Chatterton: The Allington Solution

A rather wonderful radio play starring Benedict Cumberbatch. 

An afternoon Play, Thursday 1st May 2008, 14:15 on BBC Radio 4 FM.

The first radio play by historian Peter Ackroyd, author of the book Chatterton.

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The play is available via the link below, which takes you straight to the  radio player on that most fabulous of resources, the Archive.org website.

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Here's the Link to listen to the show: Chatterton: The Allington Solution

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Who or what killed the boy genius Thomas Chatterton?                                   

For over two hundred years, everyone thought he committed suicide, a neglected poet driven to despair. Everyone, that is, except Jeremy Allington, a literary historian, who thinks the prevailing wisdom is nonsense. Only he isn't quite as polite as that …

 

Dangerously close to losing his job and his partner, Allington is determined to prove that history is not as simple as some historians would have us believe.

 

Cast:
Thomas Chatterton ..... Benedict Cumberbatch
Jeremy Allington ..... Adrian Scarborough
Ruth ..... Rachel Bavidge
Partridge ..... David Timson
Sam Beaumont ..... Glen McCready
Mrs Angel ..... Liza Sadovy
Jackman ..... Hugh Ross
Mr Crane ..... Jonathan Keeble
Coroner ..... Hugh Dickson
Mark Lawson ..... Himself

 

Producer: Nicolas Soames
A Ukemi Production for BBC Radio 4. 

 

Set in both the present day and the 18th century, 

Chatterton:  The Allington Solution is the first play for Radio 4 by the acclaimed writer, biographer and historian, Peter Ackroyd.

 

 

Thomas Chatterton (20 November 1752 – 24 August 1770) was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. He was an influence on Romantic artists of the period such as Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge.