Opening Lines

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

A classic of Italian literature, The Betrothed follows the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, who plan to marry, only to be thwarted by a Spanish noble, Don Rodrigo, who has his eye on Lucia.

Told against a backdrop of 17th century Lombardy, before Italy became a unified country, The Betrothed is a call for national unity as well as a compelling love story.

In this first of two episodes, John looks at the rich cast of characters which makes The Betrothed such a powerful read. He meets the local priest, Don Abbondio, who is supposed to wed Renzo and Lucia but is easily dissuaded under pressure from Don Rodrigo, the Nun of Monza whose life in a convent is not the one she would have chosen, and the ‘Nameless One’, a thug straight out of a Mafia playbook.

It's a novel with many twists and turns, and at times even the author admits that he may be giving his readers too much detail. But as John finds, there’s good reason to stick with the story and enjoy a novel which every Italian is likely to have encountered at school.

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.

Contributors:

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

John Yorke looks at the 1952 psychological suspense novel from French crime-writing team Boileau-Narcejac. The plot centres around travelling salesman Ferdinand Ravinel who conspires a plot with his mistress Lucienne to murder his wife. After the icily dark bathtub murder, Ravinel’s wife Lucienne’s body strangely disappears- and so begins Ravinel’s psychological unravelling.

Noted for the ingenuity of their plots and narrative twists, this was the first novella from duo Boileau-Narcejac. The pair are credited with creating an authentically French subgenre of crime fiction and a number of their works were adapted for the screen - She Who Was No More became the 1955 cinematic classic Les Diaboliques, followed by Alfred Hitchcock’s adaption of Vertigo in 1958.

John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he 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. 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:

Readings by Matthew Gravelle

Credits

Produced by Lucy Hough

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Originally composed about 2000 years ago, the Mahabharata is one of the world’s greatest pieces of storytelling, as well as a foundational Hindu text. Woven through its central account of a great dynastic family conflict and bloody war is the story of the gods and their relationship to humankind, as well as spiritual, philosophical and practical instruction about how to live one’s life in the best possible way.

In the second of two episodes about the Mahabharata, John asks why and how this 2000 year-old epic still resonates so strongly, what makes it such rich territory for modern re-tellings, and looks at some of its universal themes.

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:

Readers:

Producers: Sara Davies & Tolly Robinson

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

Originally composed about 2000 years ago, the Mahabharata is one of the world’s greatest pieces of storytelling, as well as a foundational Hindu text. Woven through its central account of a great dynastic family conflict and bloody war is the story of the gods and their relationship to humankind, as well as spiritual, philosophical and practical instruction about how to live one’s life in the best possible way.

In the first of two episodes about the this epic poem, John looks at how the central story of the conflict between two branches of the great Bharata family gives the work its extraordinary and gripping dramatic impact.

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:

Jatinder Verma, founder of Tara Arts, theatre director and Director of Mahabharata Now, BBC Radio 4

Readers:

Producers: Sara Davies and Tolly Robinson

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke continues his exploration of Lark Rise to Candleford, Flora Thompson’s much-loved account of rural life.

Lark Rise to Candleford is one of our best loved evocations of rural England, but it is also an evocation of rural poverty, and of the emerging opportunities for young women as a new century dawned.

It tells the story of a girl growing up in a poor rural hamlet in rural Oxfordshire in the 1880s. Eventually she moves to the village of Candleford Green to begin her adult life working in a post office, and her story frames the larger one of Britain at the end of the 19th century, facing seismic social change.

In this second episode, John explores how the journey made by the central character in the book, Laura Timmins, reflects Flora Thompson’s own journey from a country childhood to the world of work and wider society. He wants to know how Lark Rise to Candleford echoes the rapid social changes taking place at the end of the 19th century, specifically the growth of towns and the opportunities they offered for new forms of employment and leisure. Flora Thompson’s book is unusual because it gives a female perspective to life at the turn of the 20th century; John is keen to find out how poor women’s horizons broadened as they started to glimpse the possibility of lives beyond marriage, motherhood or a job in domestic service.

