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Book at Bedtime: Virginia Woolf - Orlando (Omnibus): Episode 1

Orlando

Episode 1

Virginia Woolf - Orlando (Omnibus)

BBC Radio 4 - Book at Bedtime, Virginia Woolf - Orlando (Omnibus), Episode 1

Orlando, a young nobleman in Tudor England, embarks on a journey spanning five centuries.

Orlando, a young nobleman in Tudor England, embarks on a tumultuous journey spanning five centuries. Read by Amanda Hale.

In Virginia Woolf's Orlando, a young nobleman in Tudor England, embarks on a tumultuous journey spanning five centuries. 

Orlando, "the longest and most charming love letter in literature" was intended for and inspired by Vita Sackville-West and her noble roots. Along with the eponymous hero's adventuring through the ages, Woolf explores what it means to write and the all-important question of gender - as relevant and resonant today as it was in the 1920s when she wrote this high spirited novel.

Orlando, is a young nobleman in Tudor England when we first encounter him and he writes the first lines of his poem, The Oak Tree, a poem that he keeps about him as he travels through time. Swept along by his adventures we next find him as he falls in love for the first time with a beautiful Russian princess on the frozen Thames at the court of James I. A desire to write leads to a disastrous meeting with a much admired poet before, under Charles 1, he becomes the king's charismatic ambassador in Constantinople. A dramatic transformation takes place in this opulent city and Orlando continues his adventures as a woman. Returning to eighteenth-century London, the life of the poet continues to call, but later the restrictions placed upon Orlando by the Victorian era are impossible to bear. Glimmers of new possibilities arrive with the twentieth century and the promise of fulfilment through love and writing.

Reader: Amanda Hale
Abridger: Richard Hamilton
Producer: Elizabeth Allard.

Omnibus of the first five of ten parts - first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015

Book at Bedtime: Virginia Woolf - Orlando (Omnibus)

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Drama: Classic & Period

Virginia Woolf's tale about a poet who lives through several centuries and changes sex

Virginia Woolf's romp about a poet who lives through several centuries and changes sex

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