An extensive collection of full-cast dramatisations and long-lost original radio plays by Dame Susan Hill

Award-winning author Dame Susan Hill is best known for her hit ghost story The Woman in Black and her popular ‘Simon Serailler’ detective series, but she has also written extensively for radio. This audio anthology includes full-cast adaptations of two of her early novels, plus an additional 12 BBC Radio plays, many of them available for the very first time since their original broadcasts.

Gentlemen and Ladies tells of the friendship and loneliness of a family living in a small Midland village, while Strange Meeting explores the relationship between two young subalterns in the First World War. These moving dramatisations star Patricia Hayes, Stephanie Cole, Martin Jarvis and David Timson.

Themes of interdependence and isolation run through all Hill’s radio plays, which she describes as dealing with ‘human beings in confrontation’. In Taking Leave, a nephew visits the family he barely knows; in Lizard in the Grass, an orphan living in a clifftop convent is persecuted by one of the nuns, in The Cold Country, tempers fray when four explorers become snowbound in Antarctica and in Consider the Lilies, an ageing bachelor who sees angels finds himself drawn to a dying girl. Richard Hurndall, Helen Worth, Terry Scully, John Rollason and Tony Britton are among the star casts.

A Window on the World focuses on students Nell (Patricia Gallimore) and Jess (Julie Hallam), who are mere observers of life – until one of them acts to alter the situation. Strip Jack Naked finds sick recluse James (Ian Richardson) shaken out of his austere existence by a visit from his estranged wife, but in The Sound that Time Makes, wife and mother Fay (Patricia Gallimore) is obsessively haunted by her schooldays. And with her wedding approaching, Helena (Carole Hayman) struggles to let go of her childhood in Here Comes the Bride.

Chances features two interlinked monologues, read by Dames Judi Dench and Peggy Ashcroft, in which an Irish maid at a seaside hotel ponders her life, and a guest remembers better days and higher standards. A dying Frenchwoman summons her estranged daughter in Out in the Cold, starring Pauline Letts and Fiona Walker. Finally, Winter and Autumn focus on two couples, one elderly and resident in an old folks’ home, the other middle-aged and attempting to escape the past by moving house. Doreen Mantle, Cyril Luckham, June Brown and Bernard Hepton star as the spouses searching for meaning and connection.

Copyright © Susan Hill 1968 (Gentlemen and Ladies), 1971 (Strange Meeting, Taking Leave, Lizard in the Grass), 1972 (The Cold Country), 1973 (Consider the Lilies), 1975 (A Window on the World, Strip Jack Naked), 1980 (The Sound that Time Makes, Here Comes the Bride), 1981 (Chances), 1982 (Out in the Cold), 1985 (Winter), 1986 (Autumn)

Contents:
Gentlemen and Ladies
Strange Meeting
Taking Leave
Lizard in the Grass
The Cold Country
Consider the Lilies
A Window on the World
Strip Jack Naked
The Sound that Time Makes
Here Comes the Bride
Chances
Out in the Cold
Winter
Autumn