A spy disappears into the shadows of Cold War Europe. A policeman walks a lonely beat. Three shepherd children in Portugal witness something that will change the world.
What connects these seemingly different stories? The remarkable imagination of William Keenan.
In this edition of Chesterton Radio’s Saturday Night Theatre Companion, we rediscover the English journalist, novelist, Catholic writer, and BBC dramatist whose work ranged from gripping espionage thrillers to police mysteries and powerful explorations of religious faith.
We follow Keenan’s interconnected Michael Heywood spy trilogy — Late Into the Night, The Night of Caesar’s Knives, and The Vienna Connection — through a dangerous world of intelligence agents, divided loyalties, and Cold War deception.
Then we turn to the darker streets of British crime drama with Lonely Beat and The Dark Windows of a Room, where the search for truth becomes intensely personal.
Finally, we explore Keenan’s Catholic imagination through Fatima and Margaret Clitherow, two extraordinary stories of faith, courage, persecution, and conscience in the face of political power.
Along the way, we examine the lost art of BBC radio drama, the actors and producers who brought these stories to life, and the extraordinary ability of sound and silence to create entire worlds in the listener’s imagination.
From the back streets of Manchester to the corridors of Soviet intelligence, from Elizabethan England to the fields of Fatima, Keenan’s plays return again and again to one enduring question:
What does a person do when the truth demands courage?
Join us for a journey into the golden age of British radio drama — and the rediscovery of a storyteller whose work deserves to be heard again.
Listen to the original plays:
William Keenan — Complete Radio Drama Collection
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