Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively (Omnibus)

Available for 30 days

Stephanie Cole reads Penelope Lively's intimate meditation on gardening, literature and creativity. She begins with the metaphorical garden, from the Garden of Eden to Monet's water lilies at Giverny. Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her Oxfordshire garden and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. In this intimate and eloquent work of narrative non-fiction, one of the UK's most cherished and admired writers uses the garden to break open the world for us, and examines how we might encourage our lives to bloom. Omnibus of five episodes abridged by Siân Preece. Producer: Eilidh McCreadie. First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2017.