Helen Dunmore’s prize-winning first novel is set in the late spring, early summer of 1917. War haunts the Cornish coast and ships are being sunk by U-boats, strangers are treated with suspicion, and newspapers are full of spy stories.

Into this uneasy landscape, to a hamlet just outside St Ives, come DH Lawrence and his German wife, Frieda. They are hoping to escape the war-fever that grips London and also to live as cheaply as possible in a rented cottage. The pacifist Lawrence is reeling from his latest novel, The Rainbow, having been banned for obscenity, and is struggling to finish and publish its sequel, Women in Love.

They befriend Clare Coyne, a young artist who has lived alone with her father since her mother died when she was a child.

Written by Helen Dunmore
Read by Louise Brealey
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Produced by Lizzie Davies
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4 Show less