THIS epic adaptation of Flora Thompson’s writings is given a new resonance as writer Keith Dewhurst brings various elements together to paint a portrait of an English paradise lost.

This marvellous work has many qualities yet probably finds its voice in the achingly nostalgic creations of folk luminary Ashley Hutchings whose music underpins the story of a village from the 1880s until the outbreak of the First World War.

The two men have combined to produce a masterpiece, blending narrative with Hutchings’s sensitive arrangements of traditional songs and tunes that chart the progress of the villagers through the joys and hardships of everyday life.

There are some sterling performances from the cast when they double – and sometimes treble up – as the main characters in this tiny community. Jonathan Ansell undergoes rapid metamorphoses from farmhand to soldier, as does Jenni Bowden and Elizabeth Marsh, who turn in a dazzling array of different roles.

The indomitable Sara Crowe stands like a rock as the mother of narrator Laura Timms, delicately played by Becci Gemmell, and there’s also some fine guitar and mandolin work courtesy of Blair Dunlop, Roger Wilson and David Osmond.

However, it is the sky that ultimately tells this tale. We go from a harvest cloudless blue to brooding storm clouds that foretell the great catastrophe that is to come.

It is then that the sound of summer thunder is replaced by the roar of the guns and seas of waving corn sink into the mud of foreign fields.

The final scene is in shadow and its imagery will be immediately obvious to anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of the subject.

Lark Rise to Candleford runs until Saturday (December 11) and is thoroughly recommended.