Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

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

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

Book at Bedtime

Audiobooks

Podcasts

Drama

Readings from modern classics, new works by leading writers and world literature

Readings from modern classics, new works by leading writers and literature from around the world

BBC Radio 4 Extra

BBC Radio 4 LW

Book at Bedtime: Naomi Alderman - The Lessons

Book at Bedtime: Naomi Alderman - The Lessons: Episode 2: An Invitation

The Lessons

Episode 2

Episode 2: An Invitation

Naomi Alderman - The Lessons

An Invitation

BBC Radio 4 - Book at Bedtime, Naomi Alderman - The Lessons, An Invitation

James is befriended by Jess, then Mark, whose invitation is too extraordinary to refuse.

Second term at Oxford, and James is befriended first by Jess, then Mark, who issues an invitation too extraordinary to refuse. Read by Rory Kinnear.

Rory Kinnear reads the Orange New Writer's Award Winner, Naomi Alderman's, second novel, 'The Lessons', a story of ambition, friendship, betrayal and desire. Today: Second Term: Struggling with loneliness and injury James is befriended first by Jess, then Mark - who issues an invitation too extraordinary to refuse.

Reader Rory Kinnear
Abridger Sally Marmion
Producer Di Speirs

The Lessons is the second novel from Naomi Alderman, winner of the Orange New Writer's Award and Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. Set among the dreaming spires of Oxford, it follows the progress of a gilded group of under-graduates drawn together by their dazzling and mercurial fellow student Mark Winters. Fuelled by his trust-fund and resident in his Georgian mansion, they live a charmed life of learning and parties and love-affairs. But university is no grounding for real life and none of the friends will be prepared, some years later, when tragedy strikes.

The Lessons is a novel about friendship, ambition, betrayal and desire, and the fact that only life can teach the lessons you really need to learn.

Naomi Alderman won the Orange New Writers Award for her first novel Disobedience and has subsequently been named as the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. She is a graduate of Lincoln College, Oxford.

Rory Kinnear, fresh from playing Angelo at the Almeida and about to play Hamlet at the National Theatre studied at Balliol College, Oxford and reads his first Book at Bedtime.

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

Rory Kinnear reads from the novel by Naomi Alderman

Rory Kinnear reads from Naomi Alderman's story of a group of a group of gilded undergraduates at Oxford

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Book at Bedtime

Naomi Alderman - The Lessons

Episode 2: An Invitation

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4