Hello and welcome to My Time Capsule, sort of. My name is Mike Fenton-Stevens, and every year, around this time, in place of the usual My Time Capsule episodes, I like to give you a pre-Christmas gift, have a free recording of one of Charles Dickens' Christmas stories. Last year we gave you The Haunted Man and the Ghost Bargain, Dickens' final Christmas

story. And this year, I've decided to record The Battle of Life, a love story, his 1846 novella.

It's one of his less well-known stories, but it's a beautiful one nonetheless. It comes in three parts,

each about an hour long. You'll be able to listen to it over the next week

as we release them. This is part one. I hope you enjoy it. We'll be back with new regular episodes

after that. Until then, may I be the first to say, Merry Christmas. If that doesn't drive you

mad in November, cheers. The Battle of Life by Charles Dickens. Cheers.

The Battle of Life by Charles Dickens, read by Michael Fenton-Stevens.

Chapter 1, Part the First Once upon a time, it matters little when, and in Stallwart, England, it matters little where, a fierce battle was fought.

It was fought upon a long summer day when the waving grass was green.

Many a wild flower formed by the almighty hand to be perfumed

goblet for the dew felt its enameled cup filled high with blood that day, and shrinking dropped.

Many an insect deriving its delicate colour from harmless leaves and herbs was stained anew

that day by dying men,

and mark its frightened way with an unnatural track. The painted butterfly took blood into the

air upon the edges of its wings. The stream ran red. The trodden ground became a quagmire,

whence from sullen pools collected in the prints of human feet and horses' hooves, the one prevailing hue still lowered and glimmered at the sun.

Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the sights the moon beheld upon that field, when, coming up above the black line of distant rising ground, softened and blurred at the edge by trees.

She rose into the sky and looked upon the plain, strewn with upturned faces that at once

at mother's breasts sought mother's eyes, or slumbered happily. Heaven keep us from a knowledge

of the secrets whispered afterwards upon the tainted wind that blew across

the scene of that day's work and that night's death and suffering. Many a lonely moon was bright

...