C. P. Snow - Strangers and Brothers, 2003
BBC Radio 4: The Classic Serial
Lewis Eliot's story is about power and the exercise of power. How men, whether at the highest pinacle of authority at Westminister or mearly in a clerk's office play the strings that give them power and influence over other people. It is also a story of how England changed over the period of his working life from the 1920's to the 1960's. It changed, and yet remained the same. Always people jockying for position, trying to outsmart each other whether in the affairs of the human heart or power over other people's lives. In a minor way, Lewis has helped shape governments; helped win wars, even; seen careers reach the stars and then explode in fragments. Curiously, for a tale of such moment, it begins in the Midland town where he was born. His family, the Eliot's, were lower-middle class and sinking; his schooling rudimentary, and his ambition... limitless.
In a world where truth and justice test the personal philosophies of even the strongest men, Eliot is the ambitious lawyer fighting the temptations that could ruin his personal life. Eliots decisions lead his career on a tempestuous journey of success, tragedy, and rekindled love. Throughout it all, Eliot realises his true "brothers" masquerade as "strangers."
A 10-part dramatisation by Jonathan Holloway. Produced and directed by Jeremy Howe and Sally Avens.
EPISODES
1) 'A Time of Hope' (Sunday 19th January 2003 , 3:00 p.m.)
After what seemed like a lifetime clerking in a council office, Lewis had resolved to break free: free from Leicester, free from his class, and free from his past. The ticket to his new life was passing the exam to study at the bar in London. It is July 1927. Lewis is 22 and George Passant, his night school teacher, is throwing a party to celebrate his success for passing the exams.
Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway from C. P. Snow's 1949 novel, "Time of Hope".
With Adam Godley [Lewis Eliot], Anastasia Hille [Sheila Knight], Stephen Moore [Herbert Getliffe], Danny Webb [Percy Hall], Jamie Glover [Charles March], John Standing [Leonard March], Emma Williams [Ann Simon], Laura Doddington [Marion Gladwell], Carla Simpson [Katherine March], Bill Wallis [George Passant], Brett Usher [Dr. Morris / Reverend Laurence Knight], Suzanna Hamilton [Mrs. Getliffe] and David Haig [The Narrator]. 60 minutes.
2) 'The Conscience of the Rich' (Sunday 26th January 2003 , 3:00 p.m.)
It is April 1936 and Lewis is now 31 years old. While the facists and the Republicans fought it out in Spain, Lewis navigated his way through the lower echelons of the British establishment. From obscure Midlands poverty he has risen to a fellowship in law at Cambridge University. He had a pretty wife who no one except his closest friends knew was useless. He had never been to University and learned his basic law at night school. He had never been in business and imbibed the vocabulary of management in the atheneum and the manners of privilege at the Friday night dinners of his closest friend's family - the fabulously wealthy Marches. The trick had worked. He was taken seriously and lived on the penumbra of the 300 or so people who actually run the country.
Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway from C. P. Snow's 1958 novel, "The Conscience of the Rich".
With Adam Godley [Lewis Eliot], Anastasia Hille [Sheila Knight], Jamie Glover [Charles March], John Standing [Leonard March], David Horovitch [Philip March], Adam Levy [Roy Calvert], Emma Woolliams [Ann Simon], Michael Culkin [Ronald Porson], Clive Merrison [Godfrey Winslow], Philip Franks [Arthur Brown], Andy Taylor [Francis Getliffe] and David Haig [The Narrator]. 60 minutes
3) 'The Masters - Part 1' (Sunday 2nd February 2003 , 3:00 p.m.)
It is January 1937 and Cambridge lies muffled under a blanket of deep snow. The quad is empty and quiet while Eliot sits enjoying the fireside. He and his wife have become use to living apart - in fact they had grown comfortable with separation. Ten years previously, Lewis had started out on the difficult road to being a barrister in London. But ill health and his ill-judged marriage had pushed his career in a different direction. He is teaching in a Cambridge college when an election is called for a new Master.
Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway from C. P. Snow's 1951 novel, "The Masters".
With Adam Godley [Lewis Eliot], Philip Franks [Arthur Brown], Matthew Marsh [C. P. Chrystal], David Calder [Paul Jago], Adam Levy [Roy Calvert], Ian Hogg [Sir Horace Timberlake], Clive Merrison [Godfrey Winslow], Andy Taylor [Francis Getliffe], Hugh Quarshie [R. T. A. Crawford], Jeremy Child [R. E. A. Nightingale], Joanna Monro [Mrs. Alice Jago] and David Haig [The Narrator]. 60 minutes.
4) 'The Masters - Part 2' (Sunday 9th February 2003 , 3:00 p.m.)
It was December 1937. It had been a dismal year. The Germans and Japanese had started up their war machines and the Master at the Cambridge college where Lewis was a Fellow of Law had just passed away. His death threw the college into turmoil and ranker as his colleagues plotted and counter-plotted the succession. There were two candidates: Crawford, a brilliant scientist, ambitious, and in Eliot's view, vain but associated with the anti-appeasement faction against Hitler; and Jago, Eliot's man, a good teacher but an undistinguished academic, unconcerned with the world outside their cloister. The election was to be immediately before Christmas and neither candidate had a majority of the 12 Fellows. They needed both the Returning Officer's vote and a defection from Crawford's camp. Against all his rational instincts Eliot promised to chase down one of the imbittered old-guard to see if he couldn't secure them a turncoat at the last innings. The Reverend Despard-Smith, at 70 years, the most lonely and resentful of all the 'rightists' in college, seemed most worth a try.
Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway from C. P. Snow's 1951 novel, "The Masters".
With Adam Godley [Lewis Eliot], Anastasia Hille [Sheila Eliot née Knight], Adam Levy [Roy Calvert], Philip Franks [Arthur Brown], Matthew Marsh [C. P. Chrystal], David Calder [Paul Jago], Joanna Monro [Mrs. Alice Jago], Clive Merrison [Godfrey Winslow], Hugh Quarshie [R. T. A. Crawford], Jeremy Child [R. E. A. Nightingale], Andy Taylor [Francis Getliffe], Peter Howell [Reverend A. E. Despard-Smith], Patrick Godfrey [R. S. Robinson], Carla Simpson [Betty Vane] and David Haig [The Narrator].
60 minutes.
5) 'The Light and the Dark' (Sunday 16th February 2003 , 3:00 p.m.)
Eliot spent the first years of the war scared stiff, and he was right to be. He was about to find himself at the heart of a project that would threaten the future of civilisation. They were fighting the Germans, the Americans weren't yet in the war, the League of Nations had fallen apart, and the enemy was poised to invade Europe. His private life was in shreds - his wife, a suicide. He shut up his Chelsea house and at age 35 he was living ridiculously, wandering between his club, a Pimlico bed-sit, and rooms in a Cambridge college of which he was a Fellow. Those of his Cambridge colleagues with any vim had gone into the war effort. Eliot was in Whitehall, in a close, consultative role with energy minister Sir Thomas Bevill. Bevill's Permanent Secretary and Eliot's immediate boss was the self-regarding Hector Rose. One Autumn afternoon he was summoned for a little talk.
Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway from C. P. Snow's 1947 novel, "The Light and the Dark".
With Adam Godley [Lewis Eliot], Adam Levy [Roy Calvert], Juliet Aubrey [Margaret Davidson], Rupert Vanisttart [Hector Rose], Anne-Marie Duff [Rosalind Calvert], Peter Marinker [Houston Eggar], Anthony Calf [Gilbert Cooke], Kenneth Collard [Willie Rumtofski], Carla Simpson [Betty Vane] and David Haig [The Narrator].
.60 minutes
6) 'The New Men' (Sunday 1st June 2003 , 3:00 p.m.)
Eliot's war was spent locked in the race against the germans to split the atom. It was the greatest adventure of his life. The biggest thing he had ever been involved in. You could say he was the crucial link between the nuclear research facility at Barford and Whitehall. On the one hand he was struggling to keep the scientists under some semblance of control, among them his brother Martin and his former Cambridge colleague, Walter Luke. On the other, he fought to keep his masters in government convinced that nuclear research was a vital initiative. On an April evening in 1943, he arrives at the hanger in Barford, where the atomic pile - a huge, concret cube - loomed like an eastern religious monument. Here he finds that there are problems in the development.
Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway from C. P. Snow's 1954 novel, "The New Men".
With David Haig [Lewis Eliot], Tim McInnerny [Martin Eliot], Jeremy Swift [Walter Luke], Claire Skinner [Irene Eliot née Brunskill], Adrian Scarborough [Eric Sawbridge], John Carlisle [Sir Hector Rose], Sean Baker [Captain Smith], Andrew Wincott [Edgar Hankins], and Rolf Saxon [David Rubin].
60 minutes.
7) 'Homecomings' (Sunday 8th June 2003 , 3:00 p.m.)
It is August 1945 and Eliot is working in Whitehall as Chief Liaison with Britian's Nuclear Weapons Establishment at Barford. The news that the Americans had beaten Barford to the atom bomb knocked the stuffings out of them. Walter Luke, their chief scientist, had wanted to send a delegation to the States to tell them not to use the bomb in anger - not to let the spider out of the box. Then when the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, they were appalled and ashamed. Then the second bomb on Nagasaki left many of them winded. Close on it's heels came something that would make Barford utterly unbearable - a spy.
Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway from C. P. Snow's 1956 novel, "Homecomings".
With David Haig [Lewis Eliot], Tim McInnerny [Martin Eliot], Jeremy Swift [Walter Luke], Juliet Aubrey [Margaret Davidson], Adrian Scarborough [Eric Sawbridge], Robert Lang [Sir Thonas Bevill], David Collings [Austin Davidson], Ian Hughes [Geoffrey Hollis], John Carlisle [Sir Hector Rose], Sean Baker [Captain Smith], and Stephen Moore [Herbert Getliffe].
60 minutes.
8) 'The Affair' (Sunday 15th June 2003 , 3:00 p.m.)
The 'affair' was very odd. It happened at the Cambridge college where Eliot had taught law before the war. Then, the college had scooped him up and resurrected his faltering career and had maintained a place in his affections ever since. In 1954, Eliot was semi-detached from the university and had his head down in co-ordinating the development of the British atom bomb. Indeed, it was atomic research that took him back to the college and dropped him into the midst of the affair that was pre-occupying the senior common room. It was pure Dreyfuss - like the famous affair of the French colonel, it was a miscarriage of justice perpetrated by unsound evidence and was as much based on prejudice as on fact. His brother, Martin, who had returned to Cambridge when he left Barford met him off the early train one April morning...
Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway from C. P. Snow's 1960 novel, "The Affair".
With David Haig [Lewis Eliot], Tim McInnerny [Martin Eliot], Jeremy Child [R. E. A. Nightingale], Hugh Quarshie [R. T. A. Crawford], Geoffrey Whitehead [Francis Getliffe], Jonathan Coy [Arthur Brown], Sean Barrett [Paul Jago], Peter Blythe [Dawson Hill], Clive Merrison [Godfrey Winslow], David Acton [Julian Skeffington], and David Tennant [Donald Howard]. 60 minutes
9) 'The Corridors of Power: An Even Bet' (Sunday 22nd June 2003 , 3:00 p.m.)
It's 1955 and Eliot has turned 50. He was blessed with a beautiful wife and a beautiful child. Although not a career civil servant, he was now a fixture in Whitehall. His job was to co-ordinate Britian's atomic bomb project - not a task he relished. The Cold War cast a chill shadow across them all. One spring evening in the run-up to the General Election, he and his wife, Margaret, were invited to a party in Lord North Street, the London home of Roger Quaife, a youngish Conservative MP who was beginning to be talked about. It was an evening that set Eliot on one of the most extraordinary adventures of his career.
Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway from C. P. Snow's 1964 novel, "The Corridors of Power".
With David Haig [Lewis Eliot], Iain Glen [Roger Quaife], Juliet Aubrey [Margaret Eliot née Davidson], Ronald Pickup [Lord Reginald Collingwood], John Woodvine [Lord Gilbey], Jeremy Swift [Sir Walter Luke], Geoffrey Whitehead [Sir Francis Getliffe], John Carlisle [Sir Hector Rose], Christopher Rozycki [Michael Brodzinski], Julia Watson [Caroline Quaife], Avril Clarke [Diana Skidmore], David Leonard [Douglas Osbaldiston], Rolf Saxon [David Rubin], and Simon Firth [Philips].
60 minutes.
10) 'The Corridors of Power: The Choice' (Sunday 29th June 2003 , 3:00 p.m.)
In the summer of 1957 they were in the thick of the terror known as the Cold War. The debacler at Suez had damaged Britian's standing at the top table; toppled a Prime Minister and made the new Conservative government very nervous. Eliot was working in Whitehall along side the new rising star of the Tory cabinet, Roger Quaife. The prize on offer was the greatest of Eliot's career. Against type and presidence, Quaife was working on a plan to scrap Britian's atom bomb. It was something Eliot believed in with every fibre of his being. This proposal will soon be published in a white paper that would mark an astonishing turnaround in Conservative thinking. Eliot was worried about their e nemy, Brodzinski, and decided to confide in his colleague, Douglas Osbaldiston...
Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway from C. P. Snow's 1964 novel, "The Corridors of Power".
With David Haig [Lewis Eliot], Iain Glen [Roger Quaife], Juliet Aubrey [Margaret Eliot née Davidson], Ronald Pickup [Lord Reginald Collingwood], Geoffrey Whitehead [Sir Francis Getliffe], John Carlisle [Sir Hector Rose], Emma Brown [Ellen Smith], Julia Watson [Caroline Quaife], David Leonard [Douglas Osbaldiston], Paul Venables [Monteith], Rolf Saxon [David Rubin], and Stephen Critchlow [Traford].
60 minutes.
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Here are the first five episodes. Katy will be posting the latter five once these are done.
Replies
I have just listened again to this and in its way it is amazing.It is not the best writtenn novel or play ever but it does dramatize issues and ideas very very well.Maybe most intersting of all it conveys the link between the hugely important political and the apparently only personal.For when it was written it desrves even more credit.As it happens it was rebroadcast on bbc radio4 extra last week but very sincere thanksBob for loading it
You hit it on the head, keva. In my writing and studies of radio the combination of the historical and the personal, as expressed in dramatic terms, is central. Sorry I forgot to post a follow-up thanks to everyone--I think this is an exceptional work. So, thanks.
I saw a big two-volume collection of these novels in a second-hand shop and was at first quite tempted. Then I thought to myself, look at how thick those books are, you'll never get through them all, they'll just sit there gathering dust until you die. At least I feel I have a chance of listening to these radio adaptations! Thanks for sharing.
Thank You! --------------------------------------- Rick
C. P. Snow - Strangers & Brothers - 2 - The Conscience of the Rich...
C. P. Snow - Strangers & Brothers - 3 - The Masters Part 1.mp3
C. P. Snow - Strangers & Brothers - 4 - The Masters Part 2.mp3
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