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Book at Bedtime: The Restoration of Otto Laird

Alan Corduner

Nigel Packer

Jeremy Osborne

Rosalynd Ward

Book at Bedtime: The Restoration of Otto Laird: Episode 2

The Restoration of Otto Laird

Episode 2

BBC Radio 4 - Book at Bedtime, The Restoration of Otto Laird, Episode 2

Otto is asked to make a TV documentary about Marlowe House.

Seventy-nine-year-old Otto gets an invitation to go to London to make a TV documentary about Marlowe House. But will he decide to go?

A story of memory and place, old age and architecture.

"Otto had felt surprisingly nervous on the plane across from Geneva; not from any fear of flying, but a fear of what he was flying to. [...] Throughout the short flight he experienced a strange inner turbulence. He had a queasy sensation that he was re-establishing a connection with the past; flying backwards into his own memories. He would no longer be experiencing them from a distance, but in the city where they had once been real."

Architect Otto Laird has been living a semi-reclusive life with his second wife in Switzerland. But he is forced to re-engage with the wider world when he learns that his landmark building Marlowe House - a 1960s tower block in South London - has been marked for demolition.

Episode Two.
79-year-old Otto gets an invitation to go to London to make a TV documentary about Marlowe House. But will he decide to go?

Nigel Packer lives in London. He has been a music reviewer for BBC News Online and Ceefax, a reporting officer at the International Committee of the Red Cross and a contributor to various magazines and newspapers. The Restoration Of Otto Laird is his first novel.


Reader: Allan Corduner
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Producer: Rosalynd Ward

A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.

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By Nigel Packer. A story of memory and place, old age and architecture.

By Nigel Packer. Semi-reclusive architect Otto Laird is forced to re-engage with the wider world when he learns that his landmark building has been marked for demolition.

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