with Eleanor Bron as George Sand, Robert Powell as Chopin
"We were treated like outcasts at Majorca, because of Chopin's cough and also because we did not go to church. I should have to write ten volumes to give you an idea of the cowardice, deceit, stupidity and spite of this stupid, thieving and bigoted race." (George Sand)
The novelist George Sand and the composer Fryderyk Chopin went to Majorca at the height of their love affair in 1838. What happened there was as dramatic as any of the scenes in her own romantic novels. It never stopped raining and their lodgings turned out to be in a damp, echoing monastery. Yet she wrote some of her most celebrated words while they were on the island, and Chopin wrote music which 'smelt of paradise'. Their story is narrated by Peter Barkworth
(Re-broadcast Friday 11.0am LW)
Hear This! page 25 and Woddis On: page 97