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.

Credits: Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson, Oxford University Press, 1945

Produced by Jane Greenwood

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke explores Lark Rise to Candleford, Flora Thompson’s much-loved account of rural life.

Lark Rise to Candleford is one of our best loved evocations of rural England, but it's also an evocation of rural poverty, and of the emerging opportunities for young women as a new century dawned.

It tells the story of a girl growing up in a poor rural hamlet in rural Oxfordshire in the 1880s. Eventually she moves to the village of Candleford Green to begin her adult life working in a post office, and her story frames the larger one of Britain at the end of the 19th century, facing seismic social change.

In this first of two episodes, John is keen to explore the puzzle of what sort of book Lark Rise to Candleford is. It appears to be an autobiographical social history of rural England at the close of the 19th century, but at the heart of it is a fictional character, Laura Timmins. And he wants to find out more about how Flora Thompson, a woman who left school at 14 after a rudimentary education, went on to write an instant bestseller which has become one of the 20th century’s most enduring classics.

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.

Credits: Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson, Oxford University Press, 1945

Produced by Jane Greenwood

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke takes a look at If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, a novel by one of the most translated Italian writers of the 20th century, Italo Calvino. Published in 1979, this dizzying work of metafiction takes you on a journey into the very nature of reading.

The novel begins with you, the Reader, going into a bookshop to buy a copy of If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You start reading, and you're just getting gripped by the story when there seems to be a printer's error. You take the book back to the shop for a replacement, but the replacement seems to be a totally different story.

In fact, every time you try to find the story you started reading, you end up with a completely different one, in a completely different genre - from noirish detective story, to romance, adventure, political intrigue and Gothic horror. The one thing that all these stories have in common is that they end at a cliffhanger moment. It's a literary puzzle, which challenges conventions at every turn, and constantly seeks to engage the reader's imagination.

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:

Readings: Paul Dodgson

John Yorke takes a look at Alexis de Tocqueville’s seminal work, Democracy in America. First published in 1835, it is arguably one of the most influential books ever to pervade American public discourse, quoted by almost every political leader - both from the red side and the blue.

It’s a two-volume work (the second volume was published in 1840) that explores American society through the eyes of a young aristocrat from revolutionary France. He was convinced that democratic rule was as inevitable as the march of time, and looking to the American democratic project - then still in its infancy - for lessons to take home.

De Tocqueville explores the notion of equality - its advantages and potential pitfalls - through the lenses of philosophy, of literature, of religion, of politics, wringing ideas out of them as he holds them up to the light.

And what he finds holds relevance for those of us trying to understand America today. Its praise and its criticisms help remind us that, for all its fault-lines at its worst, at its best America is still a shining ideal.

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: Tom Glenister

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke considers Alexander Dumas' great swashbuckler, The Three Musketeers, and his creation of a classic hero in D'Artagnan and an unforgettable villain in Milady de Winter.

In the second of two episodes about the book, John examines how Dumas created this enduring page-turner. He also looks at aspects of the novel that are sometimes overlooked - its wit and humour as well as some very dark passages.

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

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work.

John Yorke examines Alexander Dumas’ classic, The Three Musketeers. It's one of Dumas' most famous works and contains one of literature's greatest heroes in D'Artagnan and one its most dastardly villains in Milady De Winter.

In the first of two episodes about the book, John shows us how Dumas was able to create such enduring characters that have lived in the public imagination for almost 200 years. The names of the Musketeers themselves - Athos, Porthos, and Aramis - are familiar to people who've never read the actual book but seen one of the many film and TV adaptations. The novel mixes real historical figures with fictional creations, and John explores how closely Dumas remained true to the reality of the world he was portraying.

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:

Produced by Alison Vernon-Smith

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4