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Afternoon Reading: Malachi Whitaker - The Crystal Fountain

Rosalind Ayres

Martin Jarvis

Malachi Whitaker

Afternoon Reading: Malachi Whitaker - The Crystal Fountain: Episode 3: Home to Waggonhouses

The Crystal Fountain

Episode 3

Episode 3: Home to Waggonhouses

Malachi Whitaker - The Crystal Fountain

Home to Waggonhouses

BBC Radio 4 - Afternoon Reading, Malachi Whitaker - The Crystal Fountain, Home to WaggonhousesSearch BBC

Sarah visits the husband who deserted her, and a long bicycle ride won't deter her.

Sarah visits the husband who deserted her three years before. A long bicycle ride across rough country won't deter her. Read by Rosalind Ayres.

Martin Jarvis directs Rosalind Ayres in Malachi Whitaker's moving story, written in the 1930s. Sarah has been cycling for two hours. Where's she going? And why? She's determined to see the husband who deserted her. She has heard he is lying ill at Ebesham. 

Three years ago he had come into some money and it had turned his head. Then the farm seemed too small for him. He went to look at bigger farms miles away. On one of his journeys he met an attractive widow. One day they left quietly together, and later Sarah heard that they had set up house at Ebesham. And now Sarah is riding there, where David is lying ill. But she arrives to find an unexpected situation. What she does next could probably only have come from Malachi Whitaker compassionate pen. 

Malachi Whitaker was prolific in the 1920s and '30s, writing with great perception and care about ordinary folk, invariably setting the stories in her native Yorkshire. She became known as 'the Chekhov of the north' because of her sympathetic observation of the minutiae of human beings and their (often comic) behaviour. 

Producer/Director: Martin Jarvis 
A Jarvis & Ayres Production for BBC Radio 4.

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A selection of short stories by Malachi Whitaker

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Malachi Whitaker - The Crystal Fountain

Episode 3: Home to Waggonhouses

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