Main content
Sorry, this episode is not currently available

Susan Swingler - House of Fiction

4 Extra Debut. How Australian novelist Elizabeth Jolley created a fiction from real life. Starring Miriam Margolyes and Juliet Aubrey. From June 2014.

Dramatised by Sara Davies from the memoir by Susan Swingler.

When Susan Swingler was twenty-one, she received a cheque from an aunt of whom she'd never heard. Intrigued, she went to visit. Her aunt asked after her brother and sister and was surprised that Susan did not appear to have an Australian accent.

But Susan was an only child, and she had never been to Australia. She'd lived alone with her mother since the day her father abandoned them seventeen years before. Why did her aunt, and the rest of her family, believe they were living in Australia?

This meeting begins for Susan the process of unravelling an extraordinary deception that lies at the heart of her family, invented by her step-mother, Australia's best-known female novelist, Elizabeth Jolley.

Miriam Margolyes and Juliet Aubrey star in this true story of how Elizabeth Jolley's most creative piece of fiction is her own life. Includes interviews with Susan Swingler.

Director...Mary Ward-Lowery

Music...Gnossiene No.3 by Erik Satie.

45 minutes

Last on

Wed 27 Mar 2019 21:15

Credits

Role Contributor
Elizabeth Jolley Miriam Margolyes
Joyce Jolley Juliet Aubrey
Leonard Jolley Nicholas Farrell
Young Susan Isabella D'Alessandro
Laura Jacqueline Tong
Director Mary Ward-Lowery
Adaptor Sara Davies
Author Susan Swingler

Broadcasts

  • Wed 4 Jun 2014 14:15
  • Wed 27 Mar 2019 11:15
  • Wed 27 Mar 2019 21:15

Opening Lines

Opening Lines

John Yorke unpacks the themes behind the stories in Radio 4's weekend afternoon dramas.

The Shakespeare Sessions

The Shakespeare Sessions

Immerse yourself in Shakespeare’s world