Book of the Week - A Strange Eventful History - Episode 3

Eleanor Bron reads from Michael Holroyd's biography of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, two greats of the Victorian stage. Irving's blood-and-thunder melodramas and versions of Shakespeare proved huge hits at the Lyceum Theatre. After a triumphant tour of the United States, his relationship with Ellen deepened and a romance was rumoured. But the course of their relationship was to change with the death of the father of Ellen's two illegitimate children.