ARTS & DRAMA
12 August 2008
Tuesday 12 August 2008 11:30-12:00 (Radio 4 FM)
Best-selling author Val McDermid examines the development of the lesbian novel and its transition from the margins to the mainstream.
She looks at the furore surrounding Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, the subject of an obscenity trial in 1928 and banned because of its lesbian content. Virginia Woolf's Orlando was published in the same year but escaped the censor. The programme includes a rare BBC recording of Vita Sackville-West, the inspiration behind Woolf's modernist masterpiece.
Contributors include Jeanette Winterson, Sarah Waters and Ali Smith.
Followed by News.
