Showing results for "L P Hartley" in Genre Fiction

Overcome with grief at her husband’s death, Lady Franklin, an eligible young widow, unburdens herself to Leadbitter–a gallant, hard-bitten ex-soldier who has invested his savings in the car he drives for hire–as he takes her on a series of journeys. He in turn beguiles her with stories of his non-existent wife and children, drawing her out of her self-absorption and weaving a dream-life with Lady Franklin at its heart.

Richard Mardick is an elderly man with a secret that he has kept since his youth. He recounts his memories to his young protégé and secretary so that his story can be preserved. Faced with illness, the teenage Richard was sent to live with different relatives while being trained as a farmer. Lonely and stifled by family life, he then met a girl and his life changed… with shattering significance for his future.

During the long, hot summer of 1900, young Leo Colston is invited to stay for a month at a lordly, aristocratic manor in Norfolk. There he falls in love with his friend's older sister, who commissions him to ferry secret messages to the local farmer, her lover. His naiveté sustains their affair until ultimately leading to an event that will change their lives irrevocably.

An acclaimed novelist, short story writer and critic, Leslie Poles Hartley is best known for his 1953 novel The Go-Between, which won the W. H. Heinemann Award and was adapted as a BAFTA-winning film starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates. Included here is a radio dramatisation of that classic tale, alongside adaptations of three further novels and five short stories.

World War III left the world in ruins, but now a new society has sprung up from the ashes, ruled by an unseen dictator who believes a system of strict equality is the best way to prevent future strife. Too much beauty, intelligence, or personality is severely frowned upon. Those who run afoul of the Dictator are punished, sometimes with death and sometimes with a more mysterious and terrible fate, being "emptied".

A new adaptation of L. P. Hartley's story of a boy who is betrayed by a sophisticated young rich woman and her farmer lover who use him to ferry letters back and forth in the blazing summer of 1900 - with Richard Griffiths and Harriet Walter. It's best known from the 1970 film, which focused on the main plot line. But on re-reading the book, adaptor Frances Byrnes found within it another drama perfect for audio in which an old man finds a boyhood diary and is forced to unlock the trauma inside.