The Past 

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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Sian Thomas

Tessa Hadley

Sally Marmion

Di Speirs

Tessa Hadley - The Past: Episode 10

The Past

Episode 10

Tessa Hadley - The Past

BBC Radio 4 - Tessa Hadley - The Past, Episode 10

Tessa Hadley's compelling new novel - a story of siblings, secrets and passions.

Tender conclusion in which the lost is found - and learning to live without love. Powerful novel read by Sian Thomas.

Today Finding the lost and living without love as Sian Thomas reads the final, tender part of Tessa Hadley's new novel, a beautifully observed portrait of a family and the change wrought by time across the generations.

Three middle-aged sisters and a brother meet up in their grandparents' old house for three long, hot summer weeks. Under the idyllic surface, there are immediate tensions. Secrets, misunderstandings and passion play out as the characters shift and reappraise and a way of life - bourgeois, literate, ritualised - winds down to its inevitable end.

While the siblings circle each other, and the adolescents approach each other, the children watch and come to their own conclusions.

Tessa Hadley is one of Britain's finest writers, an acute observer of character, time and place and the most published short story writer in the New Yorker in recent years.

The reader is Sian Thomas
The abridger is Sally Marmion
The producer is Di Speirs

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

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Drama: Relationships & Romance

Tessa Hadley's novel, a story of siblings, secrets, misunderstandings and passion.

Sian Thomas reads Tessa Hadley's powerful novel, a story of siblings, secrets, misunderstandings and passion, played out over one last, hot summer. Abridged by Sally Marmion

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