Dramatist and screenwriter David Rudkin would never use the word ‘stage’ in talking about his theatre, only ‘space’. ‘Stage’ it seemed was too elevated, creaky and limited to the material world. His work played out instead in the mental landscape, or what he referred to as ‘the theatre within’. This was certainly the case with his masterful radio-turned-theatre piece The Lovesong of Alfred J Hitchcock which we toured together Off-Broadway in 2014 and which received the very warmest of American welcomes (“Lifeless British Dirge” The New York Post). It was in a yellow taxi with David on the way back to the hotel from that experience, contemplating our fair (and lifeless) nation, that he first told me of Alan Moore’s little-known 1996 novel Voice of the Fire, a compendium of 12 voices, each based within a ten-mile radius of Northampton town centre. This was a work that found heaving life in one of the most overlooked places in England, drilling down into 4000 years of history to do so. Even in our hyperconnected age the book was almost impossible to find, having effectively fallen out of print, and yet, when I finally tracked one down, the grail-like status it had developed did not disappoint. Each chapter was a perfectly formed universe, terrifying and exact, made up of voices so vivid they leapt straight off the page, aiming resolutely at that theatre within.

Voice of the Fire was fast approaching its 25th birthday and still remained eclipsed by the gargantuan body of work the author had written before and since. I asked him if I could bring each story to audio life with an ensemble of stunning actors and a fully realised sound world, an approach that I hoped would bring life to the often lifeless format of the audiobook. Alan was enthusiastic, even offering his own services as narrator of the final chapter (although no one else could have possibly played that part). There was huge pleasure in selecting the voices for each of the remaining pieces. Maxine Peake was first on board to voice the agitated monologue of a Bronze Age murderer, Alan having been so taken with her television performance as Myra Hindley. Toby Jones then joined us as the man who built Northampton castle, followed by Aisling Loftus as the last witch to be burned in England, Tom Edward Kane as ‘blazing car murderer’ Alfred Arthur Rouse, Pamela Nomvete as a vision-witnessing nun and Mark Gatiss as the severed head of Francis Tresham.

Of the chapters remaining unallocated, one stood out, resisting conventional actorly rendition; the story of an ancient fisherman, dressed as a giant bird on stilts, trapped in a cycle of denial and mourning over a murdered family. A shorter piece than the rest, it was raw and direct in a way that would have been smothered by over-trained tones. Sleaford Mods is one of the few contemporary bands that Alan has cited strong affection for, and the idea of Jason Williamson voicing this haunted character felt almost too perfectly aligned. As a singer of such distinctive power he knows how to cut straight to the rhythm of the words, their shape and sound. He doesn’t overburden the language with too much intention or biography. His is a voice, there on the river bank, carving his words like the fisherman his stilts, narrating an extreme life without a scrap of self-pity. It was one of the most moving pieces in the whole collection. We recorded him at JT Soar, a former fruit and potato merchants', now a studio in Nottingham, during which I had a revelation that the story of a traumatised fisherman caught in the net of his own delusion echoed the tragic story of poet John Clare on his doomed walk from Epping Forest back home to Northamptonshire, in search of his lost first love. Like our stilt-wearing birdman, Clare stumbles on, clenching the past (or a version of it) like a stone in his pocket, trying to save himself from the horror of his present tense reality. And so Jason returned to speak Clare’s diaries as reimagined by Alan; a historic moment bringing three radical Midlands voices together as one. (Jack McNamara)