Anthony Curtis presents a series of eight programmes on the novel since the war.
1: The Death of the Novel?
What was the state of the novel in 1945? According to Cyril Connolly , the form ' needed to be re-invented from the beginning.' In the event, the novel received a new vitality by abandoning literary experiment and reverting to its traditionai forms and concerns.
ANTHONY CURTIS looks at the works of Henry Green and William Cooper , writers whose novels were to point to two of the main directions of English fiction in the 50s and 60s. Extracts read by ELIZABETH PROUD and GAVIN CAMPBELL Producer FRANCES DONNELLY long wave only