Titus and Muzzlehatch: Image courtesy of the Mervyn Peake Estate

In The Guardian radio critic Elisabeth Mahoney has written a lovely piece about the nervousness she felt, having loved the 1985 adaptation, on hearing that Brian Sibley was tackling the novels for Radio 4 yet again. Not only that but:

"...it was a hugely ambitious project: Peake's three novels plus the concluding volume by Peake's wife, Maeve Gilmore, rediscovered last year, made into six hours of Classic Serial."

She writes that not only is this a "terrific new adaptation" but it also captures

"...every brilliant thing about Peake: the glorious writing; the strangeness; the collision of voices and realities; the satire of now - whenever now is as you read or listen - and the beautiful, vivid conjuring of fragments of the past."

If you're at all daunted by the idea of the six hours of radio drama then do read Mahoney's review - if her enthusiasm doesn't sell it to you nothing will. If you have heard Titus as it's been broadcast then you might like to read about the production and how it came together on the blog. More links below.

Paul Murphy is the Editor of the Radio 4 blog

• This is the link to all six episodes of The History of Titus Groan. They're available until 4.00pm on Sunday 21 August when the new Classic Serial, Anthony Trollope's The American Senator is broadcast.
• Read the previous posts on the Radio 4 blog: Writer Brian Sibley on adapting Titus for the radio and Producer Jeremy Mortimer on the making of The History of Titus Groan.
• Elisabeth Mahoney's review is here. Gillian Reynold's also reviewed Titus in the Telegraph and while "...admiring the acting, Brian Sibley's adaptation of a complex work, the pace of Jeremy Mortimer's direction", she "still couldn't understand what was going on. At all. The minute I thought I had, off it would go again into another dimension of fear, temptation, betrayal, each so vivid it flooded the mind's eye...".
• Links to Brian Sibley's blog and the official Mervyn Peake site.
• Follow Radio 4 on Twitter or see a full list of Radio 4 accounts on Twitter
• Join the Radio 4 page on Facebook

Titus and Muzzlehatch: Image courtesy of the Mervyn Peake Estate

When Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast was first published in 1950, readers got to the end of the book and found that Titus Groan rides away from the ancient ancestral home that had been the setting for Peake's epic tale of ambition, intrigue, revenge and the relentless struggle between tradition and change.

Those early readers had no idea where Titus would go or what would become of him. Worse, they had to wait a further nine years, until the publication of Titus Alone, to find out and, when they did, it came as something of a shock, as it may also do for listeners following the radio dramatisation. Endlessly pursued by faceless representatives of authority, the character now finds himself in an alien world of motorcars and aeroplanes, where society is controlled by industrialists and scientists.

As a dramatist, having spent many months locked in the stifling, ritual-bound world of Gormenghast castle, I felt as anxious and uncertain as our hero when we had to turn our backs on the great sprawling castle and head off into the unknown.

Although I was sorry that there was no more dialogue to be written for Steerpike, Prunesquallor, Bellgrove and the others, there was the immediate compensation of a new and fascinating cast of curious and intriguing characters: Muzzlehatch, the bizarre menagerie-owner; the intensely loving Juno; and the beautiful, but dangerous, Cheeta and her sinister scientist father.

What also became quickly clear was that regardless of the new experiences that crowd in upon Titus, he is constantly haunted by the ghosts of his past, as a result of which we never totally lose sight of the arcane world he left behind.

Although the Titus books are often referred to as 'The Gormenghast Trilogy', Mervyn Peake's original intention was for a cycle of books, the next of which was to have been called Titus Awakes. By the time Titus Alone was published, however, Mervyn Peake's health was in serious decline and when he died in 1968 he had written no more than a fragment of his next book.

A few years later, his widow, the late Maeve Gilmore, took up the task and completed Titus Awakes. I read it first thirty years ago when Maeve loaned me the manuscript and when its publication was finally announced this year, I wanted to weave something of Maeve's Titus Awakes into Mervyn's Titus Alone and make of it a single story.

Drawing on an emotionally powerful episode from the fourth volume, I have tried to unite the two authors who - both as husband and wife and as artists - were so much part of each other's lives with the fate of their shared character and, at the same time, bring Titus' story full circle with a fitting and poignant coda.

