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David Hare: A BBC Radio Drama Collection
David Hare: A BBC Radio Drama Collection
Jan 27, 2026 10:11 PM

Author:David Hare,Full Cast,Anthony Hopkins,Bill Nighy,Judi Dench,Zoë Wanamaker,Samantha Bond,Stephen Tompkinson,Ronald Pickup,Geoffrey Palmer

David Hare: A BBC Radio Drama Collection

Eight incisive dramas by the internationally-renowned playwright - plus bonus interview

Writer and director David Hare is one of England's leading political dramatists, celebrated for his many award-winning plays analysing the morality of contemporary Britain. This collection comprises some of his most acclaimed pieces, as well as a fascinating radio interview with Hare himself.

It opens with his two acknowledged masterpieces: Plenty and Amy's View. These mesmerising dramas, both spanning several decades, present vivid portraits of strong women diminished by circumstance, metaphorically evoking the changing values and collapsing ideals of the postwar period. These are followed by Knuckle, a fast-paced parody of the American hardboiled thriller set in the Home Counties; and Pravda, co-written with Howard Brenton, a satirical comedy about a monstrous media tycoon.

Also included are The Bay at Nice, set in 1950s Russia and exploring the nature of art and freedom; Skylight, about the reunion between a Thatcherite entrepreneur and his onetime mistress; Racing Demon, the first in a trilogy of plays about British institutions, focusing on the Church of England in crisis; and the play in which Hare made his acting debut: the powerful monologue Via Dolorosa, a meditation on his extraordinary 1997 trip to Israel and Palestine.

Among the stellar cast: Jane Lapotalre, Zoë Wanamaker, Judi Dench, Samantha Bond, Anthony Hopkins, Bill Nighy, Robert Glenister, Stephen Tompkinson, Ronald Pickup, Geoffrey Palmer, Stella Gonet & Paul McGann.

In an interview for the World Service arts programme Meridian, David Hare talks about why he enjoys writing good parts for women, what he believes plays can achieve that other media cannot, and the capacity of art to change society.

Production credits

Written by David Hare.

Pravda written by David Hare and Howard Brenton.

Text copyright © David Hare 1974 (Knuckle), 1978 (Plenty), 1986 (The Bay at Nice), 1990 (Racing Demon), 1995 (Skylight), 1997 (Amy's View), 1998 (Via Dolorosa). Pravda text copyright © David Hare and Howard Brenton 1985.

All rights reserved.

Special thanks to The British Library and Keith Wickham for sourcing audio files.

Content list

1. Plenty

2. Amy's View

3. Knuckle

4. Pravda

5. The Bay at Nice

6. Skylight

7. Racing Demon

8. Via Dolorosa

Bonus interview

Meridian: David Hare

First broadcast BBC World Service, 21 October 1991

©2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Reviews

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The greatest novel of the century

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The Odyssey, the Divine Comedy and Hamlet whisper their way through its pages: and Ulysses is their equal at every turn

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Ulysses, with its comic-epic tapestry, took fiction deeper than ever into the raucous carnival of everyday life

—— Independent

Dirty, blasphemous and unreadable, or one of the greatest novels of the 20th century? No matter what your opinion of it, Ulysses has had a profound influence on modern fiction... Unforgettable

—— Guardian

[Gabler's edition is] a required object of study for every scholar working in English literature

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Viciously satisfying. Malice takes Sleeping Beauty and turns everything on its head, cutting right to the core of this bejewelled world. Heather Walter has given us a villain to adore.

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Full of evocative detail and memorable characters

—— Zoe West , Woman & Home

Lily is a wonderful creation - diffident and trying to find her place in the world... But it's Tremain's attention to detail that really sets this novel apart

—— Ian Critchley , Literary Review

Terrific

—— Claire Allfree , Sunday Telegraph, *Novel of the Week*

An authentically melodramatic whydunnit set in Victorian London

—— Anthony Cummins , Daily Mail

Tremain has created a feisty, rebellious heroine in the style of Jane Eyre and Maggie Tulliver, in a setting that owes much to Dickens... a very engaging read

—— Vanessa Berridge , Daily Express

A heart-wrenching tale that blends historical detail, moral fable and fairy story with a powerful heroine at its helm

