2. Cousin Edward

Penelope Wilton and Lyndsey Marshal star in this high Victorian tale of a woman who runs her own bank.

Hester rejects another offer of marriage which is in effect a merger attempt from a rival bank.

To ward off further threats, she invites her disgraced cousin Edward Vernon and his spoilt wife back, to front the business of the bank with local businessmen.

A young woman in a 19th-century Cheshire town, having been snubbed and discarded in marriage, does something truly radical.

When the family bank is in danger of a run, she pledges her whole private fortune to save it. But instead of merely underwriting it, in return she insists on running the bank herself, as a single woman, in defiance of all convention.

Margaret Oliphant's novel first published in 1883.

Dramatised by Kate Clanchy & Zena Forster.

Margaret Oliphant ..... Penelope Wilton
Hester Vernon ..... Lyndsey Marshal
Harry Sellon ..... Ben Crowe
Farrington ..... Patrick Brennan
Mildmay Vernon ..... Paul Stonehouse
Miss Vernon-Ridgeway ..... Sarah Thom
Miss Matilda Vernon-Ridgeway ..... Liza Sadovy
Edward Vernon ..... Joseph Kloska
Lady Ellen Vernon ..... Jasmine Hyde
Labourer ..... Adam Nagaitis

Director: Jonquil Panting

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.