P. D. James
read by Michael Jayston

The book is set in 1978 (it was written in 1980) and takes as its starting point the Children's Act of 1975, by which adopted adults had, for the first time in Britain, the right of access to their original birth certificates, and thereby the means of tracing their natural parents. Philippa Palfrey is intellectual, privileged and gifted, and was adopted at the age of eight into an affluent but emotionally stunted family. Apart from a few flashes of memory, she has no recollection of her life before the adoption; all that she knows of her background is what her adoptive parents have told her and the cosy fantasies she has constructed for herself...it is a tribute to James' powerful writing that, even when you know it's coming, the moment that Philippa quite casually learns the truth is still shocking...

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