by Georges Simenon
Six years ago Simenon was summoned to his mother's bedside to pay his last respects. Several years after her death, he felt the need to write down his thoughts during that week of daily visits to the hospital, to set down the questions he would have liked to ask her as she lay dying, forever a stranger to her son.
Patrick Troughton reads extracts from this letter Simenon wrote in her memory as he tried to know and understand her, piecing together the fragments of her past.
Producer JOHN KNIGHT