Opening Lines

In this second episode, John Yorke digs deeper into Euguene O’Neill’s 1921 play “Anna Christie” – about an estranged daughter who is reunited with her sea captain father, and falls in love with a sailor. The play examines identity, family and sexual politics, and asks questions about love, faith, redemption, resilience and forgiveness.
John asks how and why the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning dramatist introduced realist theatre to the US, looks at Eugene O’Neill’s influence and legacy, and asks what we should make of “Anna Christie” today.
John Yorke has worked in television and radio for over 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production he has worked on some of the most popular shows in Britain; from EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless. He created the BBC Writers Academy and trained a generation of screenwriters, now with thousands of hours of television to their names. His acclaimed books Into the Woods and Trip to the Moon explore the structure and power of narrative, and he writes, teaches and consults on all forms of storytelling, including many podcasts for Radio 4.
Contributor:
Robert M. Dowling, professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, author of the biography Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts.
From the BBC archives:
Playwright Arthur Miller, from Changing Stages: America, 19 Nov 2000.
Actor Natasha Richardson, from Woman’s Hour, 18 June 1990.
Credits:
Excerpts from “Anna Christie” by Eugene O’Neill, 1921, including Ruth Wilson in the 2011 Donmar Warehouse production.
Excerpt from the 1930 film adaptation of “Anna Christie” starring Greta Garbo.
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Sound: Sean Kerwin
Producer: Jack Soper
Executive Producer: Sara Davies
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
A Pier Production for BBC Radio 4 & BBC Sounds

In the first of two episodes, John Yorke looks at “Anna Christie” by Eugene O’Neill - one of American theatre’s founding fathers, and the only American dramatist to have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The play is about a young woman who goes in search of her estranged father, a sea captain, and falls in love with a sailor.
Debuting in 1921, “Anna Christie” is one of O’Neill’s early works – less well known and less successful than his later plays, like Long Day’s Journey into Night or The Iceman Cometh – but, as John Yorke explains, “Anna Christie” is significant both for what it tells us about one of American theatres key figures, and as a story that captures a nation at a moment of transition.
John Yorke has worked in television and radio for over 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production he has worked on some of the most popular shows in Britain; from EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless. He created the BBC Writers Academy and trained a generation of screenwriters, now with thousands of hours of television to their names. His acclaimed books Into the Woods and Trip to the Moon explore the structure and power of narrative, and he writes, teaches and consults on all forms of storytelling, including many podcasts for Radio 4.
Contributors:
Robert M. Dowling, professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, author of the biography Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts.
Thomas Kail, director of a 2026 production of “Anna Christie” at St Ann’s Warehouse, New York, speaking on the WNYC podcast All Of It with Alison Stewart.
From the BBC archives:
Jude Law, The Radio 2 Arts Show, 5 August 2011
Ruth Wilson, Front Row, 5 August 2011.
Writer and critic Sarah Churchwell, Front Row 10 August 2011.
Credits:
Readings by Eric Stroud.
Excerpts from “Anna Christie” by Eugene O’Neill, 1921, including Natasha Richardson in the 1990 Young Vic production and Ruth Wilson and Jude Law in the 2011 Donmar Warehouse production.
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Sound: Sean Kerwin
Producer: Jack Soper
Executive Producer: Sara Davies
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
A Pier Production for BBC Radio 4 & BBC Sounds

