‘There must be something behind the wicked stepmother story,’ Duncan said. ‘There must be some basic fear or need that makes the portrayal of stepmothers down the ages so universally unkind. It’s as if stepmothers have come to represent all the things we fear, most terribly, about motherhood going wrong. We need mothers so badly, so deeply, that the idea of an unnatural mother is, literally, monstrous. So we make the stepmother as wicked, then you need never feel guilty or angry about your real mother, whom you so desperately need to see as good.’

Read by Patricia Hodge.

3 hours on 2 CDs