Hard Times: BBC (BBC Radio Presents)

In the polluted and poverty-ridden Coketown, Louisa and Tom Gradgrind endure a cold and loveless childhood at the hands of their self-satisfied and unimaginative father Thomas.

Louisa, starved of affection, is forced into a miserable marriage with self-made industrialist Josiah Bounderby.  Tom descends to a secret life of theft.  But for some, even among the squalor there is the hope of redemption and eventful happiness.

Dicken's brilliant and moving satire on the Victorian family and the philosophies of a society which sought to turn men into machines was written at the height of both his popularity and creative powers.