Home Front: Radio 4’s first world war drama will fight out the full four years

In a studio in Birmingham, there’s an air of excitement. Jessica Dromgoole and her team are recording new scenes for Home Front, Radio 4’s specially commissioned drama commemorating the first world war. They know that they’re about to launch on to the airwaves the boldest, most creative and enterprising venture yet heard on the station. The years of planning, of making endless decisions about how to do it, what to focus on, where to set it, which real stories to fictionalise, which to abandon, have paid off. A random scene between a volunteer at a makeshift hospital and a wounded soldier is being recorded. There’s no preamble, no explanation, just two people having a conversation. Yet the writing is so sharp and effective, not a word wasted, the characters so deftly drawn that I knew at once who these people were, their place in the drama, their hopes and fears, their inner sadness.