Brian Sibley is a writer and broadcaster whose radio dramatisations have included The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Pilgrim's Progress and works by Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, James Thurber and J B Priestley. A former Secretary and Chair of the Mervyn Peake Society, he has been a long-standing friend of the Peake family and contributed an introduction to the recent publication of Maeve Gilmore's Titus Awakes.

• Read The History of Titus Groan: Radio 4 Classic Serial which includes Brian Sibley talking about adapting Titus Groan on the Radio 4 blog.
• The official Mervyn Peake website
• Brian Sibley's blog.
• Listen: A Hundred Years of Mervyn Peake (available until 21 August)
• In pictures: The art of Gormenghast
• The Telegraph: New Gormenghast novel found in attic

Brian Sibley is a bit of a legend in radio. Presenter (Radio 4 arts programme Kaleidoscope and the World Service arts magazine Meridian), contributor and playwright, he paired up with writer Michael Bakewell on the classic dramatisation of Lord of the Rings, he did the complete Narnia series, and back in 1985 he did a classy, award-winning adaptation of Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan and Gormenghast for Radio 4.

So when he got in touch in January 2010 to suggest that we extend the Titus franchise with Peake's third book, Titus Alone, and with the as yet to be published conclusion to the series - Titus Awakes (written by Peake's widow, Maeve Gilmore) - I just had to see if I could get Radio 4 to sit up and take interest.

And did they. Jeremy Howe, Radio 4 drama commissioner, suggested that we present all four books, in an epic 6-hours of the classic serial. The decision came in June last year, and, with the full backing of the Peake estate, Brian started work.

We had lots of tricky decisions to take - how to keep Peake's extraordinary prose, how to split the episodes, how to manage the tricky transition when Titus leaves Gothic Gormenghast and enters the stream-punk sci-fi world of Titus Alone. Brian decided that he wasn't even going to look at his 1980s scripts. He was going to start again from scratch. We devised a punishing script delivery schedule, and booked a twelve-day recording stint for late May.

On the 25th May there was a cast of twenty actors gathered in a room in Broadcasting House for the first read-through. And what a cast: Miranda Richardson confessed to being a die-hard Peake fan, Paul Rhys rehearsed a few owl noises, James Fleet and Tamsin Greig tried out a few Prunesquallor laughs, and Fenella Woolgar and Claudie Blakley started talking (and thinking) in unison as the identical Groan twins.

The recording schedule was like something out of Gormenghast's ritual box, literally hundreds of scenes, featuring dozens of deaths, a number of falls from great height, fires, floods and mayhem in a menagerie. But at 6.00pm on Saturday 11th June, David Warner and Luke Treadaway staggered out of the studio and posed for a final picture on the steps of All Souls. The recording was done.

Roger Goula is an amazing composer. His music paints Titus's world in a fantastic array of aural colours. And Peter Ringrose has matched the music with a brilliant sound design. I hope that you all enjoy listening to the fruit of their labours, and that you enjoy entering for a while into Mervyn Peake's extraordinary world.

Jeremy Mortimer is Executive Producer Audio Drama

• Dramatiser Brian Sibley on Mervyn Peake's classic series:
  
• The History of Titus Groan starts on Sunday 10th July at 3pm and is available to listen to on the Radio 4 website. The full serial will Series Stacked and be available until the 21st August
• The pictures show (from top): Titus Groan (Luke Treadaway) with the Artist (David Warner); Irma Prunesquallor (Tamsin Greig) with Professor Bellgrove (William Gaunt); Steerpike (Carl Prekopp) fighting with Barquentine (Gerard McDermott).
• Visit Brian Sibley's blog and the official Mervyn Peake site.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wfqps

Robin Brooks dramatised 'I, Claudius' for BBC Radio 4. Here, he writes about the pleasures of adapting Graves for radio. His post begins with a clip from the current episode - SB

As material for dramatisation, one of the best things about 'I, Claudius' is that it starts very well and then gets better as it goes on. As the dynasty unravels - Graves produces more and more splendid villains for our delectation: grandma-serial killer Livia, her son the morose and sexually perverted Tiberius, ghastly Gnaeus Piso (to whom the telly version devotes virtually an entire episode), Tiberius's slimy sidekick Sejanus, nephew Caligula, who can now be heard waiting about on the fringes of the action, ready to reveal himself as the most glorious psychopath of all, even Claudius's monstrous, murderous wife Urgulanilla, will now get her moment in the spotlight. Livia herself is still hanging grimly on, and in episode 3 she has a long scene with Claudius, in which she finally reveals to him the extent of her villainy. These characters are a gift to the writer, and to the actors, who, as I hope you've noticed by now, attack them with delightful relish.

