Afternoon Play

By Richard Holmes. Drawing on original documents and notebooks, the story of the time in 1799 when, in a town house on the banks of the River Avon in Bristol, Humphry Davy, later celebrated for his miners lamp, came within a breath of discovering the anaesthetic powers of nitrous oxide. Humphry Davy ...... Paul Mundell Dr Thomas Beddoes ...... Richard McCabe Mrs Anna Beddoes ...... Eleanor Tremaine The Ostler ...... David Collins The Journalist ...... Kenneth Cranham Mr Coleridge ...... Stephen Noonan Mr Southey ...... Richard Holmes.