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Lindsay Duncan reads from "Burying The Bones" - the latest book by acclaimed biographer Hilary Spurling. Her subject is Pearl Buck one of the most successful and popular American novelists of the 20th Century.

Though her work has now fallen out of fashion, in her day Pearl was a phenomenal bestseller. The novel that made her name was "The Good Earth" - and it still sells in its thousands - which depicted for the first time the gruelling conditions of China's rural poor. Born to Presbyterian missionaries in 1890s China, Buck's first hand experience of the language and people informed her writing and helped to change Western perceptions of that country forever; in recognition of which she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938.

In today's episode, we learn more about Pearl's childhood and the ways in which her father's missionary zeal impoverished his family. A firebrand preacher who was often absent for long periods of time, he invariably spent his meagre wages on a project to translate the New Testament into Chinese. Pearl's mother lost four children to illnesses which could have been treated easily had they better access to food and medicine. This was the potent environment which formed Pearl and inspired her adult imagination.

Abridger: Alison Joseph
Producer: Kirsteen Cameron.