The Crown stars Eileen Atkins and Alex Jennings reunite for BBC Radio 4 drama

Hope Bourne (1918–2010) was a writer and artist who lived for several decades alone on the remote moorlands of Exmoor, without electricity, surviving by hunting, growing her own food and maintaining a fiercely independent way of life. Despite her geographical isolation, Bourne was an accomplished intellectual and artist who was once offered a place at the prestigious Slade art school at the age of eleven.

Writer Zalie Burrow has taken a pivotal period in Bourne's life as inspiration for her radio play, Hope Bourne, which she wrote specifically for Dame Eileen Atkins. It concerns Bourne's relationship with the publisher Anthony Dent, played by Alex Jennings, who becomes intrigued when she sends him an untidy but compelling draft of her journals, illustrated with striking drawings. His subsequent visits to Exmoor to discuss publishing lead to an unlikely friendship that develops over several years, during which time Dent’s assumptions about society, success and fulfilment are gradually challenged. The publication of these works led to Bourne becoming quite a celebrity later in life.

Burrow describes the genesis for the play as coming from an epiphany in a library:

"Hope Bourne first came into my life on a visit to the Exmoor Library in Dulverton, Somerset. Her face, radiant and weathered, shone out from the front of a book perched on a low shelf, and I swiftly devoured all of her wonderful nature books and visited the Exmoor Society, where her amazing little watercolour paintings, adorning receipts and old ripped envelopes, had found a safe home. I researched and quickly became infatuated with this incredibly resilient woman who lived off of one pound a week, a woman who filled her boots with straw in winter to ward off the cold, who lived almost entirely self-sufficiently in the wilds of Exmoor for decades with no hot water or central heating."

Yet that initial encounter with Bourne led to a rather long gestation period for the play, as Burrow delved deeper into the life of a woman who played by her own rules, but had a multifaceted personality hidden beneath the surface eccentricity: "Over the months that followed I learnt so much more about Hope; she was not just this wild eccentric woman of the moor who didn’t fit in, she was an incredible individual oozing with talent who had led a very challenging and interesting life layered with deep friendships, heartache and unfulfilled dreams. And so, I wrote a play… a very long play… over two hours in fact, which covered her life from her first memory of being pushed in a pram on Armistice Day down Oxford High Street to her final days of living in a small bungalow in Withypool surrounded by her beloved bantams."

However, the challenge for a writer is always to get a commission and so Burrow's producer, Cherry Cookson, suggested that she write the role of Hope specifically for Eileen Atkins and aim for the much shorter afternoon drama slot on Radio 4. With that in mind, Burrow read Dame Eileen’s autobiography: "I discovered many similarities between these two remarkable women – both are humble and straightforward, delicate yet feisty and both are extremely resilient. With thoughts of Hope and Eileen intermingling in my mind the play very quickly found its way onto the page."

And the end result justified that decision, as Burrow explains: "Watching Eileen Atkins inhabit Hope Bourne in the recording studio was just such a wonderful experience. There was such an honestly and simplicity to her delivery that quietly lifted Hope off the page and brought her back to life."

Dame Eileen is swift to return the compliment to Burrow about her writing: 'This had everything going for it, a very unusual and interesting play, about a woman who was very tough and determined who lived her life her own way."

On working again with her co-star from The Crown, Alex Jennings, Atkins belies her status as a grand dame of stage and screen in her praise, " It was simply lovely to be acting with Alex again. He's not only a great actor, but he was wonderfully patient with me."

And in a nod to the old adage abut being nice to people on the way up as you may need them on the way down (not that's likely in Dame Eileen's case), the star of Hope Bourne is certain to mention as many people involved as possible, "There was Cherry Cookson, a director I had worked happily with many times. And the sound engineer, Jon Calver, without whom I probably couldn't have done it."

A humble and straightforward woman, just like Hope Bourne herself.

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