Angela Carter's Love Affair With Radio

Summary

Angela Carter's relationship with radio began with an accidental sound effect. She went on to write two docu-dramas, Come Unto These Yellow Sands (about the Victorian painter Richard Dadd) and A Self-Made Man (about Edwardian novelist Ronald Firbank) and re-worked two of her short stories into radio plays. Carter loved radio's technical possibilities: the opportunity to extend the power of the written word, blurring the lines of traditional narrative into 'three-dimensional story-telling'. This documentary weaves interviews with Carter's friends and colleagues Susannah Clapp, Carmen Callil, Marina Warner and Christopher Frayling, memories of the studio technicians who worked on her plays and the responses of listeners who heard them, with extracts from the plays themselves to suggest why Carter found the medium so magical and appealing. Academic Charlotte Crofts explains why the medium suited her so well. Producer: Sara Davies.