All That Fall

Mrs Rooney, old and unwieldy, is dragging herself towards the railway station on a Saturday lunchtime to meet her blind husband on his way back from the office, and guide him home. She passes the time of day with a man with a dung cart, and a man with a bicycle. A third man with a motor car offers her a lift. A church-struck spinster helps her up the station steps . . . All That Fall, specially commissioned by the BBC and first broadcast on the Third Programme in 1957, was immediately and universally acclaimed for its comic and linguistic exuberance.