Ulverton

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Ulverton: Episode 3

Episode 3

BBC Radio 4 - Ulverton, Episode 3

Multi-voice reading of Adam Thorpe's story of a fictional village from 1650 to 1988.

It's 1743 and a young wife and new mother is confined to her room in Ulverton House. What seems like accepted medical practice may have more sinister motives.

Adam Thorpe's ground-breaking Ulverton was published in 1992. Although it was a first novel, the reviews heralded a "masterpiece" (Peter Kemp, Sunday Times) and it was also celebrated in the American press - "as encompassing a portrait of what it means to be British as I have ever read" (Seattle Times) and "One of the great British fictional works of our time" (LA Times). 

It's a novel which has long been celebrated for the way it employs all the lyrical agility of the English language as it evolved down the centuries to give us a narrative that is shaped by time and character and born of a particular landscape - the chalk downlands of West Berkshire. A succession of different voices offer brief glimpses of life in Ulverton at roughly a generation's interval. 

Ulverton House, 1743. Lady Chalmers is confined to her room in the weeks and months after the birth of her first child. Her letters reveal a turbulent state of longing.


Written by Adam Thorpe
Read by Eleanor Tomlinson
Abridged by Sara Davies and Jill Waters
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4

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Adam Thorpe tells the story of a village through the voices of each passing generation.

Adam Thorpe's masterpiece telling the story of a fictional Berkshire village. A succession of different voices offer glimpses of life in Ulverton at roughly a generation's interval.

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