The first of five stories to gobble you up from Angela Carter's iconic collection of fairy stories.

Angela begins by re-telling of the story of Bluebeard.

A young pianist marries a wealthy aristocrat, a Marquis, much older than herself and with three previous wives, all mysteriously deceased.

Finding herself alone in the empty castle, with nothing to do but play the piano, she cannot resist entering the one room the Marquis has forbidden to her.

At the time of writing The Bloody Chamber in the late 1970s, Carter was disaffected by both sides of the feminist debate. She re-worked traditional fairy tales from her own unique, literary outsider’s point of view, putting women at the centre of the stories.

With their feisty heroines and rgiastic mash-up of beasts, shape-shifters and ghouls, her extraordinary tales are the most perfect example of her style, not just for her incomparable prose, but also in the dizzying twists and turns of perception, fantasy and myth.

Controversially influenced by De Sade, she embraced the erotic, explored our deepest and darkest urges, and subverted the roles of hunter and prey, master and mistress so that, instead of male sexuality, it is the female that becomes transgressive and powerful.

Dramatised by Olivia Hetreed.

Anne ....... Sophie Cookson
The Marquis ....... Jasper Britton
Mother ....... Rakie Ayola
Jean Yves ....... Nigel Pilkiington

Sound Design: Lucinda Mason Brown

Director: Fiona McAlpine

An Allegra production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in September 2018. Show less