Four literary portraits from Omnibus.

This week: Thomas Mann - The Fight Against Death
with Peter Barkworth as Thomas Mann and Peter Woodthorpe as Cipolla the Magician in 'Mario and the Magician'

A small seaside town in Mussolini's Italy and the arrival of a visiting 'magician'... but what happens when he gives a performance... and what dark areas of the mind are opened up, what powers are set to work?
The sinister events that occur that night are the subject of Thomas Mann's short story, Mario and the Magician, adapted for this programme, first shown two years ago, to mark the 1975 centenary of the birth of one of the literary giants of the 20th century - Thomas Mann, writer and moralist. How far, the programme asks, does what he wrote ring true today?
Narrator Michael Smee

"Television drama documentary at its very best" (The Observer)