Tessa Hadley - Deeds Not Words

Tessa Hadley's short story 'Deeds Not Words' tells how two teachers at the same girls' school follow very different paths during the troubled years of the early 20th century. The reader is Harriet Walter
The girls at St Clement's School had been swept along by crazes before. Like the time when automatic writing from the subconscious was the fashion, or that phase when everyone devoured the novels of Marie Correlli. But this time, it's the radicalism of the Suffragette movement that has everybody talking, and girls are pinning pictures of the Pankhursts inside their desk lids, and distributing angry pamphlets. Whilst the smouldering English teacher Laura Mullhouse acts as a beacon for their fervour, the Latin Mistress Edith Carew has baser needs. But both of their paths lead them in unexpected directions.
Producer: Sarah Langan.