Opening Lines

Producer and writer John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact behind the books, plays and stories that are being dramatised in Radio 4's weekend afternoon dramas.

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Episodes

Confessions of a Justified Sinner

John Yorke delves into James Hogg’s masterpiece of Gothic horror, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Presented as a ‘found document’, the confessions give a chilling insight into the mind of a murderer. This novel is a horror story, a mystery thriller, a psychological study of religious extremism, and at its heart lurks a serial killer. Despite being first published in 1824 it still has all the contemporary resonance, in the view of renowned crime writer Ian Rankin, to ma...

Mar 19, 2023•14 min

Porgy - Episode 2

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke examines Porgy by Edwin DuBose Heyward. Porgy was published in 1925 and concerns the love affair between Porgy and Bess. Set within the poor black community of Charleston, South Carolina, the book was later adapted into the blockbuster musical Porgy and Bess. The writer Du Bose Heyward was white and, ever since it was published, the book has raised questions about authenticity and cultural appropriation. In th...

Mar 11, 2023•15 min

Porgy - Episode 1

The series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work. John Yorke examines Porgy by Edwin DuBose Heyward. Published in 1925, Porgy was an immediate hit and was later adapted both for the stage and the blockbuster musical Porgy and Bess. In this first of two episodes about Porgy, John looks at the story at the heart of the original novel and the background of the remarkable man who wrote it. How and why did Edwin DuBose Heyward, the epitome of the intellectual, Southern, whit...

Mar 11, 2023•15 min

Gaslight

John Yorke looks at Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 stage play Gaslight. A big hit on London’s Shaftesbury Avenue and an even bigger success on Broadway, Patrick Hamilton’s drama of the mental abuse of Bella Manningham by her husband Jack lives on, sometimes unacknowledged, as the source of the term Gaslighting - one person’s attempt to make another doubt their sanity. Best known for his novels such as Hangover Square and The Slaves of Solitude, Hamilton drew on his own miserable childhood memories of b...

Mar 08, 2023•15 min

Georges - Episode 2

In the second of two episodes about Georges by Alexander Dumas, John Yorke looks at the central theme of the book - race. Although a mixed race man, Alexandre Dumas very seldom addressed the issue of race in his work. Georges is the only novel in which it plays any part. Published after the abolition of slavery in France but before France banned slavery in its colonies, the central themes of Georges are revenge, for a racial insult, and race. John Yorke looks at how the book approaches these iss...

Feb 26, 2023•15 min

Georges - Episode 1

In the series that takes a look at books, plays and stories and how they work, John Yorke examines Alexander Dumas’ forgotten classic; Georges. Georges was one of Dumas' earliest novels and in this first of two episodes about the book, John shows us how it set the template for many of those that followed. It's a swashbuckling, page-turner full of plot twists, cliff hangers and larger-than-life characters. Dumas was a mixed race man and Georges is unique in that it's the only one of his novels th...

Feb 26, 2023•15 min

The Bronze Horseman

John Yorke explores the way the celebrated 19th century writer Alexander Pushkin’s 400-line narrative poem, The Bronze Horseman, gives us an astonishing image of the unequal relationship between ruler and ruled. This ground breaking poem, which is one of the great landmarks of Russian literature, shows us how the empire building passion of one ruler, the tsar Peter the Great, with his grand design to create the city of St Petersburg in spite of its situation on marshy and inhospitable land, can ...

Feb 19, 2023•15 min

Yentl the Yeshiva Boy

John Yorke explores the themes and impact of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story Yentl. Written in the 1950s but set in the orthodox Jewish community of late nineteenth century Poland, the story was made into a successful Hollywood film starring Barbara Streisand. Yentl, a young orthodox woman, rebels against the constraints of a woman’s life and disguises herself as a young man in order to be able to study at a Yeshiva, or religious college. In describing the complications and misunderstandings...

Feb 12, 2023•15 min

Lady Chatterley's Lover - Episode 2

John Yorke looks into Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D H Lawrence. In this second of two episodes about the book, he looks at what drove Lawrence to use the language that got him into so much trouble and made the novel infamous. He outlines the book's other transgressions and what happened at that famous, ground-breaking trial in 1960. John Yorke has worked in television and radio for nearly 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the book...

Jan 29, 2023•15 min

Lady Chatterley's Lover - Episode 1

John Yorke looks into Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence. In this first of two episodes about the book, he outlines the simple story at the heart of this most controversial of novels. Although it’s chiefly known for its graphic descriptions of sex and its liberal use of four letter words, John asks if the book is actually much more than a titillating tale about a passion that crosses the class divide. He looks at how the horrors of the Great War affected Lawrence and drove him to write what ...

Jan 29, 2023•15 min

Welcome to Opening Lines

In this series John Yorke shares a lifetime of experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that have made a mark. John Yorke has been working in television and radio for nearly 30 years. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe and has brought together his experience in his bestsell...

Jan 19, 2023•3 min

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