Wildfire at Midnight - Mary Stewart - BBC Saturday Night Theatre
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- Опубликовано: 14 окт 2024
- Wildfire at Midnight is a novel by Mary Stewart which was first published in 1956. Stewart herself described the book as "an attempt at something different, the classic closed-room detective story with restricted action, a biggish cast, and a closely circular plot".
Fashion model Gianetta Brooke leaves her usual glamorous surroundings to go on holiday to the Scottish island of Skye, only to find that her ex-husband, writer Nicholas Drury, is staying at the same hotel in Camasunary. Set against the backdrop of recent events at the time of publication-the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the Hillary expedition that was the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest-this romantic suspense novel now has a "bygone era" sense of time and place.
After two murders take place locally, suspicion falls on the hotel guests, who include an aging "femme-fatale" star stage actress, a renown mountaineer, a possessive climber and her ingenue apprentice, a jealous wife and philandering husband, an old acquaintance of Gianetta’s and Nicholas’s, a writer of travel guides, and a handsome local versed in pagan folklore. Gianetta, above suspicion due to her more recent arrival at the hotel, finds herself divided when assisting the police, torn between old loyalties, new sympathies, and her clear civic duty.
The mystery component lightly blends 1953 news events with mountaineering, druid mythology and pagan ritual, along with conflicting views about the conquering of nature: heroic progress or human arrogance? Add in a dash of Separate Tables linteraction among the guests at the hotel and mix in a killer among them for traditionally entertaining suspense intrigue.
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I read all of Mary Stewart's books when I younger.
Love this one too.. Falling to sleep having someone read to you is so calming.. I have to listen every night now!!!
These programmes relax me too, help me to sleep in these anxious times... A thousand thanks!
Same here.
I seem to recognise your name from Jamie Mason pre-Covid days! How's life?
Not thinking 'anxious' thoughts is the answer, turning off the news, not reading about awful daily events, talking about it....all contribute to feeling good, reaching for great, positive, healthful personal times.
Thank you again for sharing this broadcast. I especially like the Scottish ones but enjoy them all. They remind me of better times
Thank goodness something worth listening to .
Listening to these programs relaxes me
Most enjoyable & right up my street this morning 👍 Thank you for uploading.
Yay, a mystery! Many thanks! 👍
Love these!! Thank you so much. Love from South Africa 🇿🇦
That was intriguing and well enjoyable. Thanks!
Great listening. Thanks for the upload
Enid Blyton for grown-ups! Lovely!
I have been reading her novels lately & really enjoy them. Clean mysteries! Thank you for sharing this one.
***Edit***
This is the most violent & graphic Mary Stewart tale I have ever heard 🙁
I wonder if the interpretation and production brings added violence to the story. It is definitely rather brutal.
@@auntyJanette No, it's there. I have read and re-read every Mary Stewart novel since I was a schoolgirl and pinched my mother's library books. This probably is the most violent.
@@VLind-uk6mb two years on you are taxing my old memory!! I’ll relisten with a caveat that if it’s too violent I’ll turn it off. 😊
@2MsValkyrie529: I LOLLED at this, especially the cardboard 😅.
Adult entertainment so wonderful 🙏🏻
This keeps me sane in a mad world.
Just a delight
Thanks
Thank you thank you thank you
Good play Uncle Chesterton.
Love them so much
A couple of Mary's stories have been adapted by BBC radio and although very entertaining they were consistently plagued with wild coincidences. Same here. Travelling to a remote Highlands hotel to find you know loads of people also visiting. Piffle.
Nicholas is not a coincidence if you listened to the end. But if it is a fairly well-known small hotel in a place with few others, there's a good chance it will draw people like the actress. And it is a climbing hotel, so it will draw climbers.
Never heard of 'brown coffee'. Americans dont prepare others coffee or tea. We just put milk and sugar on the table.
Just like being back in the UK
I was rather surprised to hear the credits at the end. The voice of Gianetta sounded EXACTLY like Felicity Kendal, so much so, it was hard to believe it wasn't her. I have no idea what year this was recorded (the book was written in the 50s, I think) and may have been too early for it to have been her, anyway. The English men all had that extremely posh accent of an earlier era.
lol sounds nothing like her
the last time I was in Camusunaridh there was just a bothy there
Oh No...! There's been another Muh-dah !
Thanks Uncle Chesterton you old demon, you...!
🤣🤣🤣
Good grief - my suspicions were confirmed by Wikipedia - Mary Stewart was married for 56 years until her husband's death - she never experienced divorce. Only exceptional authors should write about personal and deeply emotional topics of which they have no experience. H.G.Wells' "War of the Worlds" was by far a more convincing story than Stewart's "Disneyesque" approach to divorce (especially divorce in the 1950's - it was not a decision taken easily nor was it quick in its execution - by comparison Hillary and Tanzing's conquest of Everest took less time than the average divorce in those days).
What twaddle. Authors are authors and use imagination. I can’t possibly think how awful life and art would be if only people wrote what they knew. How stultifying
@@claralblume2200 Disagree - authors do and should use imagination but what they write becomes 'twaddle' when they don't bother to research the topic before committing words to paper unless, of course, it is meant to be a work of fantasy and not depicting everyday life.
Apparently Ms Stewart wanted to write a ' classic closed room detective
story " ? Having listened to this I can safely say Dame Agatha has nothing
to worry about. No cliche was left unused and massive amounts of cardboard
employed in constructing the ' characters ' . If she'd come up with a decent
plot she might have gotten away with it but , alas, that vanished like the Cuillin
Hills under a thick blanket of Scotch mist.
When a story wasn't specifically written as a radio play, but adapted from a book then the story usually gets shortened. It might be that shortening and adaption have an effect on the original quality of the story.
I must say, though, I find the quality of the BBC plays excellent.
Thank you, BBC. And thank you, ChR, for uploading the plays. 🙋♀️
Thanx Uncle 2msvalkyrie ....I'll take dew note.
@ MrBazzabee
Keep it in your sporran ! !
This is a really poor adaptation of a very good book. Worth reading the book.
@@anniebroadbent7961 I don't think it is too bad -- much better than the adaptation of The Gabriel Hounds -- but the book is definitely richer. I loved re-reading it almost as much for its drawing of the landscape as for the characters, who may have been lightly-drawn but were perfectly understandable.