About this podcast
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.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 142 episodes
- Gulliver's Travels - Episode Two · 14 minJohn Yorke looks at the second half of Jonathan’s Swift’s 1726 novel Gulliver’s Travels, taking in Gulliver’s voyages to the floating island of Laputa and to the land of the…
- Gulliver's Travels - Episode One · 14 minJohn Yorke looks at the first two parts of Jonathan’s Swift’s 1726 novel Gulliver’s Travels. Gulliver’s voyages to Lilliput and to Brobdingnag are the ones that will be familiar…
- Celtic Christie: Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? · 14 minA dying man’s final, puzzling question - “Why didn’t they ask Evans?” – provides the title for Agatha Christie’s 1934 novel. What singles this book out is that the investigation…
- The Things They Carried · 14 minJohn Yorke explores The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, novelist and veteran of the Vietnam War. Published in 1990 it’s a collection of interlinked stories about a platoon of…
- Midnight Cowboy · 14 minMidnight Cowboy, a 1965 novel by the American writer James Leo Herlihy, is best known to most for its film adaptation, starring Jon Voight as Joe Buck – a naïve dreamer from…
- Libra - Episode Two · 14 minFor the 100th title to be explored in Opening Lines, John Yorke picks up the 1988 novel Libra by the heavyweight American writer, Don DeLillo. In this second episode considering…
- Libra - Episode One · 14 minFor the 100th title to be explored in Opening Lines, John Yorke picks up the 1998 novel Libra by the heavyweight American writer, Don DeLillo. The book centres around the…
- Trouble in Mind · 14 minAlice Childress’s first major work is set in a world that she knew very well both as a performer and a writer – the theatre. It’s 1957 and rehearsals are beginning for a new…
- They Shoot Horses, Don't They? · 14 minThey Shoot Horses, Don’t They? takes us into the strange and brutal world of dance marathon competitions dating from the Great Depression in America. It follows Robert and…
- Anna Christie - Episode 2 · 14 minIn this second episode, John Yorke digs deeper into Euguene O’Neill’s 1921 play “Anna Christie” – about an estranged daughter who is reunited with her sea captain father, and…
- Anna Christie - Episode 1 · 14 minIn the first of two episodes, John Yorke looks at “Anna Christie” by Eugene O’Neill - one of American theatre’s founding fathers, and the only American dramatist to have been…
- Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog · 14 minJohn Yorke examines Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, ten semi-autobiographical short stories in which Dylan Thomas looks back and observes himself growing into the artist –…
- Moon Tiger · 14 minWriter Penelope Lively’s enduring themes are the connections and interplay between memory, history and time. Nowhere is this more compelling than in Moon Tiger, published in 1987…
- Don Quixote - Episode Two · 14 minJohn Yorke explores why Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes has had such a profound influence on storytelling in the 400 years since it was published in 1605. ‘Like Shakespeare…
- Don Quixote - Episode One · 15 minJohn Yorke explores why Don Quixote has had such a profound influence on storytelling in the four hundred years since it was published. The first European novel, it’s an epic…
- Transcription · 14 minJohn Yorke takes a look at Transcription by Kate Atkinson. First published in 2018, Transcription tells the story of three different time periods in the life of our protagonist…
- Celebrating Stoppard · 15 minTom Stoppard was of course best known for his work writing for stage and screen - but the dramas he created for radio were also an extremely important part of his career and his…
- Flight - Episode Two · 14 minFlight by Walter White, published in 1926, asks questions about race and identity when its central character chooses to ‘pass’ as a white woman. In this second episode about the…
- Flight - Episode One · 14 minFlight was the second novel by one of twentieth century’s America’s most influential figures, Walter White. Published in 1926, it asks questions about race and identity when its…
- My Antonia · 14 minJohn Yorke explores themes of loss, longing and the founding of America, in Willa Cather’s innovative novel, My Ántonia. A milestone in American literature, the novel’s heroine…
