Oxford, The Trout Inn: The tale of a pot boy named Malcolm Polstead, and a girl hidden in a convent. Read by Simon Russell Beale.

Twenty two years after the publication of Philip Pullman's NORTHERN LIGHTS, the author Philip Pullman returned to the world of HIS DARK MATERIALS with a brand new trilogy.

LA BELLE SAUVAGE, read by Simon Russell Beale, is the first volume of THE BOOK OF DUST.

Set ten years before the events of HIS DARK MATERIALS, this novel explores the origins of that story.

We open in Oxford, at The Trout Inn, with a pot boy named Malcolm Polstead, and the whisper of a mysterious baby girl, hidden at the local convent, in the care of the nuns...

Omnibus of the first five of ten episodes.

Producer: Allegra McIlroy

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2017.