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Episode 5

Angela Carter sent Susannah Clapp a series of postcards that reflected her life and times. Now her friend brings these cards to life to form a memorable portrait of the author.

"These cards make a paper-trail, a zig-zag path through the eighties, when I knew Angela. They are casually dispatched - some messages are barley more than a signature - but often the more pungent for that. They catch Angela on the wing, shooting off her mouth."

Angela Carter was the author of such tour de force novels as 'Wise Children' and 'Nights at The Circus'. Since her death twenty years ago, nothing that amounts to a biography has been written about her. Susannah Clapp, her great friend and literary executor, has not written a biography but has brought these postcards to life - Living Doll, Flickerings, Twin Peaks, Chilli - to paint a vivid picture of the novelist at work and at home in London, and also on her earlier travels in America and Japan.

Susannah Clapp reads from her account of Angela Carter,
the dazzling novelist who died twenty years ago. Carter's postcard
entries are read by Claire Skinner and the series abridger is Katrin
Williams.

Producer Duncan Minshull.

15 minutes

Last on

Sat 11 Feb 2012 00:30

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  • Fri 10 Feb 2012 09:45
  • Sat 11 Feb 2012 00:30

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