''The People's Princess'' was a

radio play Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine t ...

written by

Shelagh Stephenson Shelagh Stephenson is an English playwright and actress. Background and education Stephenson was born in Tynemouth, Northumberland in 1955. She read drama at Manchester University. Career Acting Stephenson worked as an actress with the Royal S ...

. Directed in

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

by Eoin O'Callaghan, it premiered as the

Afternoon Play ''Drama'' (formerly ''Afternoon Theatre'', ''Afternoon Drama,'' ''Afternoon Play'') is a BBC Radio 4 radio drama, broadcast every weekday at 2.15pm. Generally each play is 45 minutes in duration and approximately 190 new plays are broadcast each ...

on 11 December 2008 at 2.15pm on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

. It was based around the marriage and divorce of

George IV George IV (George Augustus Frederick; 12 August 1762 – 26 June 1830) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover from the death of his father, King George III, on 29 January 1820, until his own death ten y ...

and

Caroline of Brunswick Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (Caroline Amelia Elizabeth; 17 May 1768 – 7 August 1821) was Queen of the United Kingdom and Hanover from 29 January 1820 until her death in 1821, being the estranged wife of King George IV. She was Pr ...

. As the title suggests, it drew parallels with the marriage and divorce of

Prince Charles Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. He was the longest-serving heir apparent and Prince of Wales and, at age 73, became the oldest person to ...

and Diana, such as Caroline and Diana's popularity among the British working classes, Charles and George's unpopularity during their divorce proceedings, the fickleness of such popularity or unpopularity, Caroline and Diana's use by anti-monarchical figures for their own ends, and the power of the press.

Cast

*George IV -

Alex Jennings Alex Jennings (born 10 May 1957) is an English actor of the stage and screen, who worked extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre. For his work on the London stage, Jennings received three Olivier Awards, winning for ...

*Caroline of Brunswick -

Rebecca Saire Rebecca Saire (born 16 April 1963) is a British actress and writer who gained early attention when, at the age of fourteen, she played Juliet for the ''BBC Television Shakespeare'' series. Stage * Sybil in ''Private Lives'' ( National Theat ...

* Henry Brougham - Julian Rhind Tutt *

Lord Sidmouth Viscount Sidmouth, of Sidmouth in the County of Devon, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 12 January 1805 for the former prime minister, Henry Addington. In May 1804, King George III intended to confer the titles ...

Chris McHallem Christopher McHallem (born 1960) is a British actor, writer, musician and director. McHallem began his career in 1977 with the punk rock/post-punk band the Transmitters under the pseudonym "Dexter O'Brian", but left the band shortly after its ...

Lord Liverpool Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, (7 June 1770 – 4 December 1828) was a British Tory statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1812 to 1827. He held many important cabinet offices such as Foreign Secret ...

Richard Howard Richard Joseph Howard (October 13, 1929 – March 31, 2022; adopted as Richard Joseph Orwitz) was an American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and was a graduate of Columbia University, w ...

* Sir Robert Gifford - Mark Lambert * Lady Jersey -

Jill Cardo Jill is an English feminine given name, a short form of the name Jillian ( Gillian), which in turn originates as a Middle English variant of Juliana, the feminine form of the name Julian. People with the given name *Jill Astbury, Australian re ...

* Mr Majoucci -

Nial Cusack Nial (from "Nested Interactive Array Language") is a high-level array programming language developed from about 1981 by Mike Jenkins of Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Jenkins co-created the Jenkins–Traub algorithm. Nial co ...

Offstage characters include the

Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of ...

, Caroline's dead daughter

Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales Princess is a regal rank and the feminine equivalent of prince (from Latin ''princeps'', meaning principal citizen). Most often, the term has been used for the consort of a prince, or for the daughter of a king or prince. Princess as a subst ...

William Wood William Wood may refer to: Politicians * William Wood (MP for Berkshire), Member of Parliament (MP) for Berkshire, 1395 * William Wood (15th century MP), MP for Winchester, 1413 * William Wood, 1st Baron Hatherley (1801–1881), British statesma ...

William Cobbett William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, journalist, politician, and farmer born in Farnham, Surrey. He was one of an agrarian faction seeking to reform Parliament, abolish "rotten boroughs", restrain foreign ...

and Caroline's lover Mr Pergami.

References

External links

*http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ft64r {{DEFAULTSORT:People's Princess 2008 audio plays British radio dramas Cultural depictions of George IV Caroline of Brunswick