THE DOUBLE LIFE OF SAKI

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF SAKI
Monday 30 April 9pm-10pm; rpt midnight-1am; rpt 3am-4am; rpt Wednesday 2 May 10pm-11pm; rpt 1.25am-2.25am; rpt Saturday 5 May 11.05pm-midnight; rpt 2.50am-3.50am (signed)

Roger Davenport takes the title role in The Double Life of Saki, BBC Four's dramatised documentary about the Edwardian short story writer Hector Hugh Munro. Here he explains his enthusiam for this lesser known satirical author and his inspirations for writing the script.

I can't recall quite when or why I first read the work of Hector Hugh Munro, the writer known as Saki. My father, the critic John Davenport, was apt to pass a book to one of his young sons with the words, "I think this will amuse you." It could have been something by the Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock, or Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. Anyway, by the time I was 16, I'd read all the Saki short stories. As to why I liked the best of them as much as I do, well, it's his voice. Detached, funny, sometimes cruel; and with something more, that added value that the special writers have. He speaks so directly to you that somehow a quiet friendship is formed.

Moving on some years, I was in a pub with my wife, Joanna McCallum, and the actor Morgan George and his partner Lexi Strauss, and Morgan and I were talking about one of us trying our hand at radio adaptations of Saki. I'd just dramatised some PG Wodehouse for Radio 4 and the idea really appealed. The resulting series, produced for Woman's Hour by Ned Chaillet, renewed my interest in Hector Hugh Munro to the extent that I bought AJ Langguth's fine biography to find out more. Immediately I saw the possibilities of a stage play about this shadowy, teasing figure who finally resolved his inner conflicts by joining up for the biggest conflict of the 20th century.

It's one thing to write a drama while dog-sitting a very patient retriever in Paris, it's quite another to get it staged. However, Jack Langguth approved of the script and spoke of it to Andrew Hutton, who was producing The Double Life of Saki. A few weeks later, Andrew and I were talking about how to present the elusive Hector Munro to a new audience.

If you like the following story, The Reticence of Lady Anne, you'll like Saki. In it, a husband has the idea he may have said something wrong earlier in the day; but, sitting in her arm chair in the evening twilight, his wife is utterly silent on what this might be. An old hand at marriage after many years of it, he rambles on for a minute or two, apologising for his shortcomings, real or imagined. On his eventual departure from the room their cat launches a violent attack on their adored cage bird. "He had cost 27 shillings without the cage, but Lady Anne made no sign of interfering. She had been dead for two hours."