Ivy Compton-Burnett – författare

A dark domestic comedy by one of English literature's most distinctive and idiosyncratic authorsLife in the Ponsonby household is an emotional battleground, where tyrannical grandmother Sabine and her equally despotic daughter Hetta struggle to control the fate of the family. Caught in the crossfire are Sabine's son John, a self-absorbed novelist; his five children, Clare, France, Chilton, Victor and Muriel; and Muriel's beleagured governesses.When John's daughter, France, completes her first novel, she is persuaded by her father to publish it under a pseudonym to spare him the embarrassment of being overshadowed by his own flesh and blood. This act of selflessness sparks a series of deceptions, misunderstandings and manipulations: culminating in a family crisis which plays out across the dining-room table over the course of one hair-raising and hilarious dinner party...First published in 1937, Ivy Compton-Burnett's deft dissection of a dysfunctional Victorian family was acclaimed by contemporary critics and admired by Virginia Woolf for its 'bitter truth and intense originality'. This sublime adaptation, featuring an ensemble cast including Patricia Lawrence and Ann Mitchell, breathes new life into her brilliant, blackly comic tale.Production creditsWritten by Ivy Compton-BurnettAdapted by John SpurlingDirected by Liane AukinPiano: Martin GoldsteinCastSabine Ponsonby - Patricia LawrenceHetta - Ann MitchellJohn - John RoweClare - Tessa WorsleyFrance - Kathryn HunterVictor - Simon HewittChilton - Graham BlockeyMuriel: - Pamela MoiseiwitschMiss Bunyan - Merelina KendallGertrude - Narissa KnightsCharity Marcon - Anne JamesonStephen - Bernard BrownAlfred - Christopher GoodSir Rowland Seymour - Arnold DiamondJane - Ellen McIntoshEvelyn - Daniel WebbEdith Hallam - Vivian PicklesDr Chaucer - Robert LangMiss Blake - Fidelis MorganMr Russell - John Forbes-RobertsonFirst broadcast BBC Radio 4, 10 May-9 June 1985(c) 2025 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2025 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

It is Christmas Day, 1885, and the Edgeworths are at each other's throats again. Duncan holds his wife and children captive to his authoritarian whims; every day brings fresh struggles for power. Before breakfast is over, there will be presents in the fire.When illness strikes the family, volatile tensions are unleashed that result in scandal, adultery and murder, while a crowd of gossiping neighbours watches gleefully on.A brutally funny demolition of patriarchal authority, A House and Its Head confirms Ivy Compton-Burnett's status as one of the unique stylists of twentieth-century English fiction, and its greatest chronicler of the violent dysfunction of families.

As another term begins at her girls' school, Josephine Napier reasserts her iron grip over her teachers and family. Her air of studied self-sacrifice conceals ruthless manipulation, but with the introduction of a male teacher to her staff and the return of an old rival for her husband's affections, the mask begins to slip. Old deceptions and new rivalries come to the surface, and the starched perfection of her life is threatened.A consummate expression of Ivy Compton-Burnett's unique style, full of viciously witty dialogue laced with double meanings and veiled insults, More Women Than Men is a masterful dissection of gender and power by an essential twentieth-century writer.

Horace Lamb runs an austere household with tyrannical force and cruel thrift. His five children shiver through the winter and learn that a fire is not a thing to be taken for granted. Hierarchies are more lightly enforced in the servants' quarters, where Bullivant and Mrs Selden attempt to rein in their young charges. When Horace suddenly turns attentive and caring, the real difficulties begin: the taut order of the household slackens, setting loose old grievances.Her own favourite among her novels, Manservant and Maidservant is Ivy Compton-Burnett at her witty, lacerating best. A ruthless satire of power struggles and petty economies, it exposes the violence and cruelty at the core of Victorian family life.