C.P. Snow

Adam Godley

David Haig

Bill Wallis

Juliet Aubrey

Full Cast

David Tennant

Anne-Marie Duff

Stephen Moore

Danny Webb

An epic BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation

The full-cast BBC Radio adaptation of C. P. Snow's epic series about the English establishment across the twentieth century 
 
'A vivid portrait of British academic, political and public life' Guardian 
 
'A very considerable achievement... It brings into the novel themes and locales never seen before (except perhaps in Trollope)' Anthony Burgess 
 
In 1920s Leicester, Lewis Eliot must escape the drudgery of a council clerk's office and his provincial lower class background to begin his decades-long rise to power. As the years pass, and Lewis progresses to successful London lawyer, to Cambridge don, to wartime service in Whitehall, to senior civil servant and finally retirement, he faces in his own life and the lives of those around him collapsing marriages, terrible illness, the politics of academia, Nazism, nuclear weapons, the price of power, and the ever-present realities of war. 
 
The New York Times praised the book series, saying, 'through [them] as in no other work in our time we have explored the inner life of the new classless class that is the 20th century Establishment'. John Betjeman claimed the books were 'as full of life as life itself'. The Strangers and Brothers series captures perfectly the ever-present battle between political and personal integrity Lewis must face, as well as all the upheaval and social change of the two world wars and the decades that followed. 
 
This adaptation stars David Haig and Adam Godley as Lewis Eliot, Bill Wallis as George Passant, Juliet Aubrey as Margaret Davidson, Stephen Moore as Herbert Getliffe, and Danny Webb as Percy Hall, with a full cast including Jeremy Swift, David Tennant, Anne-Marie Duff, Iain Glen, Claire Skinner and Tim McInnerny. 
 
Directed by Jeremy Howe and Sally Avens 
Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway 
 
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4, January-June 2003 
 
Full cast: 
Narrator/Lewis Eliot - David Haig 
Young Lewis Eliot - Adam Godley 
George Passant - Bill Wallis 
Marion - Laura Doddington 
Sheila Knight - Anastasia Hille 
Herbert Getliffe - Stephen Moore 
Percy Hall - Danny Webb 
Charles March - Jamie Glover 
Leonard March - John Standing 
Katherine March - Carla Simpson 
Ann Simon - Emma Woolliams 
Mrs Getliffe - Suzanna Hamilton 
Revd Knight - Brett Usher 
Young Francis Getliffe - Andy Taylor 
Winslow - Clive Merrison 
Young Brown - Philip Franks 
Roy Calvert - Adam Levy 
Young Jago - David Calder 
Nightingale - Jeremy Child 
Chrystal - Matthew Marsh 
Crawford - Hugh Quarshie 
Mrs Jago - Joanna Monroe 
Sir Horace Timberlake - Ian Hogg 
Young Hector Rose - Rupert Vansittart 
Houston Eggar - Peter Marinker 
Willy Romantovski - Kenneth Collard 
Gilbert Cooke - Anthony Calf 
Margaret Davidson/Margaret Eliot - Juliet Aubrey 
Rosalind - Anne-Marie Duff 
Betty Vane - Carla Simpson 
Martin Eliot - Tim McInnerny 
Walter Luke - Jeremy Swift 
Irene - Claire Skinner 
David Rubin - Rolf Saxon 
Sawbridge - Adrian Scarborough 
Edgar - Andrew Wincott 
Captain Smith - Sean Baker 
Sir Hector Rose - John Carlisle 
Sir Thomas Beville - Robert Laing 
Austin Davidson - David Collings 
Jago - Sean Barrett 
Dawson Hill - Peter Blythe 
Skeffington - David Acton 
Francis Getliffe - Geoffrey Whitehead 
Brown - Jonathan Coy 
Donald Howard - David Tennant 
Roger Quaife - Iain Glen 
Lord Collingwood - Ronald Pickup 
Caro Quaife - Julia Watson 
Lord Gilbey - John Woodvine 
Diana Skidmore - Avril Clark 
Phillips - Richard Firth 
Osbaldiston - David Leonard 
Brodzinski - Christopher Rozycki 
Ellen Smith - Emma Bown 
Monteith - Paul Venables 
Trafford - Stephen Critchlow 
 
© 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

C.P. Snow

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