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Classic Serial

Drama: Classic & Period

Adaptations of works which have achieved classic status

Classic Serial: Songs and Lamentations

Peter Hamilton-Dyer

Gillian Kearney

Russell Dixon

David Seddon

Henry Devas

Deborah McAndrew

Michael Symmons Roberts

Susan Roberts

Classic Serial: Songs and Lamentations: Episode 2

Songs and Lamentations

Episode 2

BBC Radio 4 - Classic Serial, Songs and Lamentations, Episode 2

Drama looking at the last days of Jerusalem from two very different perspectives.

Left to starve by the king, the jailed Jeremiah is kept alive by the young servant girl, who brings him food, ostensibly because she wants to help him, but she has another motive.

Songs and Lamentations , a new translation of the two biblical books Lamentations and Song of Songs by Michael Symmons Roberts . A powerful story of the horrific destruction of a once great city, and the love story of a couple who find hope and solace in each other offering two very different, but complementary, perspectives on the days leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian armies in 587 BC.

Set in the middle east, this poetry of violence, heat, passion and vengeance has clear resonance with the intractable cycle of violence - and the survival of love - in that same part of the world 2500 years on. The themes and wisdom of 'Song of Songs' and 'Lamentations' have never been more current or more apposite.


Jeremiah Peter Hamilton-Dyer
Rachel Gillian Kearney
Pashur Russell Dixon 
Nathan Tom Ferguson
Zedekiah David Seddon 
Thomas Henry Devas 
Samuel Patrick Lally 
Ana Deborah McAndrew

Directed in Salford by Susan Roberts 

2. Although left to starve by the King, the jailed Jeremiah is kept alive by the young servant girl from the palace, who brings him food, ostensibly because she wants to help him. But she has another motive.

She is meeting a man nearby, one of the King's own ministers. Love between a minister and a servant is impossible. Nonetheless they flirt and entice each other, in the poetry of the Song of Songs.

Day by day, pressure mounts on the King. The people want revolution against the Babylonians, but Jeremiah the prophet's warnings are unsettling him.

The impossible love of the couple in Song of Songs becomes an elegy for the city

And its people.

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

Drama by Michael Symmons Roberts looking at the last days of Jerusalem

Drama by Michael Symmons Roberts looking at the last days of Jerusalem, drawn from new translations of two of the most powerful books of the Hebrew Bible, Song of Songs and the Book of Lamentations

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