The Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott died a hundred years ago, leaving behind a fascinating and talented wife, the sculptor Kathleen Scott. Jenny Coverack's trilogy of readings is adapted from her own one-woman stage play, written with Robert Edwards, based on Kathleen Scott's autobiography and journals. These begin with Kathleen's unconventional childhood, when she was farmed out to relatives, before she took the bold and at the time unconventional decision to go to Paris to study art. Here, she mixes in Bohemian circles and is pursued by numerous admirers wanting to start affairs, but what matters most to her is the search for a man worthy of the role of father to the son she longs for.
With grateful acknowledgement to the novelist Louisa Young for her biography of her grandmother, Kathleen Scott, 'A Great Task of Happiness'.