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Midsummer Night in the Workhouse

Midsummer Night in the Workhouse: Episode 1: A Weekend in the Country

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Episode 1

Episode 1: A Weekend in the Country

A Weekend in the Country

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An invitation to Richard's family home finds Elizabeth forced to make a difficult choice.

Extra Debut. An invite to Richard's family home finds Elizabeth compelled to make a difficult choice. 1960s story read by Zoe Tapper.

In A Weekend in the Country by Diana Athill, an invitation to Richard's family home finds Elizabeth compelled to make a difficult choice.

The short stories collected in Midsummer Night in the Workhouse represent the start of Diana Athill's writing career. In the preface to the selection she says: 'I can remember in detail being hit by my first story one January morning in 1958. Until that moment I had been hand-maiden, as editor, to other people's writing, without ever dreaming of myself as a writer.' Then she encountered someone who reminded her of an episode in her past and that evening she wrote her first short story. She went on to win the the "Observer" short story competition and writes, 'Bury me, dear friends, with a copy of the Observer folded under my head, for it was the Observer's prize that woke me up to the fact that I could write and had become happy.'

Diana Athill's stories draw on her own personal experiences and her keen observations of others, each is perceptive, poignant and funny.

Diana Athill was born in 1917. In 1946 she joined Andre Deutsch and went on to become one of the country's leading editors in a career spanning fifty years. She has published six volumes of memoirs and a novel. 

Read by Zoe Tapper
Abridged by Julian Wilkinson
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.

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