David Suchet – keeping the faith
A new radio drama lays bare the tensions in the life of composer William Byrd – a Catholic in post-Reformation England. D.J. Taylor talks to its star, David Suchet
A new radio drama lays bare the tensions in the life of composer William Byrd – a Catholic in post-Reformation England
As backstage revelations go, this one is in a class of its own. In BBC Radio 3’s five-part drama on the Catholic composer William Byrd (1542/43-1623), To Preserve the Health of Man, David Suchet plays the lead opposite Juliet Aubrey as Queen Elizabeth I. So scintillating are the sparks that Suchet and his co-star strike off each other – the composer polite, wary yet conciliatory, the monarch courteous yet unambiguously tough-minded – that it’s impossible for the listener to imagine they were anywhere but side by side in a socially distanced studio.
Not so, Suchet reveals. It was impossible, he says, to set up to record in his study at home, so he worked from the BBC studios. “She was elsewhere … In fact I don’t exactly know where she was. But we absolutely clicked, although we never even met. It’s the first time in 52 years in the profession that I wasn’t in the same room as the person I was acting with.”
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