David Beaty The Temple Tree

SANWAL

Saturday-Night Theatre Sat 10th Jun 1972, 20:30 on BBC Radio 4 FM The Temple Tree, the novel by David Beaty, adapted for radio by Betty Davies   A story of East and West, of ruined cities and jet aircraft. of civilisation and the jungle.   James Hannaker is given a puzzle in the beautiful island of Ceylon ... This play is set before 22 May 1972 when Ceylon became the Republic of Sri Lanka.       Capt Coates: Douglas Blackwell Melanie Grey: Kate Binchy James Hannaker: Michael Spice Roy Laughton: David Spenser Reeves: Rolf Lefebvre Ayah: Zohra Segal Capt Dewhurst: William Eedle Seneratne: Saeed Jaffrey Fonseca: Garard Green Gunn: Bill Nagy Sir Arthur: Manning Wilson The Brahmin: Geoffrey Matthews Thriller, describing the attempts of a British aviation accident investigator in post-colonial Sri Lanka to get the authorities to take his concerns over the crash of a Boeing 707 seriously, when local politics mean that a verdict of pilot error is being railroaded through. This is the kind of aircraft-based adventure story Beaty has kept in transit for close to twenty years -- about Jamie Hannaker, an accident investigator still lashed by the memory of his wife's death and now temporarily in Ceylon when a 707 crashes; about Melanie, the stewardess, with whom he falls in love; about the 1000 kilobars of gold the plane was carrying which has now disappeared; and about Roy Laughton, who makes transistor radios in the jungle but that's not all. . . . The competence -- no more -- gives it an automatic clearance for what must be by now an obvious readership. [Kirkus Review: Sept. 1, 1971]

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.