Christmas Eve, 1950. A 25-year-old Richard Burton takes the microphone as David Copperfield. Boris Karloff becomes the sinister Uriah Heep. And as the formidable Betsey Trotwood, one of Britain’s great character actresses enters the story: Flora Robson.
In this Chesterton Radio deep dive, we follow Robson’s extraordinary voice across more than thirty years of radio drama through three very different performances.
🎙️ David Copperfield — Theatre Guild on the Air (1950)
Richard Burton, Boris Karloff and Flora Robson bring Dickens to American network radio on Christmas Eve.
🎙️ The Soft September Air — Charlotte Hastings, BBC Saturday Night Theatre
An older Robson plays an independent novelist whose carefully ordered life is unexpectedly transformed by a group of young people.
🎙️ A Voice in My Hand — Charlotte Hastings, BBC Saturday Night Theatre
A haunting late-career drama connected with the celebration of Robson’s remarkable sixty years in the theatre.
Along the way, we explore Robson’s unusual career as one of Britain’s finest character actresses; the young Richard Burton before international fame; Boris Karloff beyond Frankenstein; playwright Charlotte Hastings and her recurring collaboration with Robson; and the changing art of radio drama from America’s golden age to the BBC tradition of the late twentieth century.
Most of all, this is about something radio does perhaps better than any other medium.
The theatre disappears. The scenery comes down. The audience goes home. The actors themselves eventually pass into history.
But the microphone remembers.
More than seventy-five years after that Christmas Eve broadcast, we can still hear Flora Robson walk into Dickens’ story as Betsey Trotwood.
The past isn’t merely something we can read about.
We can still hear it.
Listen to the plays
David Copperfield — Richard Burton, Boris Karloff & Flora Robson
The Soft September Air — Flora Robson & Charlotte Hastings
A Voice in My Hand — Flora Robson & Charlotte Hastings
From Chesterton Radio — The Little Station on Commercial Street in Atchison, Kansas.
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