - a voluptuous gold-digger from Ukraine who loves green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine and who’ll stop at nothing in her single-minded pursuit of the luxurious Western lifestyle she dreams of.

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: Professor Andrew Wilson, Professor of Ukrainian studies at University College London and author of ‘The Ukrainians’

Archive: Radio 4 – Marina Lewycka on 'Book Club', 8th January 2015

Readings from A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian: Marina Lewycka (Penguin Essentials, 71), 2017

Reader: Janet Ellis Producer: Alison Vernon-Smith Sound: Sean Kerwin Researcher Henry Tydeman Production Hub Coordinator: Nina Semple Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke looks at The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov’s final play and a landmark in 20th century theatre.

It’s 1903 and Liubov Andryeevna Ranyevskaya has returned to the family estate in southern Russia. As the head of this aristocratic household she faces a dilemma. The family is in serious financial difficulty and they have the choice of either selling the entire estate, or accepting the proposal of local businessman, Lopakhin, to cut down their beloved cherry orchard to make way for holiday homes and use the money to pay their debts.

In the second of two episodes, John looks at how Chekhov’s use of ambiguity, his skilful combination of comic and tragic elements, and his rejection of naturalism represent a departure from his previous work and were to prove so influential in the development of 20th century theatre.

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 Radio 4.

Contributors: Simon Russell Beale, whose long and distinguished acting career has seen him play many roles, including his performance as Lopakhin in a 2009 production of The Cherry Orchard at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He also won an Olivier Award for his performance as Uncle Vanya in 2003. Rosamund Bartlett, a cultural historian with expertise in Russian literature, music, and art. Her books include Chekhov: Scenes from a Life and she has also translated and edited selections of his stories and letters. Benedict Andrews, director of an acclaimed production of The Cherry Orchard at the Donmar Warehouse in London in 2024.

Reader: Torquil MacLeod Closing music: Torquil MacLeod Sound: Sean Kerwin Researcher: Henry Tydeman Production Hub Coordinator: Nina Semple Producer: Torquil MacLeod Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke looks at The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov’s final play and a landmark in 20th century theatre.

It’s 1903 and Liubov Andryeevna Ranyevskaya is returning to the family estate in southern Russia. As the head of this aristocratic household, she faces a crisis. The family is in serious financial difficulty and it seems inevitable that the estate will have to be sold to pay their debts. A local businessman, Lopakhin, offers a solution, but it would mean the loss of their beloved cherry orchard.

In this first of two episodes, the focus is on these two main protagonists, who embody the tensions between the old aristocracy and the emerging merchant class, and the student Trofimov whose revolutionary ideas point prophetically towards the path that Russia was soon to take.

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: Benedict Andrews, director of an acclaimed production of The Cherry Orchard at the Donmar Warehouse in London in 2024 Rosamund Bartlett, a cultural historian with expertise in Russian literature, music and art. Her books include Chekhov: Scenes from a Life and she has also translated and edited selections of his stories and letters.

Excerpt taken from the BBC Radio 3/Palimpsest production of The Cherry Orchard, directed by Toby Swift, with Neil Dudgeon as Lopakhin and Saffron Coomber as Dunyasha. It was first broadcast on Radio 3 on 18th November 2018.

Music: Torquil MacLeod Sound: Sean Kerwin Researcher: Henry Tydeman Production Hub Coordinator: Nina Semple Producer: Torquil MacLeod Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Charles Darwin’s ideas changed our understanding of the world perhaps more than those of any other British scholar. His famous voyage on HMS Beagle ended in 1836, and he had developed his findings into his theories on evolution and natural selection within six years. It was not, however, until 1859 that he shared these revolutionary ideas with the public in On The Origin of Species, a book far different to the one he had intended to write.

In this episode of Opening Lines, John Yorke examines what finally led Darwin to write this pioneering work of popular science, and the impact it had upon his contemporaries.

The programme features evolutionary biologist Dr Tori Herridge of the University of Sheffield.

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 Radio 4.

Clip of Andrew Marr from ‘Great Britons: Darwin’ BBC2 (2002)

Sound: Sean Kerwin Researcher: Henry Tydeman Production Hub Coordinator: Nina Semple Producer: Geoff Bird Reader: Paul Dodgson Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke looks at Treasure Island, the great swash-buckling adventure by Robert Louis Stevenson that inspired almost every pirate tale to follow.

Stevenson wrote the story to amuse his stepson on a wet holiday in the Scottish Highlands, with the original title The Sea Cook. Looking back at his time as a boy, narrator Jim Hawkins recounts his thrilling adventures on land and at sea in the pursuit of buried treasure, and we discover that the sea cook is none other than archetypal pirate Long John Silver, one-legged and with a parrot on his shoulder, one of Stevenson’s great literary creations.

John Yorke argues that Treasure Island has a profound and lasting impact even in the age of Minecraft, Reality TV and YouTube length dramas, and in this episode of Opening Lines he will explain why.

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.

Contributor: Louise Welsh, author and Professor of Creative Writing, Glasgow University

Extracts from: Michael Morpurgo, Twice Upon a Time podcast produced by Hat Trick Productions Ltd, 2022 Claire Harman, BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives, 2005

Reader: Crawford Logan Sound: Sean Kerwin Researcher: Henry Tydeman Production Hub Coordinator: Nina Semple Producer: Mark Rickards Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

In the months that followed the end of the Second World War, very few people in the West knew the true power of the atomic weaponry that had forced the Japanese surrender. John Hersey’s article Hiroshima would change that.

Released a year after the bombs were dropped, the New Yorker piece was journalistic dynamite and sold out in hours. Published in one instalment - taking up the whole edition of the magazine - Hersey’s meticulous and unflinching account of what happened after the atom bomb detonated brought home the horror of atomic weaponry to the world and changed journalism in the process.

John Yorke speaks to Janine di Giovanni, award winning war reporter and founder of The Reckoning Project (a war crimes unit that operates in Ukraine and the Middle East) about how pivotal the article was and how it impacts her work today.

John has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and shares his experience with 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: Janine di Giovanni, war reporter and founder of The Reckoning Project. David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker John Hersey, author

Archive: The David Remnick audio, and the John Hersey interview (taken from the American Audio Prose Library interview conducted by Kay Bonetti Callison, 1988) were both originally broadcast as part of Hersey’s Hiroshima produced by Dora Productions Ltd, BBC Radio 4 2016.

Reader: Riley Neldam Sound: Sean Kerwin Researcher: Henry Tydeman Production Hub Coordinator: Nina Semple Producer: Tolly Robinson Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke takes a look at The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark. Published in 1963, two years after the success of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, it’s set in the summer of 1945. A group of young women live, love and lodge together in the shabby but respectable May of Teck Club in the months between VE Day and the ending of the war 99 days later with the final victory in Japan.

It’s a riveting yet disconcerting read - simple, yet knotty and complex, and it’s not at all about what it seems. With contributions from the writer AL Kennedy, John explores the pleasures of this short yet wonderfully satisfying novella.

John 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.

Contributor: A.L. Kennedy

Reader: Ruth Sillers Producer: Laura Grimshaw Executive Producer: Sara Davies Sound: Sean Kerwin Researcher: Henry Tydeman Production Hub Co-ordinator: Nina Semple

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4