Episode 1

A new two-part adaptation by Ian Billings, celebrating the 300th anniversary of Jonathan Swift’s satire.

Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon with a sensible English mind and an ambition for greatness, is shipwrecked and wakes on a strange shore, pinned to the ground by a crowd of people no bigger than his hand. In Lilliput he is a marvel and a potential weapon, taken up by a court that treats its own quarrels with enormous seriousness. But his travels are only beginning, and the further he goes, the harder it becomes to see home in quite the same way.

Published in 1726, Swift's book has spent three centuries being read both as a children's adventure and as one of the sharpest satires on human vanity in English.

Swift was writing about the politicians and courtiers of Georgian England. Three hundred years later, the joke still lands.

Lemuel Gulliver.....Graham Dickson
General Clefen-Marsi/ King of Brobdingnag.....David Holt
King of Lilliput/ Jester.....Jack Nuttall
Glumdalclitch.....Lucie Shorthouse
Limtoc/ Queen of Brobdingnag.....Joanna Neary
Flimnap/ Farmer.....Sunil Patel
Queen of Lilliput/ Mother.....Debbie Korley
King's Father/ Yokel.....Ian Billings

Written by Jonathan Swift
Adapted by Ian Billings
Directed by Lorna Newman
Sound design by Sharon Hughes
Production Coordinator: Sara Benaim
Studio Production Coordinator: Jonathan Powell
Technical Producers: Andy Garratt, Neva Missirian and Kira Golightly

A BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4.