Strangers and Brothers: An epic BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation

The full-cast BBC Radio adaptation of C. P. Snow's epic series about the English establishment across the twentieth century

'A vivid portrait of British academic, political and public life' Guardian

'A very considerable achievement... It brings into the novel themes and locales never seen before (except perhaps in Trollope)' Anthony Burgess

In 1920s Leicester, Lewis Eliot must escape the drudgery of a council clerk's office and his provincial lower class background to begin his decades-long rise to power. As the years pass, and Lewis progresses to successful London lawyer, to Cambridge don, to wartime service in Whitehall, to senior civil servant and finally retirement, he faces in his own life and the lives of those around him collapsing marriages, terrible illness, the politics of academia, Nazism, nuclear weapons, the price of power, and the ever-present realities of war.

The New York Times praised the book series, saying, 'through [them] as in no other work in our time we have explored the inner life of the new classless class that is the 20th century Establishment'. John Betjeman claimed the books were 'as full of life as life itself'. The Strangers and Brothers series captures perfectly the ever-present battle between political and personal integrity Lewis must face, as well as all the upheaval and social change of the two world wars and the decades that followed.

This adaptation stars David Haig and Adam Godley as Lewis Eliot, Bill Wallis as George Passant, Juliet Aubrey as Margaret Davidson, Stephen Moore as Herbert Getliffe, and Danny Webb as Percy Hall, with a full cast including Jeremy Swift, David Tennant, Anne-Marie Duff, Iain Glen, Claire Skinner and Tim McInnerny.

Directed by Jeremy Howe and Sally Avens
Dramatised by Jonathan Holloway

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4, January-June 2003

Full cast:
Narrator/Lewis Eliot - David Haig
Young Lewis Eliot - Adam Godley
George Passant - Bill Wallis
Marion - Laura Doddington
Sheila Knight - Anastasia Hille
Herbert Getliffe - Stephen Moore
Percy Hall - Danny Webb
Charles March - Jamie Glover
Leonard March - John Standing
Katherine March - Carla Simpson
Ann Simon - Emma Woolliams
Mrs Getliffe - Suzanna Hamilton
Revd Knight - Brett Usher
Young Francis Getliffe - Andy Taylor
Winslow - Clive Merrison
Young Brown - Philip Franks
Roy Calvert - Adam Levy
Young Jago - David Calder
Nightingale - Jeremy Child
Chrystal - Matthew Marsh
Crawford - Hugh Quarshie
Mrs Jago - Joanna Monroe
Sir Horace Timberlake - Ian Hogg
Young Hector Rose - Rupert Vansittart
Houston Eggar - Peter Marinker
Willy Romantovski - Kenneth Collard
Gilbert Cooke - Anthony Calf
Margaret Davidson/Margaret Eliot - Juliet Aubrey
Rosalind - Anne-Marie Duff
Betty Vane - Carla Simpson
Martin Eliot - Tim McInnerny
Walter Luke - Jeremy Swift
Irene - Claire Skinner
David Rubin - Rolf Saxon
Sawbridge - Adrian Scarborough
Edgar - Andrew Wincott
Captain Smith - Sean Baker
Sir Hector Rose - John Carlisle
Sir Thomas Beville - Robert Laing
Austin Davidson - David Collings
Jago - Sean Barrett
Dawson Hill - Peter Blythe
Skeffington - David Acton
Francis Getliffe - Geoffrey Whitehead
Brown - Jonathan Coy
Donald Howard - David Tennant
Roger Quaife - Iain Glen
Lord Collingwood - Ronald Pickup
Caro Quaife - Julia Watson
Lord Gilbey - John Woodvine
Diana Skidmore - Avril Clark
Phillips - Richard Firth
Osbaldiston - David Leonard
Brodzinski - Christopher Rozycki
Ellen Smith - Emma Bown
Monteith - Paul Venables
Trafford - Stephen Critchlow

© 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd