Opening Lines

In the series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work, John Yorke explores Graham Greene’s dark, comic classic, Our Man in Havana.

Set in pre-revolutionary Cuba, Our Man in Havana is a comic spy caper with a dark heart. In this the second episode on the novel, John considers what impact the place had on the work, and how Greene’s fictional locations became known as ‘Greeneland’. He also examines how Greene’s attitude to the question of loyalty, a recurring theme in his writing, is central to this book.

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:

Credits:

Produced by Alison Vernon-Smith

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 Graham Greene’s classic dark comedy, Our Man in Havana.

Greene was already an established and successful novelist and screenwriter by the time he wrote Our Man in Havana and, in this first of two episodes about the book, John looks at the plot of what became a classic comedy thriller and at how deftly Greene outlined his characters. The book is set in pre-revolutionary Havana and John also hears how the political situation coloured his writing and how the target of Greene’s work was an organisation that was very familiar to him - British Intelligence.

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:

Credits:

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke looks at the short story The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern. It’s Christmas Eve and George Pratt is contemplating suicide when a stranger appears almost by magic, and grants George a wish, that he’d never been born.

When Stern wrote the story in 1943, he could find no one who wanted to publish it so he sent it out to friends as a Christmas card. One of those cards found its way to Frank Capra, one of the great film directors of the 1940s, and became a film that now defines Christmas for many people.

John shares a lifetime of experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the secrets behind the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. He has been working in television and radio for nearly 30 years. 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:

Credits:

Produced by Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke takes a look at Tove Jansson's magical 1946 novel Comet In Moominland.

Comet In Moominland is the second Moomin book and it’s a classic children’s tale. A comet is heading straight for earth, indeed to Moomin valley - so Moomintroll and his best friend Sniff head off on an adventure to try and do something about it. Their journey is eventful; they meet lots of new people and make lots of new friends but remain focussed on their mission to find out more about these faceless dangers, and get back home to Moominmama and Moominpapa and the warmth, safety and cake they offer.

Tove Jansson was an acclaimed author, artist and illustrator. She was prolific in all these forms, writing 12 adult novels, many short stories, and producing illustrations throughout her life, but it is the Moomin characters and stories that endure. They are one of Finland’s biggest literary exports - translated into over 50 languages. In this episode, John Yorke asks where these fantastical characters come from, what is it about them that struck such a chord, and why do they remain so popular today.

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:

Producer: Laura Grimshaw

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke takes a look at A Grain of Wheat, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s groundbreaking book about the lead up to Kenyan Independence. Published in 1966 as part of the Heineman African Writers Series, A Grain of Wheat offers an authentic insight into Kenya’s Land and Freedom Army rebellion (better known in Britain as the Mau Mau) and its brutal suppression by British colonial authorities. Told from the perspective of various Kikuyu characters living in Kenya’s central highlands, it is set in the four days leading up to the hard-won Uhuru, or Independence celebrations. But through flashbacks, we also learn of what has happened in the decade prior to that; how characters have been sent to detention centres, or held in concentration camps, resisted British authorities, or collaborated with them. Now, on the eve of change, it is time for reflections and recriminations.

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:

Credits:

Readings: Patrick Gatua

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke shines a light on the dark, claustrophobic pages of Manuel Puig’s classic 1976 novel Kiss of the Spiderwoman, that went on to become a play, a musical and an Oscar-winning film.

Puig wrote the novel, which focuses on the relationship between a gay window dresser and a revolutionary political prisoner, having fled the ruling military dictatorship in Argentina. John shows how the book celebrates the power not only of human connection but also the imagination, as the two central characters - stripped of so much by way of physical comfort - escape the gloom of their cell through lengthy retellings of classic Hollywood films.

The novel itself couldn’t escape censure, and was banned in Argentina until 1983.

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 - his students have had 17 green-lights in the last two years alone.

