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15 Minute Drama: Writing the Century: Passages from Empire

Fenella Woolgar

Sara McGaughey

Rina Mahoney

Richard Nichols

Claire Cage

Vanessa Rosenthal

Polly Thomas

15 Minute Drama: Writing the Century: Passages from Empire: Episode 5

Drama: Biographical

Writing the Century: Passages from Empire

Episode 5

BBC Radio 4 - 15 Minute Drama, Writing the Century: Passages from Empire, Episode 5

Happiness comes at last to Ina on her wedding day, made sweeter by a letter from Gwladys.

Happiness comes at last to Ina on her wedding day, made all the sweeter for a letter from Gwladys Hughes, still nursing on the other side of the world.

The latest in the Writing the Century series, based on real life letters and diaries of extraordinary ordinary people.

For 70 years The Colonial Nursing Association sent hundreds of hard working, adventurous nurses to work all over the then British colonies. Writer Vanessa Rosenthal discovered some of their correspondence housed in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, during her time as writer in residence at Kings College, London. By the 1920s these intrepid women, many of whose lives were marked by loss after the First World War and the need to provide for themselves, were marching across the globe.

Ina Crafer, in her early 40's, struggled to make ends meet in Africa; Gwladys Hughes, in her late 30's, loved the challenges that nursing in an extreme Northern climate offered. Through their own words, we discover the daily minutiae, trials and great rewards of nursing life abroad for this generation of women who were ahead of their time.

The radio plays are based on research funded by the Wellcome Trust at the Centre for the Humanities and Health in collaboration with Prof. Anne Marie Rafferty, Drs Jessica Howell, Rosemary Wall and Anna Snaith, King's College, London.

Episode 5
Happiness comes at last to Ina, on her wedding day, made all the sweeter for a letter from Gwladys Hughes, still nursing on the other side of the world, both pioneers in their own way.

Director ..... Polly Thomas
Sound designer ..... Nigel Lewis
PC ..... Willa King
Executive Producer ..... Alison Hindell

Writer ..... Vanessa Rosenthal

A BBC Cymru/Wales production or BBC Radio 4.

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.

The real-life experiences of two globetrotting nurses in the 1920s, in their own words.

The real-life experiences of two globetrotting nurses in the 1920s. Gwladys Hughes and Ina Crafer swap adventures in their own words, dramatised by Vanessa Rosenthal

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