Episode 2

Montag has quit his job as fireman, burning books for a living. He has a copy of the Bible, maybe the last one in existence, and he can't burn it.
He can't talk to his wife. His only hope is Faber, a retired English professor.

Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns.

It's Guy Montag's job to know these things: he's a fireman and he has burned books all his life. He used to love his job, doing this service for the public, but he can't do it anymore. As his life unravels he begins to question all his beliefs.

Ray Bradbury's cult classic was first published in 1953 but it imagines a world very like 2017, in which sophisticated mass media are used to pacify and control people; love is a commodity; attention spans are short and police hunts are live entertainment.

Poetic, dazzling and shocking: Ray Bradbury's vision of the future has become terrifyingly familiar.

Omnibus of the last five of ten parts abridged by Sara Davies.

Concluded by Alex Jennings.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.