Opening Lines

In December 1974, Bruce Chatwin headed south from Buenos Aires to write an account of his journey through Patagonia. On the surface it was based on a series of encounters with the dispossessed - exiles, refugees and outlaws and those who had made their home on the southernmost tip of South America - but Chatwin’s real interest lay in the internal journey behind their stories and the nature of human restlessness.

John Yorke looks at why his vivid prose and highly original style both startled and excited readers when it was published in 1977. It was to catapult Bruce Chatwin from a journalist to a much-feted writer and he went on to author a series of critically acclaimed books, including The Songlines and On the Black Hill.

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 on 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: Tom Glenister

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Hailed as the best non-fiction account of the city, Venice was published in 1960 and became an international best seller. It was the first in a series of city ‘portraits’ by Jan Morris that included Oxford, Hong Kong and Trieste. She went on to publish over 40 books including her monumental account of the British Empire, Pax Brittanica.

John Yorke delves into how Jan Morris defied boundaries in Venice and explores why Morris’ first impressions of the city in 1945 were so powerful to her. He also listens to other readers of Venice who talk about Morris’ vivid description and playful wit. And Jan Morris herself refers to the city of Venice as a touchstone in Conundrum, her account of her gender reassignment in the 1970s.

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/Saturday 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:

Archive clips of Jan Morris from Radio 4’s Bookclub, originally recorded in June 2008.

Researcher: Nina Semple

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke takes a look at Mother Courage and her Children, Bertolt Brecht’s play written in 1939 on the eve of World War Two.

Set in an earlier time when the Thirty Years War was raging across Europe, Mother Courage and her Children deals with some of the great themes of conflict and capitalism, looking at the way that one mother tries to survive with her family intact. Brecht grew up in Germany in the years after the First World War when the country was struggling with inflation running out of control. This difficult situation informed Brecht’s political views, and he supported the Communist ideals, although never actually joined the Communist Party.

Brecht also had a number of theories about theatre which John explores. The way he structured his plays meant that the audience would be told what was about to happen with the use of placards. So in Mother Courage, scene captions explain the action in advance at the start of each scene. He didn’t want us to identify too closely with the characters on stage believing that, if we do, we would be surrendering our own viewpoint. John Yorke looks at the emotional detachment that Brecht sought and asks if it really worked.

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:

Helene Weigel in "Brecht on Stage", (BBC / Open University, 1989)

Acting in the Sixties: extract from episode with Richard Burton conducted by film critic Kenneth Tynan, on the BBC in 1967

Producer: Mark Rickards

John Yorke takes a look at Mother Courage and her Children, Bertolt Brecht’s play written in 1939 on the eve of World War Two.

Set in an earlier time when the Thirty Years War was raging across Europe, Mother Courage and her Children deals with some of the great themes of conflict and capitalism, looking at the way that one mother tries to survive with her family intact. Brecht grew up in Germany in the years after the First World War when the country was struggling with inflation running out of control. This difficult situation informed Brecht’s political views, and he supported the Communist ideals, although never actually joined the Communist Party.

His work reflects his concerns about the nature of capitalism and war. Mother Courage focusses on a woman who wants to make a living selling goods to anyone who will buy them, regardless of allegiance. She has three children, and the play shows how one-by-one she loses each of her them to war. We see how her decisions contribute to her deaths of her children.

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:

Producer: Mark Rickards

John Yorke delves into Tim Winton’s beloved novel, Cloudstreet, published in 1991.

Set in a suburb of Perth in Western Australia, the novel spans the period from the end of the Second World War until the mid 1960s and made the young Winton, who wrote the book in his 20s, both a literary and popular phenomenon in his own country. It tells the story of two large white working class families – the Pickles and the Lambs - who experience separate catastrophes, and end up moving to the city to share a great, breathing, ramshackle house, No.1 Cloudstreet.

The novel was, and still is, one of the most beloved and popular Australian novels ever written but, in this second episode about Cloudstreet, John Yorke explores some of the controversy that has arisen in more recent years.

Many of those who love and admire the book for its true and loving depiction of white working class life - warts and all - do now also have reservations about the sheer absence of well-rounded indigenous characters in the book. Aboriginal characters are depicted as ‘no nation’ and solely ‘noble’, never more than angels and ghosts. There is one recurring aboriginal figure in Cloudstreet who Winton has since described as being ‘the conscience of the nation’.

In this episode, we hear Winton himself remarking that the way he depicts aboriginality in the book was ‘naïve’ and that he has since learned much more about indigenous culture. One of Australia’s most celebrated writers Kim Scott, who is the first indigenous writer to have won the prestigious Australian prize, the Miles Franklin award, shares his thoughts about Cloudstreet in this episode. He says "I do remember being struck by the (recurring) aboriginal character as a lamppost... and one can slam novelists for that, but I think it’s within the infrastructure of what literature and Australia allowed Tim, so perhaps it’s a tribute to him that here is an absence, here’s something that (Winton is saying) I can’t articulate but needs to be in the mix”.