One of the more unusual aspects about this production has been the golden memory of the television version. I have heard some people claim that this is definitive, and that no further version need be made. I think that's nonsense; I, Claudius is a classic, and deserves re-interpretation as much as any other. But there's no denying that the 70's series is remembered vividly by everyone who saw it, and that it is a very, very hard act to follow.

One of things that makes it possible to attempt our own version is the difference between the two media. Take the scene in episode 1 in which soothsayer Thrasyllus announces Tiberius's recall to Rome because of the drowning of his rival. In the book, Thrasyllus talks to a little wren which perches close by to deliver the good news. (One of the things I like most about Graves is that he takes magic and ancient superstition very seriously). In the TV version a trained wren is not a practical possibility. Jack Pullman has a centurion come in and deliver the news, and then turns this to his advantage by showing the centurion's appalled reaction to Tiberius's delighted laughter at the drowning.

With the magic of radio, the original presents no problem - the wren arrives, chirrups, flutters off - and the same might be said of many more such scenes: gladiatorial combat and mutinying legions are all rather easier to do on radio than elsewhere, unless you have Ridley Scott or Charlton Heston on board, of course. I suppose what I'm saying in a nutshell is that radio adaptation - certainly as far as 'I, Claudius' is concerned - allows one to be more faithful, really extremely faithful, to the book, and this is very satisfying to me personally, because I have always loved the novel. What it comes down to in the end, is that Robert Graves wrote a truly wonderful book.

Robin Brooks

• Listen to 'Sejanus', the third episode of 'I, Claudius' on Sunday at 1500 and listen again on the Radio 4 web site.
• The picture shows Tim McInnerny as Tiberius.
• There's a very handy 'I, Claudius' family tree on the Radio 4 web site (PDF).

Editor's note: this post by the lead in Radio 4's new Classic Serial, 'I, Claudius', starts with a clip from the drama - SB.

I was eight when 'I, Claudius' first aired on the BBC in 1976. It remains burned on my brain as the first televisual event that I recall. Of course I was far too young to be allowed to watch all or indeed any of its vices and excesses, and I remember it principally for two reasons; because I watched what I did from halfway up the stairs through a gap in the living room door; and for Derek Jacobi.

Derek's performance catapulted him into public consciousness, and to an eight year old boy who already dreamed of being an actor it made one thing abundantly clear; a character actor can have just as much fun as a leading man. Claudius is one of those roles that makes an actor jump for joy, because you can be the fool, the schemer, the wise man, the idiot, the villain, the hero and the narrator all at the same time.

Thirty-four years later, producer Jonquil Panting asked me if I'd like to play Claudius on the radio and I jumped at the chance. I'd had a wonderful time working with her as Jesus in Witness and as Yuri in Doctor Zhivago in recent years and I knew it would be an epic romp. Of course I couldn't get the image or sound of Derek as Claudius out of my head, and was simultaneously thrilled and quietly terrified to be told that he would be playing Claudius' step-grandfather Augustus.

Fortunately, with Derek playing my grandfather it more or less gave me licence not to have to worry if I sounded a lot like him. It's impossible to take on the stammer and not hear Derek's voice in your head, or sense him constantly on your shoulder. In the end it was easier to accept that I was bound to sound like I was impersonating him, throw caution to the wind and just enjoy myself.

For most of the recording period I didn't see Derek because Augustus mostly appears with the boy Claudius, so we only had one full day in the studio together and it proved to be enormous fun. Naturally I told Derek of all my nervousness at playing the character that made him famous, and said how hard it was not to hear his voice. Derek was kind enough to put me at my ease by saying 'Well how do you think I feel? I've got Brian Blessed sitting on my shoulder.'

Tom Goodman-Hill plays Claudius in Radio 4's new production of 'I, Claudius'

• Listen to episode one of 'I, Claudius' on Sunday at 1500.
• Tom is on Twitter. Follow tgoodmanh
• The picture shows Tom Goodman-Hill as Claudius and Derek Jacobi as Augustus.