Opening Lines

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...

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 th...

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 enduri...

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 huma...

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 Ve...

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...

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...

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 Pi...

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 Pi...

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-ch...

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 misunderstan...

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 come...

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke examines what lies at the heart of Tolstoy’s great novel Anna Karenina. ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ It’s one of the most famous opening lines in world literature, and the book has been called the greatest novel ever written. First published in 1878, and translat...

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke explores the themes at the heart of Leo Tolstoy’s great nineteenth century novel, Anna Karenina. In the second of three episodes, John looks at the secondary great love story in the novel, that of Kitty and Levin, and how it is built into and reflects the structure of the story. As Anna and Vronksy’s affair play...

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 it...

John Yorke explores one of Shakespeare's best loved comedies, Twelfth Night. In the second of two episodes, he explores the setting of the play and how the whole plot turns on the ambiguities thrown up by a woman dressed as a man. We’re introduced to characters who fall in love with each other in a confusion of misplaced desire. Viola is shipwrecked in a strange land and has lost her twin brother...

John Yorke explores one of Shakespeare's best loved comedies, Twelfth Night. In the first of two episodes, he untangles a complex plot and shows how we can still find it funny. But is it really a comedy? John finds sadness behind the laughter in a play that ends with a melancholic song as the rain begins to fall. We're introduced to characters who fall in love with each other in a confusion of mis...

Somewhere between autobiography, memoir and novel, the Irish writer and poet Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy was published in 1958. It’s the story of the teenaged Behan’s three years in an English Borstal – the youth detention centres of their day. As an Irish Republican, Behan’s views of the English are challenged, relationships are formed, and his journey to becoming one of the most celebrated write...

John Yorke takes a look at Ian McEwan’s 1997 complex thriller Enduring Love. It's a bold novel, set in the aftermath of a tragic accident, but the substance of the story is formed from a beautifully simple yet complex premise – everyone sees that accident in a totally different way. The central character, Joe Rose, is stalked by a stranger, Jed Parry, whom he meets purely by chance at the scene of...

John Yorke examines Victor Nekrasov’s novel Kira Georgievna, a bestseller in 1960s Russia. Set in Moscow, Kyiv and rural Ukraine, the eponymous Kira Georgievna is a successful middle-aged sculptor, originally from Kyiv, who must choose between three different lovers. She’s married to a much older painter while also enjoying a casual affair with a young man who’s working for her as a model. But Kir...

John Yorke takes a look at Aldous Huxley’s 1923 satirical novel, Antic Hay. It's a comic novel, set in post-war London and a wicked satire on the glittering hedonism of the 1920s. It tells the story of a collection of upper middle-class characters desperately trying to find meaning in their lives after the catastrophe of the First World War. Aldous Huxley is most famous for his classic dystopian s...

John Yorke delves into James Hogg’s masterpiece of Gothic horror, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Presented as a ‘found document’, the confessions give a chilling insight into the mind of a murderer. This novel is a horror story, a mystery thriller, a psychological study of religious extremism, and at its heart lurks a serial killer. Despite being first published in 1824...

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke examines Porgy by Edwin DuBose Heyward. Porgy was published in 1925 and concerns the love affair between Porgy and Bess. Set within the poor black community of Charleston, South Carolina, the book was later adapted into the blockbuster musical Porgy and Bess. The writer Du Bose Heyward was white and, ever since...

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke examines Porgy by Edwin DuBose Heyward. Published in 1925, Porgy was an immediate hit and was later adapted both for the stage and the blockbuster musical Porgy and Bess. In this first of two episodes about Porgy, John looks at the story at the heart of the original novel and the background of the remarkable man...

John Yorke looks at Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 stage play Gaslight.  A big hit on London’s Shaftesbury Avenue and an even bigger success on Broadway, Patrick Hamilton’s drama of the mental abuse of Bella Manningham by her husband Jack lives on, sometimes unacknowledged, as the source of the term Gaslighting - one person’s attempt to make another doubt their sanity.     Best known for his novels such...