Joss Ackland, Roger Allam and Leslie Phillips star in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Victor Hugo's classic novel.
When poverty drives Jean Valjean to steal a loaf of bread from a baker's window, it is an action that will haunt him for the rest of his life. A citizen of post-revolutionary France, he is sentenced to nineteen years' hard labour. On his release, his fortunes change and he becomes a respectable businessman and member of society - and yet his past continues to dog him in the form of the sadistic Inspector Javert, who seems determined to pursue Valjean to the grave.
A student uprising is gaining momentum in Paris, and barricades are being built around the city. Valjean's adopted daughter, Cosette, has fallen in love with the young...
Victor Hugo was born in Besançon, France in 1802. In 1822 he published his first collection of poetry and in the same year, he married his childhood friend, Adèle Foucher. In 1831 he published his most famous youthful novel, Notre-Dame de Paris. A royalist and conservative as a young man, Hugo later became a committed social democrat and was exiled from France as a result of his political activities. In 1862, he wrote his longest and greatest novel, Les Misérables. After his death in 1885, his body lay in state under the Arc de Triomphe before being buried in the Panthéon.
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Joss Ackland CBE was born in 1928 in London. Trained as an actor, he has appeared in more than 130 films, and countless theatre, alongside such luminaries as Dame Judi Dench, Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall. However, his first priority was always his wife Rosemary, and now their seven children and 33 grandchildren.
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