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.

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Produced by Caroline Raphael

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4