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East Lynne
East Lynne
Jul 9, 2025 11:20 PM

Author:Michael Bakewell,Rosemary Leach,Moir Leslie,David Collings,Full Cast

East Lynne

A seven-part BBC radio dramatisation of Mrs Henry Wood’s sensational Victorian bestseller, suffused with infidelity and double identities

Lord Mount Severn's country seat, East Lynne, is magnificent – but its owner is penniless, and when the noble lord dies suddenly, his daughter is left destitute. To avoid misery and humiliation, Lady Isabel accepts a proposal of marriage from Mr Carlyle, the new owner of the estate. However, she soon finds herself battling with two strong emotions: her jealousy of her husband’s friend Barbara Hare, and her attraction to the handsome Captain Levison.

Suspecting Carlyle of infidelity, she takes drastic action and leaves her husband and children to run away with Levison – only to realise he has no intention of marrying her. No sooner has Lady Isabel been betrayed by her wicked suitor than she is left unrecognisably disfigured by a terrible train crash. With her life in ruins, she adopts a new name and heads back to the place she once called home – East Lynne…

Adapted by Michael Bakewell, this much-loved melodrama stars Rosemary Leach asMrs Henry Wood, Moir Leslie as Lady Isabel, David Collings as Mr Carlyle and Anthony Edridge as Francis Levison.

Written by Mrs Henry Wood

Dramatised by Michael Bakewell

Directed by Richard Johnson

First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 14 June-26 July 1987

Reviews

A tour de force

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Jean-Paul Sartre dominated the intellectual life of twentieth-century France to an extraordinary degree ... heralded as the "pope" of existentialism, he ranked as an international superstar

—— The New York Times

An astonishing accomplishment and a book for all seasons

—— Independent

Smith is a masterful storyteller... Spring is political but Smith is more concerned with the human fallout of current affairs then the machinations of elites... Through her account of unlikely friendships, Smith brings human values to the fore. Savour it, because there is just one instalment left

—— Evening Standard

Spring weaves a story around the most pressing issues of our time... [A] bubbling, babbling brook of a book...Smith tells stories in a voice you can't help but listen to

—— The Times

A powerful vision of lost souls in a divided Britain... As Smith's Seasonal Quartet moves towards completion her own role in British fiction looks ever more vital. The final page proclaims spring 'the great connective'. It's not a bad description of Smith herself

—— Guardian

Beguiling... The eagerly awaited third instalment

—— Financial Times

Infectious in its energy and warmth

—— Daily Telegraph

Just when things were starting to look really bad, along comes the third instalment in Ali Smith's seasonal quartet to lift us out of the gloom... An extraordinary embodiment of the ways in which storytelling connects us... The work of Katherine Mansfield and Rilke, Greek myths and the propulsive lyricism of spring itself, thread together in narratives of loss and rejuvenation

—— Daily Mail

The third of her exceptional Seasonal quartet, which riffs back and forth with Autumn and Winter to expound on the importance of hope to move us beyond the darkest of times

—— I paper

The most compelling and coherent of the three books... Smith, as always is interested in how a story gets told, and who gets to tell it

—— Sunday Times

Ali Smith is one of our greatest living novelists, the Virginia Woolf of our times.

—— The Observer

A startling debut

—— Must Read , Image Magazine

An utterly beautiful book

—— Michael Harding

A beautifully written account of a love triangle that feels so real I could have lived it myself

—— Kathleen MacMahon

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—— Irish Independent

The Weight of Love left me with a feeling I so rarely get with fiction - a sort of drunkenness, an ease. I sank into it and when I got to the end, I wanted to turn it over and start again

—— Business Post

Wonderful ... A novel about lots of different forms of love ... Everyone should buy it

—— Miriam O'Callaghan , RTÉ Radio 1

Stunning ... perceptive, pitch-perfect.

—— Saga Magazine

Beautifully written ... profoundly moving.

—— Sunday Mirror

The poet Frances Leviston brings her razor-sharp observations to prose.

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—— Max Porter

A brutal portrait of male violence, as unchanging down the centuries as the coastal rock of the title… Cleverly constructed, full of electric scene-making, and harnessing an eerie energythe novel ends in hope.

—— Anthony Cummins , i

Everything [Evie Wyld] has published has left me excited and slightly (very) envious of her ability… And then came The Bass RockSomething extremely special… The book takes on an immense power. This is the best book of the #MeToo eraAn absolute blinder.

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—— Alice O'Keefe , Bookseller

Evie Wyld is exceptionally good at the gruesome… Her bewitching third novelThe Bass Rock is beautifully written and its particular brand of macabre is all Evie Wyld’s own. The tension, foreboding and sense of inevitability are hard to shake off, even once the final page is turned. Its atmosphere is so powerful that you feel you need to go for a walk afterwards.

—— Cressida Connolly , Literary Review

A dark, gristly marvel of a novel. The Bass Rock held me in thrall from cover to cover. Evie Wyld is a gothic genius: her narrative of the violence inflicted on women throughout the centuries and the seething, female anger left in its wake left me with a deep sense of disquiet that will doubtless remain for years to come.

—— Hannah Kent

A fierce novel exploring the subjugation of – and violence against – women through the ages.

—— Hannah Beckerman , Observer

I savoured this wonderful novel; it is so extraordinarily clear-eyed and vivid, sharply disturbing yet deeply compassionate. What an amazing achievement.

—— Megan Hunter

Wonderfully subtle and magnificently savage.

—— Claire Fuller

Evie Wyld's vivid, visceral writing has long been in a class of its own – and as beautiful as it is terrifying, as moral as it is furious, The Bass Rock is her at her unflinching best.

—— Melissa Harrison

Amazingly good. The Bass Rock will fill the air around you with angry ghosts and you will be glad in their company.

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Wyld’s The Bass Rock is her third novel and best so farthis is Wyld’s masterpiece – as majestic and monumental as the landmark it’s named after.

—— Alex Preston , Observer, *Books to Look Our For in 2020*

A bewitching and atmospheric novel, laced with dread. It reveals the haunted house of society, with its echoes of damaged and extinguished lives, but is also illuminated by beautiful observation about people, and their capacity for both violence and empathy.

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I loved The Bass Rock and found it menacing, sophisticated, magical and also very funny – the best book yet by a wonderful writer.

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Evie Wyld’s The Bass Rock sounds fascinating… Wyld has a luminous prose style, and to see how she copes with 300 years and Scottish doubleness (or tripleness) is high on my list of “to reads”.

—— Stuart Kelly , Scotland on Sunday

Beautifully written, [The Bass Rock] is a reminder of female folklore and the power of giving words to women.

—— Stylist *10 glorious new books to buy this March*

Ambitious in scope… The physical atmosphere of the Bass Rock and its surroundings are wonderfully evoked… But it is the relationships between women in this tessellated work that triumph... I wholly recommend this book.

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Wyld is often praised for her lyrical prose, and The Bass Rock is most certainly a continuation of this form.

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[A] dark, beautiful and funny gothic family saga for the #MeToo generation… an atmospheric book that transports you within a few sentences… The tension is always building as the story takes on an otherworldly dimension.

—— Charlotte Cripps , Independent

The Bass Rock is complex, rich, challenging… Like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, The Bass Rock offers a universal history of subjugation and oppressionViolenceruns through the book like veins in marbleVivid and gripping.

—— Irish Times

A gripping look at three women's stories across four centuries.

—— Joanne Finney , Good Housekeeping

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