Opening Lines - A Room With a View - Episode 1
Download A Room With a View - Episode 1
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.
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:
Alison Hennegan, former Director of Studies in English, Trinity Hall Cambridge
Sarah Winman, novelist
Reading by Sarah Winman
Credits: A Room with a View by E M Forster, first published by Edward Arnold 1908
Produced by Jane Greenwood
Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael
Sound by Sean Kerwin
Researcher Nina Semple
Production Manager Sarah Wright
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4
Published on Sunday, 21st May 2023.
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