Harry Swithenback’s Private Visit

Drama of the Week

BBC

Drama, Fiction

3.9 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The award-winning Scottish writer Alan Warner’s new and specially commissioned story sees an antiques expert off the telly – Harry Swithenback – arrive in at this unnamed harbour town for what he hopes is a few days of rest and relaxation, however, the townspeople have other ideas. Stuart McQuarrie reads.

Alan Warner, who as was born in Oban on the west coast of Scotland in 1964, is the author of several novels including: Morvern Callar (1995), which won the Somerset Maugham Prize and was adapted for the cinema by director Lynne Ramsay in 2002. It is published as a Vintage Classic. He also wrote These Demented Lands (1997), which won the Encore Award and The Sopranos/Our Ladies, (1998), which won the Saltire Book of the Year Award. His novel The Stars in the Bright Sky from 2010 was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Stuart McQuarrie is a television, film and theatre actor who has appeared in shows such as Taggart, Rab C Nesbitt, London’s Burning and Silent Witness. In film, he's also had notable roles in 28 Days Later, Terminator: Dark Fate and White Bird.

The producer is Dominic Howell.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.0	They call themselves Evil Corps, a cybercrime gang accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars.
0:13.0	And at the center of it all, one of the FBI's most wanted.
0:17.0	They ran their operations out of the back of an Italian restaurant in Moscow.
0:22.0	How does a man hunted by the world's top law enforcers still manage to grow an empire?
0:26.6	These guys were going to town on small businesses across America.
0:30.9	They anger, the frustration, the fear.
0:33.5	Cyberhack, evil core. Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:37.8	This is Drama of the Week.
0:43.7	Harry Swithenbach's private visit by Alan Warner.
0:48.7	Read by Stuart McCquiry.
0:52.4	I'm Colin Chisholm. I was once editor of our small-town newspaper. Last summer, I had just
1:00.7	strolled to Tesco to get more go-cat. Walking up toward me on my side of the high street was him
1:07.3	off the telly from that antiques programme which goes town to town across Britain.
1:13.2	He wore an unbuttoned navy blue overcoat.
1:16.6	As always with famous folk, he was much smaller than you assumed.
1:20.4	I could almost apply the word petite to his handsome sharp features,
1:25.6	a small box of posh tea bags held in his hand from that new
1:28.6	delicatessen. I suddenly recalled his superb name, Harry Swithenbach, Harry Swithenbach's antique
1:37.8	adventures. Hello again, I helplessly called out, though of course I'd never met him before.
1:46.8	He stopped before me, his facial expression, one of a guest who has stepped out of the hotel lift,
1:53.1	uncertain if they are on the correct floor.
	...

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