Episode 4

Several wives in, John Osborne attempts a communication blackout with Pamela Lane, beset as they both are with personal and financial difficulties.

Peter Whitebrook's completely fresh insight into the mind of one of the UK's greatest playwrights.

The letters between John Osborne and his first wife, actress Pamela Lane, are also a love letter to a now defunct system of repertory theatre and life in post-war Britain.

As these letters reveal, soon after their divorce, Osborne and Lane began a mutually supportive, loyal, frequently stormy and sometimes sexually intimate alliance lasting 30 years until Osborne's death. By the mid-1980s, they had become closer and more trusting than they had been since their earliest years together.

Acerbic, witty, candid and heartbreaking, the letters reveal a unique relationship - troubled, tender and enduring.

Read by Simon Shepherd and Amanda Root.

Abridged by Polly Coles.

Producer: Clive Brill

A Brill production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in April 2018.