A FORMER South Lakeland man has adapted a real-life war romance for a radio audience to be broadcast on Armistice Day.

Prolific radio and book writer Eric Pringle is hitting the nation's airwaves again at 2.15pm, on November 11, when his adaptation of Tears of War is broadcast on BBC Radio Four.

Mr Pringle, who moved to Ledbury three years ago after spending a large part of his writing career in South Lakeland, said the play was adapted from a book based on poems and letters from young poet May Cannan to the man she loved - war hero Bevil Quiller-Couch.

The former Provincial employee told The Westmorland Gazette the poems and letters had been collected in a book by the Cannans' great niece Charlotte Fyfe.

"I hope listeners will get a feeling of what it was like to be living at that time against the backdrop of the First World War," he said.

The writer, who has more than 30 radio plays under his creative belt, plus works for television, said adapting the story had been a fascinating process because it gave a deeply personal insight into one woman's experience of war.

"When we talk about the war poets we usually think about men writing from the front.

These poems tell the other side of the story - the civilian's experience of war, written by a woman."

Mr Pringle is now working on a third children's book based on a character called Big George.