Afternoon Play - My Year Off

In 1995 Robert McCrum was an admired novelist and editorial director at Faber and Faber. He was also a reporter who had travelled to some of the most dangerous war-torn places in the world. 42 and married barely two months to New York Times journalist Sarah Lyall, the future looked great. But overnight his world shifted. With a war correspondent's intrepidness and a writer's desire to communicate his experience to others, Robert chose to chronicle what quickly became a surreal and extraordinary new journey into a parallel world of the sick and helpless. This programme is a bold and intimate account of McCrum's experience of having a stroke. In this adaptation McCrum's narrative is interpolated with extracts from diaries that he and Sarah Lyall kept during his long and difficult convalescence. What follows is terrifying, heartbreaking, intimate, funny and ultimately life affirming. Cast: Robert McCrum ..... Alex Jennings Sarah Lyall ..... Madeline Potter Doctor/Dentist/Occupational Therapist ...... Richard Laing Paramedic/Speech Physiotherapist ..... Rachel Atkins Sound Design ..... David Thomas Adapted by Karen Rose Producer: Karen Rose A Sweet Talk Production for BBC Radio 4.