Twenty Minutes - The Courtship of Mr Lyon

Angela Carter's retelling of the classic fairytale Beauty and the Beast, in which a father steals a single white rose from the garden of a snow-covered mansion one winter's night and is forced into a strange bargain with the extraordinary leonine owner of the house. His beautiful daughter, with skin as white as snow, will accept the hospitality of the 'beast', who in turn will help her father regain his lost fortune. As the penniless girl settles in to her extravagant new surroundings, she can't help but recoil at the strange 'otherness' of her host as they sit down to dine each night. But with the eventual revival of her father's fortunes and her return to civilisation, she comes to realise it was not she who needed rescuing. Reader: Deborah Findlay.