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Classic Serial: Honoré de Balzac - Eugenie Grandet

Ian McKellen

Alison Pettitt

Shirley Dixon

Anna Calder-Marshall

Harry Hadden-Paton

David Horovitch

Blake Ritson

Jenny Funnell

Gordon House

Rose Tremain

Honore Balzac

Classic Serial: Honoré de Balzac - Eugenie Grandet: Episode 2

Eugenie Grandet

Episode 2

Honoré de Balzac - Eugenie Grandet

BBC Radio 4 - Classic Serial, Honoré de Balzac - Eugenie Grandet, Episode 2

Will the miserly Monsieur Grandet be able to forgive his defiant daughter?

With Charles sent away, will the miserly Monsieur Grandet be able to forgive his defiant daughter? Starring Ian McKellen and Alison Pettitt. From August 2014.

The final part of Rose Tremain's gripping dramatisation of Balzac's Eugenie Grandet, starring Ian McKellen as Eugenie's miserly father and Alison Pettit as his lovelorn daughter.

Monsieur Grandet, who has amassed a considerable fortune, is a miser who feigns poverty and runs his household along miserably frugal lines. All changes with the arrival of Eugenie's handsome 22-year-old cousin, Charles Grandet, from Paris. Charles has brought with him a shocking letter from his father, Guillaume, who has committed suicide. He has placed his debts and the care of his son into his brother's hands. It is a fatal decision, with ruinous consequences for the whole family.

Eugenie Grandet is considered by many to be the strongest novel in Balzac's magnificent series, The Human Comedy. It pits a young naive girl against the father she has worshipped and this defiance sets us on course for the playing out of a heart-rending tragedy. Like King Lear, Grandet is a man who deeply loves the daughter who has defied him. He has no other child, no hope, no future but her. But in Balzac's 'human comedy' the tragic and the comic exist side by side and this fruitful conjunction blossoms in Rose Tremain's enthralling adaptation.

Cello and Treble Recorder: Alison Baldwin
Original Music: Lucinda Mason Brown

Produced and directed by Gordon House
A Goldhawk Essential production for BBC Radio 4.

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

Rose Tremain dramatises Balzac's tragic novel.

Rose Tremain dramatises Balzac's tragic novel revolving around an ageing vine farmer and his innocent young daughter Eugenie.

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