The Hireling- Classic Serial, An Interior Life, A Living Death- File On Four, Cause Célèbre, Afternoon Plays- A Terrible Beauty, The People Next Door, and Crimes of Mancunia: Radio and Audio Review 27th June 2011

New Radio Four dramatisation of L.P. Hartley's "The Hireling"

BBC Radio Four’s Classic serial has been fizzing with a magnificent two part dramatisation of L.P.Hartley’s The Hireling  (Sunday 19th June, Saturday 25th June, Sunday 26th June and Saturday 4th July). Hartley seemed to specialise in catastrophic and intriguing class crossing relationships in the manner of D.H.Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

In “The Go-Between” passion vis-a-vis an already betrothed aristocrat’s daughter and the gamekeeper leads to broken hearts and suicide as well as rights of passage intensity for a young teenage boy deployed to run between the Manor and Lodge as an unwitting cupid.