Lavinia Greenlaw - The Icelandic Journals

At the height of his fame, William Morris left his wife Janey and mentor Rossetti to their affair and headed for Iceland, as ever in pursuit of an answer to the question: how to live? While travelling this starkly dramatic landscape, he kept a journal for his confidante Georgie, the wife of his friend Edward Burne-Jones. The journals are Morris at his best: visually attentive, relishing wonders and noting every good dinner as well as every shift of light and mood. He also writes about what he doesn't know he's feeling: what it means to go away and come back, to be apart and alone. Setting the journals in this context, Lavinia Greenlaw has drawn on the letters and journals of Morris's circle to reimagine the events of that summer.

The music is Debussy's String Quartet in G Minor performed by the Alban Berg Quartet.
Production Coordinator: Eleri McAuliffe
Sound: Nigel Lewis
A BBC/Cymru Wales production, written and directed by Lavinia Greenlaw and produced by Kate McAll.