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Program Title
Credits Producer: Derek Granger Director: Barry Davis Intro Country Matters II/Crippled Bloom/Intro by Alistair Cooke Good evening, I'm Alistair Cooke. Many of you, I hope, will remember that four seasons ago we put on a series of plays adapted from the short stories of two Englishmen who down the years since their death have outlasted many more famous names and now seem to be two masters of English twentieth century literature. They are A. E. Coppard and H. E. Bates. Because they both settled deep in the English countryside and shunned the whole social traffic of the successful author, they were taken for the longest time at their own valuation, which was that of minor practitioners of the short story on rural themes. But the farther we get from that time, the more they seem to be writing about men and women of any place and any time. Now tonight we start a second series of their stories again under the general title of Country Matters, which, if you remember Hamlet does not refer to country life. Remember Hamlet says, Lady, shall I lie in your lap? and Ophelia says, No Mi' lord and he replies, I mean my head upon your lap, Did you think I meant 'country matters'? Now that little exchange in Victorian times was considered so obscene that it was always deleted from stage performances, which may be as good a time as any to say that these stories are for, I'd like to say, mature audiences. In fact they are all about maturing, the discovery usually by innocent youngsters of the onset desire. This first story is by A. E. Coppard who was born in Kent in 1878, left school at the age of nine, was an errand boy, grocery boy, a professional sprinter for ten years, and for many more years a clerk in an iron works. It was there at the age of forty-three that he published his first stories. This one is set in North of England, in a seaside village in the mid-1930s. The central character, Ruby, is played by Pauline Collins, the sassy and unforgettable 'Sarah' of Upstairs/Downstairs. Episode one, Crippled Bloom.  Episode number: 1 2 3 4 5
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