John Yorke examines Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, ten semi-autobiographical short stories in which Dylan Thomas looks back and observes himself growing into the artist – the writer – that he became in adult life. The stories highlight Thomas’s contradictory nature. At school he failed every other subject apart from English, in which he came top. He’s a town boy who loves the countryside. He’s a bookish child who devours his father’s library of 6,000 books ‘with his eyes out on stalks’ by day, and a bit of a lad who roams Swansea by night, observing the goings-on of the city. Dylan Thomas was called a wastrel and an alcoholic, yet was incredibly productive, writing 300 pages of poems, 500 pages of radio scripts, 600 pages of film scripts and 1000 pages of letters. He began the short stories in 1938, a year after he had married Caitlin MacNamara and they’d settled with their first child in Laugharne, a small town on the coat of Carmarthenshire. Ten years later he would move into the famous Boathouse where he would live for the remainder of his life.
John Yorke has worked in television and radio for over 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production he has worked on some of the most popular shows in Britain - from EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless. He created the BBC Writers Academy and trained a generation of screenwriters - now with thousands of hours of television to their names. His acclaimed books Into the Woods and Trip to the Moon explore the structure and power of narrative, and he writes, teaches and consults on all forms of storytelling, including many podcasts for R4.
Contributors: John Goodby, Professor of Arts and Culture at Sheffield Hallam University, author of Critical Lives: Dylan Thomas. Joe Dunthorne, novelist, poet and journalist.
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Production Hub Co-ordinator: Dawn Williams
Sound: Iain Hunter
Producer: Kate McAll
Executive Producer: Sara Davies
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Writer Penelope Lively’s enduring themes are the connections and interplay between memory, history and time. Nowhere is this more compelling than in Moon Tiger, published in 1987 and widely regarded as one of her best novels. It won the Booker Prize that same year and went on to gain The Golden Booker in 2018 as the stand-out winner of the 1980s.
The novel’s protagonist Claudia Hampton is an historian and war correspondent, ambitious and independent and a 20th Century woman who has defied the conventions of domesticity and motherhood. In the opening lines of the novel she is reflecting back on her life as she lies on her death-bed. It will be ‘a history of the world and in the process my own,’ she promises. Through a series of scenes presented as a kaleidoscopic mosaic of memories Lively pieces together who and what has shaped Claudia during her life, such as the deeply competitive bond she had with her brother Gordon, her lacklustre approach to motherhood with her daughter Lisa and, central to her life, an early love affair with tank commander Tom Southern who she met in Egypt during WW2.
In this episode of Opening Lines John Yorke explores the dazzling technique Penelope Lively employs to draw Claudia’s life together and asks what makes this classic such an extraordinarily compelling novel.
The programme features writer, editor and critic Lucy Scholes and, from the Radio 4 archives, we hear from Penelope Lively herself in Bookclub recorded in 2001.
John Yorke has worked in television and radio for over 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production he has worked on some of the most popular shows in Britain - from EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless. He created the BBC Writers Academy and trained a generation of screenwriters - now with thousands of hours of television to their names. His acclaimed books Into the Woods and Trip to the Moon explore the structure and power of narrative, and he writes, teaches and consults on all forms of storytelling, including many podcasts for R4.
Producer: Julian Wilkinson
Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
Sound: Iain Hunter
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

John Yorke explores why Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes has had such a profound influence on storytelling in the 400 years since it was published in 1605.
‘Like Shakespeare, Cervantes is inescapable for all writers who have come after him,’ according to literary critic Harold Bloom. He creates a blueprint for the modern novel by shifting from static, infallible archetypes to dynamic, evolving characters who are fundamentally changed by their relationship with each other. Cervantes’ work is full of innovative literary ideas that still inspire writers today, including the double-act (Quixote and his portly sidekick, Sancho Panza), a multi-voiced narrative structure and the first example of metafiction, in which the line between fiction and reality is blurred.
The programme includes an interview with film director, cartoonist and Monty Python member Terry Gilliam, who spent nearly 30 years attempting to make a film about Don Quixote. He says, “You can never kill Quixote. There is no way. Quixote will be eternal. And I certainly hope that people will keep rediscovering him, because I think you can read it many times and discover new things every time. It's spectacular. I just want to get a fireplace and start reading it to my grandchildren of a cold evening. One chapter a night.”
Also including contributions from Isabel Torres, Professor of Spanish Golden Age Literature at Queen’s University, Belfast. Quotations from Penguin Classics 2003 edition, translation by John Rutherford.
John Yorke has worked in television and radio for over 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production he has worked on some of the most popular shows in Britain; from EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless. He created the BBC Writers Academy and trained a generation of screenwriters, now with thousands of hours of television to their names. His acclaimed books Into the Woods and Trip to the Moon explore the structure and power of narrative, and he writes, teaches and consults on all forms of storytelling, including many podcasts for Radio 4.
Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery
Reader: Ewan Bailey
Executive Producer: Sara Davies and Caroline Raphael
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams and Nina Semple
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Sound: Iain Hunter
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4