John concludes that perhaps, in Cloudstreet , Tim Winton found a way - at a time when dialogues about the relationship between indigenous nations and white Australia were in their infancy - to show us how white Australians lived their lives alongside indigenous people but pretended they, and the underlying reality of pain and violence done to them, were invisible.

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 in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday/Saturday 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-

Contributors: Lyn McCredden, Professor Emerita, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia

Excerpt of Tim Winton from BBC World Book Club, 6th July 2017

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, 1991, Penguin Books, Australia.

Produced by Penny Boreham

John Yorke delves into Tim Winton’s beloved novel, Cloudstreet, published in 1991.

Set in a suburb of Perth in Western Australia, the novel spans the period from the end of the second world war until the mid 1960s and made the young Winton, who wrote the book in his 20s, both a literary and popular phenomenon in his own country. It tells the story of two large white working class families – the Pickles and the Lambs - who experience separate catastrophes, and end up moving to the city to share a great, breathing, ramshackle house, No.1 Cloudstreet.

In this first episode about Cloudstreet, John Yorke asks why this prize winning book, iconic in Australia, is so beloved. As the book charts the lives, loves, griefs, struggles and entanglements of the Pickles and Lamb families, he notices that the divine aspect of everyday experience is always present. There is a sacred framing to the novel, as Winton poignantly depicts human beings trying to survive tragedy and continue thriving, by keeping on loving.

John also examines how Winton’s own background, rooted as he is in the same area his characters emerge from, shines through and gives an added depth to the language and sense of place in the novel. Ultimately John reflects that the novel is both a hymn to and a critique of the country itself, suggesting that Winton is beginning to ask questions about what it means to live in a country where the indigenous people were largely invisible to their white Australian counterparts.

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 in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday/Saturday 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

Contributors:

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton, 1991, Penguin Books, Australia.

Produced by Penny Boreham

John Yorke takes a look at Caradog Prichard's ground-breaking novel, One Moonlit Night. First published in Welsh in 1961, it broke new ground for its portrayal of taboo subjects such as sexuality, suicide and mental illness. Thirty four years later it was translated into English by Philip Mitchell who described his first encounter with the material in the original Welsh as 'a mind-blowing, life-changing, world-shaking experience akin to being allowed for several hours to stare into the face of God.'

Set in a North Wales slate-mining village at the time of the first world war, the story appears to be simple - it's about a boy and how that boy's life falls apart. But the dreamlike vision of disintegration that Prichard weaves is layered and complex, as we realise that the child, apart from observing the peculiar adult goings-on in the village, is witnessing his mother lose her mind.

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:

Desert Island Discs : extract from episode with Maxine Peake, BBC R4 16th October 2022

Readings: Matthew Gravelle

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke continues his examination of E M Forster’s best-loved novel A Room with a View, first published in 1908.

Set in Florence and Surrey, A Room with a View is both a coming-of-age story and an intoxicating love story, as teenage Lucy Honeychurch has to choose between two very different men, and between following convention or following her heart. It is a book full of muddle and misunderstanding, as well as comedy and joy, as Lucy tries to make sense of her feelings and to work out how to be true to herself.

In this second programme, John is keen to find out how Forster’s own life ties in with A Room with a View. As a gay man in Edwardian England he was all too aware of the painful dilemma of loving someone you were not supposed to love. John also wants to know how the book reflects women’s lives in the early 20th century and why, nearly 120 years after it was first published, readers still enjoy this book so much.

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 dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday/Saturday Drama series.

Credits: A Room with a View by E M Forster, first published by Edward Arnold 1908

Produced by Jane Greenwood

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke examines E M Forster’s best-loved novel A Room with a View, first published in 1908.

Set in Florence and Surrey, A Room with a View is both a coming-of-age story and an intoxicating love story, as teenage Lucy Honeychurch has to choose between two very different men, and between following convention or following her heart. It's a book full of muddle and misunderstanding, as well as comedy and joy, as Lucy tries to make sense of her feelings and to work out how to be true to herself.

The book opens at the Pensione Bertolini, a guest house for respectable English tourists in Florence. Lucy has just arrived with her much older cousin, Charlotte Bartlett, who is a martyr and a fusspot, and one of Forster’s greatest comic creations. They are disappointed not to have the rooms with views of the River Arno they had been promised by the landlady.

In this first programme of two, John is keen to find out how Forster’s own experiences of travelling in Italy are reflected in the book, why his writing makes the novel such a pleasure to read, and why, nearly 120 years after it was first published, it still resonates with modern audiences.

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 in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday/Saturday Drama series.

Credits: A Room with a View by E M Forster, first published by Edward Arnold 1908

Produced by Jane Greenwood

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke explores Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, one of the world’s greatest novels.

In this third and final part on Anna Karenina, John focuses on Tolstoy and his world, in order to come to an understanding of the true sense of his achievement in writing a novel that has been at the forefront of world literature since its publication nearly 150 years ago.

The 1870s were a time of seismic social change in Russia and, in Anna Karenina, Tolstoy’s meticulous and subtle descriptions of the daily lives and concerns of his characters reflect his own turmoil in the face of a world that was in upheaval. ‘How does one live well?’ is the profound question at the heart of the novel.

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/Saturday 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 Lore Windemuth