Contributors:

Credits:

Reader: Luciano Dodero

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

A Many-Splendoured Thin’, by the Eurasian author and doctor Han Suyin, was an instant hit in Britain and the States on its publication in 1952. Set in Hong Kong between 1949 and 1950, it’s a lightly fictionalised account of the author’s own passionate and transformative love affair.

The protagonist mirrors Han Suyin, herself – a Eurasian doctor originally from mainland China, born to a Chinese father and a Belgian mother. In real life, Han Suyin fell in love with an Australian war correspondent who, in the novel, becomes an Englishman, Mark Elliott.

In the second of two episodes, John explores Han’s other love affair, with China itself. He explains that A Many-Splendoured Thing is no longer in print and that this can be seen in the light of Han Suyin having been, for a long time, a passionate advocate of communism in China, which she saw as an improvement on the brutalities she had witnessed in feudal China. This resulted in her and her books falling out of favour as the horrors of the Cultural Revolution became fully apparent .

However, John believes it’s well worth tracking down a copy, as the novel tackles both the complexities of a cross cultural affair in 1949, and offers us a personal and nuanced portrait of a period of extreme political upheaval.

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.

Credits:

Contributors:

Reader: Chipo Chung

Producer: Penny Boreham

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

The novel A Many-Splendoured Thing, by the Eurasian author and doctor Han Suyin, was an instant hit in Britain and the States on its publication in 1952. Set in Hong Kong between 1949 and 1950, it’s a lightly fictionalised account of the author’s own passionate and transformative love affair. The protagonist mirrors Han Suyin, herself – a Eurasian doctor originally from mainland China, born to a Chinese father and a Belgian mother. In real life Han Suyin fell in love with an Australian war correspondent who, in the novel, becomes an Englishman, Mark Elliott.

The book was quickly snapped up by Hollywood and released as Love is A Many Splendoured Thing in 1955.

In the first of two episodes, John Yorke urges us to read the book as, in his opinion, the film misses the nuance, subtlety and interest of the novel.

This, he says, is because the book, through a huge and complex array of secondary characters and vivid descriptions, reveals so much about a pivotal point in history – a time when scores of refugees were making their home in Hong Kong, leaving mainland China to escape the inevitable defeat of the national government by the communists. John also explores the way Han Suyin’s honest revelations about her contradictory feelings within the love affair give the novel a huge emotional charge and offer a window into her own journey towards self-determination.

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.

Credits:

Contributors:

Reader: Chipo Chung

Producer: Penny Boreham

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke looks at The Manxman by the Sir Thomas Hall Caine, a love story set on the Isle of Man. The novel broke sales records and changed the book industry forever when it was published in 1894. Hall Caine was globally famous, hugely successful, adored by readers and feted by royalty. The story was adapted for film by Alfred Hitchcock, translated into 12 languages and performed on stage. Yet today, The Manxman and Hall Caine are almost completely forgotten.

John looks at this hugely successful Victorian melodrama, to discover a curiously powerful story, set in a location rarely found in literature, that has plenty of resonance for audiences today.

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.

Contributors:

Readings by Stephen Bent.

Researcher: Nina Semple

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke explores a work that every Italian will know – I Promessi Sposi by Alessandro Manzoni, known in English as The Betrothed.

In this the second of two episodes, John looks at the context for the story told by Manzoni in The Betrothed. Written in the early 19th century, and set in the 17th century, at a time before Italy became a unified country, Manzoni deliberately used a historical period to comment on the political situation of his time. When he was writing, the Italian peninsula was under Austrian rule, and to criticise those in charge meant a likely jail sentence. So he wrote about a time when the rulers were Spanish, with obvious parallels.

The novel deals with the issues of war, failures of leadership, conflict between classes, social unrest, religion, and gives a vivid description of a plague which devastated the population.

It’s a novel which had resonance for readers in the 19th century when it was first published and, as John discovers, also for contemporary readers today.

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 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.

Reader: Marco Gambino

The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni, translated by Michael F. Moore, The Modern Library New York

Produced by Mark Rickards

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4