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Kidnapped

Kidnapped

BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation

Summary

A gripping BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of the classic adventure story by Robert Louis Stevenson

It is 1751, and seventeen-year-old David Balfour is all alone in the world. Recently orphaned, he receives a letter instructing him to seek out his sole remaining relative at the House of Shaws. But on meeting his uncle Ebenezer, David soon realises that he is a shifty, miserly man with designs on his inheritance.

After an attempt on David's life fails, Ebenezer tricks him into boarding the brig Covenant, where he is knocked unconscious, kidnapped and taken to sea. His fate seems sealed – he is to be transported to a plantation in the Carolinas and sold into slavery.

But David's adventures are only just beginning – for when he meets charismatic Jacobite Alan Breck, he soon finds himself shipwrecked, wanted for murder and fleeing for his life across the Scottish Highlands...

This action-packed adaptation, based on Robert Louis Stevenson's enthralling tale of danger, intrigue, betrayal and friendship, stars Owen Whitelaw, Michael Nardone and David Hayman.Duration: 2 hours approx

About the author

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850. The son of a prosperous civil engineer, he was expected to follow the family profession but was finally allowed to study law at Edinburgh University. Stevenson reacted forcibly against the Presbyterianism of both his city's professional classes and his devout parents, but the influence of Calvinism on his childhood informed the fascination with evil that is so powerfully explored in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Stevenson suffered from a severe respiratory disease from his twenties onwards, leading him to settle in the gentle climate of Samoa with his American wife, Fanny Osbourne.
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