19 June
The latest best-seller from a Sheffield Hallam creative writing professor has been brought to life for a major radio adaptation – by the author herself.
Professor of Writing Jane Rogers has adapted The Testament of Jessie Lamb as a five-part radio play, airing this week on Radio 4.
The Testament.., long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and recipient of a number of top literary awards, is set in a not-so-different near future, but one in which pregnant women are dying of an incurable disease.
The adaptation features Jane Eyre actress Holliday Grainger as Jessie, with support from Mark Jordon (Heartbeat) and Joanne Mitchell (Emmerdale).
Jane said: “Adapting The Testament of Jessie Lamb for radio was much harder than I expected. In the end, in my attempt to reduce 78,000 words of novel to 12,500 of drama, I went cutting-crazy and even removed the frame of the story, the vantage point of captivity from which Jessie writes her testament.”