Something to be Spared
by Margaret Gillard
Margaret Gillard - Something to be Spared
BBC Radio 4: The Monday Play
Broadcast: Monday 25th April 1988
"Something to be Spared" follows the last six years of Edward Thomas's life as he transforms from a writer/journalist to poet, with
encouragement from his friend, American poet Robert Frost. Much of this is seen through the eyes of the two women who loved him most:
his wife, Helen, and the couple's dear friend, Eleanor Farjeon, who would go on to become an author of children's stories and plays, a poet,
a journalist, and a broadcaster.
The play opens in 1911 as Eleanor Farjeon heads off to Steep, in East Hampshire, for a weekend stay with her friend, the writer Edward
Thomas, and to meet his family for the first time at their country home.
With Ronald Pickup [Edward Thomas], Sarah Badel [Helen Thomas, Edward's Wife], Janet Maw [Eleanor Farjeon], Colin Stinton
[Robert Frost], Annabelle Lanyon [Bronwen, the Thomas's Older Daughter / Myfanwy, the Thomas's Younger Daughter], Diana Olsson
[Maggie Farjeon, Eleanor's Mother], and William Simons [The Schoolmaster].
The songs, which were written by Eleanor Farjeon, were sung by soprano Nicole Tibbles.
Directed by Cherry Cookson.
90 minutes.
Jim
