Episode 6

Rose Tremain returns triumphantly to one of her best loved characters, in the long awaited sequel to her Booker short-listed best-selling novel, Restoration, published in 1989.

Seventeen years after the events related in Restoration, Merivel, a man of wit, wisdom and not a little passion, is facing a crisis. Older and perhaps a little wiser, with his daughter on the brink of adulthood and his dearest friends ageing too, life on his Norfolk estate is no longer sufficiently satisfying. How to reinvigorate his life and find new purpose?

In today's episode: After his sojourn in France, Merivel has returned to Bidnold, to find his beloved Margaret in the grip of the deadly typhus. But a surprise visitor brings solace and perhaps hope.

The reader is the stage and screen actor Nicholas Woodeson.
The abridger was Sally Marmion and the producer was Di Speirs.