What happens
In seventeenth-century England, Lady Donna Stuart leaves London and her unhappy marriage to Lord Harry Stuart, retreating to her old estate at Navron. There she meets a French pirate, the captain of a ship hidden in a creek on her land, who has been raiding the Cornish coast. Their first encounters are wary and sharp, and each begins to feel the pull of the other. This is an episode of Lux Radio Theatre, aired on February 10, 1947, adapting the Paramount Pictures drama Frenchman's Creek, with Joan Fontaine as Donna and David Niven as the Frenchman. The broadcast covers the first two acts of the play.
England, 1668: London, then the Navron estate in Cornwall, and a pirate ship anchored in a hidden creek on the estate
Characters: Lady Donna Stuart, Lord Harry Stuart, Lord Rockingham, Lord Godolphin, William, Malady, The Frenchman
Listen for: Donna's first meeting with the Frenchman in the creek and their conversations over supper and on the ship, where his philosophy of freedom and her restlessness are set against each other
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.