—— Yours, *Christmas Gift Guide 2021*

Fans of Dickens's heart-tugging Little Dorrit should enjoy this powerful exploration of the human urge to seek places of sanctuary in a pitiless, fickle world. Perfect fireside reading - but better keep a hankie ready

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Tremain brilliantly conjures up the atmosphere of Victorian London while the story is cleverly structured to keep the reader guessing to the end

—— Richard Hopton , Country & Town House

The 19th-century world Tremain paints a wonderfully vivid. She arouses great pity in us for Lily, enhanced here by Hattie Morahan's warm and sensitive narration

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With astute psychological awareness of her characters, Hadley presents a visceral and engaging picture of a bygone time. Unexpected twists and unclichéd characters support the luscious language, making this a real pleasure of a read.

—— UK Press Syndication

Free Love artfully delves beneath the veneer of the British middle class to tell an intimate story of generational discord, political change and sexual freedom.

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Hadley's resplendent eighth novel... [has] poignantly astute observations on class, destiny and the false promises of the sexual revolution.

—— Hephzibah Anderson , Mail on Sunday

Hadley's eighth novel is as absorbing as any of her other fiction, with complex family secrets, brilliant insights...and lush descriptions of nature.

—— Markie Robson-Scott , Arts Desk

Hadley chooses her words with spellbinding precision.

—— Claire Allfree , Metro

Hadley's complex sentences are purring marvels of engineering... A brilliant writer of interiority...she has a gift...for portraying the state of wanting to be wanted, or simply to be seen... almost every page struck me anew with some elegant phrasing, feline irony or shrewdly sympathetic insight.

—— Anthony Cummins , Observer

Few contemporary novelists write about their characters' inner worlds with a finely filigreed but plain-spoken acuity that Tessa Hadley brings to her work...accessing roving, rich depths... Hadley is a master in her field.

—— Lucy Scholes , Daily Telegraph

"With each new book by Tessa Hadley, I grow more convinced that she's one of the greatest stylists alive. . . . To read Hadley's fiction is to grow self-conscious in the best way: to recognize with astonishment the emotions playing behind our own expressions, to hear articulated our own inchoate anxieties. . . . The whole grief-steeped story should be as fun as a dirge, but instead it feels effervescent-lit not with mockery but with the energy of Hadley's attention, her sensitivity to the abiding comedy of human desire. . . . Extraordinary.

—— The Washington Post

Brilliant.... In the hands of a lesser novelist, the intricate tangle of lives at the center of Late in the Day would feel like just such a self-satisfied riddle or, at best, like sly narrative machinations. Because this is Tessa Hadley, it instead feels earned and real and, even in its smallest nuances, important.... It's to her credit that Hadley manages to be old-fashioned and modernist and brilliantly postmodern all at once.... We've seen this before, and we've never seen this before, and it's spectacular.

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Utterly engrossing... Free Love is highly gratifying.

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Free Love is a triumph.

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Brilliantly done... Hadley writes with devastating psychological insight, her prose spare and scalpel sharp. But she is also judiciously non-judgemental, a generous chronicler of the foibles and fears that mar and make a marriage.

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Free Love is an absolute joy to read from a writer who never puts a word wrong. Fans of Small Pleasures will love it.

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[A] brilliant, sensual, seductively plotted new novel... Hadley has written an extraordinary story about love and transformation.

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Free Love is often deeply perceptive and affecting... it lets you imagine what it was like to wrestle with old and new ways of thinking in an age that shaped (and continues to shape) our own.

—— Guy Stevenson , Literary Review

It's the 1960s and socialism, sex and nuclear anxiety have come crashing into the middle-class bubble Tessa Hadley novels usually operate so brilliant within.

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A story about change and its limits, its beautifully judged ending will bring you to tears.

—— Daily Mail, *Summer Reads of 2022*

[An] acutely realised, deeply humane novel... Unmissable.

—— Tablet, *Summer Reads of 2022*

No novel published this year gave me more pleasure than Tessa Hadley's Free Love.

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Nothing drew me in as conclusively as Free Love by Tessa Hadley, who is surely one of our most astute and deft observers of everyday lives.

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Hadley's novels continue to get better and better - and this is her finest, most pleasurable yet... it's near enough the perfect present in book form

—— Daily Mail, *Books of the Year*

She is, in all her mastery of the craft, a writer's writer.

—— Marie Claire
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