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BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Book of the Week

Audiobooks

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Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

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BBC Radio 4 LW

Book of the Week: Hilary Spurling - Burying the Bones

Book of the Week: Hilary Spurling - Burying the Bones: Episode 4

Factual: Life Stories

Factual: History

Burying The Bones

Episode 4

Hilary Spurling - Burying the Bones

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Hilary Spurling - Burying the Bones, Episode 4

Liberated by her success, Pearl's private life nonetheless begins to fall apart.

Liberated by the commercial success of her novels, Pearl Buck's private life begins to fall apart. Read by Lindsay Duncan.

Lindsay Duncan reads another extract from "Burying The Bones", Hilary Spurling's account of the astonishing life of Pearl Buck.

The first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1938), Pearl's popular novels were rooted in her childhood experiences of growing up in rural China, the daughter of missionaries, at the turn of the 20th century. Jung Chang, the author of "Wild Swans" has described Pearl Buck as "one of the greatest writers on China".

Today's episode explores the extraordinary effect that Pearl's commercial success had on her family. This was most powerfully expressed in the freedom she had to secure a future for her daughters - including the best healthcare for her disabled daughter. But success came at a price: cracks began to appear in her marriage and Pearl became the focus of a divorce scandal that rocked 1930s America.

Abridger: Alison Joseph.
Producer: Kirsteen Cameron.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Lindsay Duncan reads from Hilary Spurling's biography of the American writer Pearl Buck

Lindsay Duncan reads from Hilary Spurling's biography of Pearl Buck, the influential American writer whose novels helped change Western perceptions of China forever

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