The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes (Omnibus)

A wide-ranging account of the whirling connections of poetry and debauchery, dandyism and duelling that linked the literary and cultural celebrities of Paris and London in the final decades of the 19th century.

A period that later came to be known as the Belle Epoque.

The Man in the Red Coat is a portrait painted by John Singer Sargent in Paris in 1881, and titled Dr Pozzi at Home. It portrays Samuel Pozzi, a man of extraordinary talents, whose contribution to medicine was in many ways ahead of its time.

But it is also an emblem of the exchange of ideas and art, science and poetry that flourished across the Channel in the 19th-century.

Written and read by Julian Barnes.

Omnibus of five parts abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed

Producer: Jill Waters

A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in November 2019.