A seven-part BBC radio dramatisation of Mrs Henry Wood’s sensational Victorian best seller, 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 as Mrs 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.
Michael Bakewell (7 June 1931 – 11 July 2023) was a British radio and television producer and radio playwright.
His work included adapting The Lord of the Rings (with Brian Sibley) into a 1981 radio series for the BBC and a series of 27 adaptations of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot stories broadcast between 1985 and 2007 by BBC Radio 4.
He was born in Birmingham, England. After graduating from Cambridge in 1954, he was recruited by the BBC's Third Programme. He became the first Head of Plays at the BBC in the 1960s.