Adam Thorpe's ground-breaking Ulverton was published in 1992. Although it was a first novel, the reviews heralded a "masterpiece" (Peter Kemp, Sunday Times) and it was also celebrated in the American press - "as encompassing a portrait of what it means to be British as I have ever read" (Seattle Times) and "One of the great British fictional works of our time" (LA Times).

It's a novel which has long been celebrated for the way it employs all the lyrical agility of the English language as it evolved down the centuries to give us a narrative that is shaped by time and character and born of a particular landscape - the chalk downlands of West Berkshire. A succession of different voices offer brief glimpses of life in Ulverton at roughly a generation's interval.

Dissection: In the year 1775 an illiterate mother dictates letters for her son who has moved away from Ulverton.

Written by Adam Thorpe
Read by Clare Corbett
Abridged by Sara Davies and Jill Waters
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4 Show less