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Moon Tiger

Dramatisation of Penelope Lively’s much-loved Booker Prize-winning novel of love and loss in wartime Egypt. Starring Geraldine James, Lydia Wilson and Toby Regbo.

‘In the middle of my life, in the war, I was in a room in Luxor. On the bedside table was a Moon Tiger, a green coil that slowly burns all night, repelling mosquitoes, dropping away into lengths of grey ash.’

Penelope Lively’s much-loved Booker Prize-winning novel is dramatised by Kate Clanchy.

Starring Geraldine James.

This adaptation – the first for the BBC – is a moving drama about love, loss, the senselessness of war and the importance of memory.

Claudia Hampton – celebrated historian, brave journalist and bad mother – is dying in hospital. Even now she begins writing in her head ‘a history of the world and my place in it’, while her resentful daughter, Lisa, interrogates her about the past. But ‘It is feeling that survives’ Claudia finds, ‘feeling and place’ – above all, some weeks in Egypt in 1942 with her lover, Tom, a tank commander.

Claudia ….. Geraldine James
Lisa ….. Lydia Wilson
Tom ….. Toby Regbo

The composer is Katharine Seaton and the music is performed by John Haslam (piano) and George Balmont (bass).

Production Co-ordinator: Sarah Tombling
Sound Designer: David Thomas

Director / Producer: Amber Barnfather

A Flare Path production for BBC Radio 4

Release date:

57 minutes

On radio

Sun 31 May 202615:00

Broadcast

  • Sun 31 May 202615:00

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