'The Crucible' in History 1st of 2 [15min]

Arthur Miller, in a 2002 BBC recording, reads his essay in which he places his play about the witch trials of Salem in the context of the era of the Red-hunting years of Joe McCarthy and the US Congress. Miller said of The Crucible in history: 'It is really my most ambitious attempt at a history of the period from one person's experience'. The essay takes in the House Committee on Un-American Activities' obsession with Miller's wife Marilyn Monroe, to the more sinister efforts to ban him from travel and work. Part of a series of programmes to mark the first anniversary of Miller's death, adapted and produced by Ned Chaillet.