Twelve Books that Changed the World presents a rich variety of human endeavour and a great diversity of characters. There are also surprises. Here are famous books by Darwin, Newton..
With music, sound effects and all the expertise of the BBC, these four traditional fairy tales are brought magically to life in full cast recordings, guaranteed to enchant all listeners
In this brilliant forerunner to Bennett's series Talking Heads monologues, Patricia Routledge plays Margaret Schofield. a woman whose existence revolves around the gossip and minutiae of office life..
Alan Bennett reads five more extracts from Untold Stones, his major collection of new writings Untold Stories. Alan Bennett's first major collection of prose since his bestselling Writing Home.
When Alice sees the White Rabbit run by, it occurs to her that she's never seen a rabbit with a watch before. Burning with curiosity, she jumps up and follows him into a rabbit-hole of enchantment...
This magnificent novel is a satirical comedy about the fight for ascendancy among the clergy in a cathedral city. The formidable Mrs. Proudie, the oily Mr. Slope, and the flamboyant Signora Neroni are among the memorable characters vying to be the dominant voice in the quiet diocese of Barchester.
Designed to be compatible with virtually every standard textbook in its subject field, Barron's EZ-101 Study Keys gives you a valuable overview of your college-level course. From Middle English thr...
This is a gripping family saga, with a monstrous father, loving mother and their four children, set in seductive Cairo from 1917 to 1953 against a backdrop of political upheaval.
This modern translation of these sometimes bawdy stories, written in the 14th century by the Father of English Poetry, entertain while telling us about England before the Renaissance.
It is now Thomas’ most widely known work, a wistful, tender, touching, wide-eyed in wonder evocation of the sights, smells and sounds of a child’s Christmas in a seaside town in Wales.
Whether sharing his wistful memory of a holiday spent with people long past, or addressing the problem of our mortality, Thomas gives us great pleasure in our personal and common memories.
The story of how the extraordinary events of Christmas Eve change the miserly Scrooge forever have made A Christmas Carol one of the greatest of all Christmas stories...
Narnia ... where owls speak, where evil weaves a spell ... where sorcery enslaves the land. Deep underground, a web of evil magic holds a prince in captivity.
Aldous Huxley here introduces us to an amiable group of artists and intellectuals engaged in the most free-thinking talk imaginable. Poetry, occultism, ancestral history, and Italian painting are just a few of the subjects for discussion among the eccentrics drawn together at Crome, an...
Salem, Massachusetts, 1692. A community stands accused of witchcraft, and in the mood of fear and recrimination that quickly develops men denounce their neighbours...
Cuculian, 'The Hound of Ulster', is the champion of Ireland and is best remembered for his single-handed defense of Ulster. This is the first time Cuculian’s story has been available in audio.
One of Shakespeare's final works, Cymbeline uses virtuoso theatrical and poetic means to dramatize a story of marriage imperiled by mistrust and rebuilt in the context of international confllict.
In Daniel Deronda, George Eliot left behind the world of the Victorian middle classes that she explored so well in Middlemarch. Eliot, with her hero Deronda, attempts to come to terms with the English Jews, a society within a society, which the people of her time seemed either oblivious to or...
Dante's Hell is one of the most remarkable visions in Western literature. An allegory for his and future ages, it is, at the same time, an account of terrifying realism.
When the U.S. Supreme Court determines the fate of genetically engineered beings - whether they're humans or animals - humanity learns that the law is truly a double edged sword...
Tom Baker and Sophie Aldred appear in one of three full-cast BBC radio dramas based around the real-life worlds of Doctor Who...contains adult themes and language...
Travel behind the scenes in the company of David Tennant, Billie Piper, Freema Agyeman, Catherine Tate, Sarah Parish, Jessica Hynes, Thomas Sangster, and many other stars of series Two and Three.
In this illuminating biography, Ronald L. Davis focuses on John Wayne's human side, portraying a complex personality defined by insecurity as well as courage and strength. Davis traces Wayne's stor...
Dylan Thomas reads his own prose and poetry in this unique collection from the archives. He is widely regarded as one of the 20th Century's most influential lyrical poets.
In “Elsie in New York,” Elsie is an innocent young woman who must look for work to make a living. Although she applies for several positions, do-gooders interfere. Thinking they are saving her soul, in actuality they point her to her destruction. In “The Purple Dress,” two young women clerks...
In this sequel to The Scarlet Pimpernel, Sir Percy Blakeney’s arch- enemy travels to England in pursuit of the impudent enemy of the French Republic. Monsieur Chauvelin devises a dastardly plot to annihilate, once and for all, both Sir Percy and his beautiful wife, Marguerite.
Its intimate blend of poetry and drama made it an instant classic; and so it remains in this unmatched recording with a perfect cast led by Richard Burton
Nearly five decades of theatrical anecdotes as David Barry {Frankie Abbott in 'Please, Sir!) recalls working with the likes of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh...
John Galsworthy devoted virtually his entire professional career to creating a fictional but entirely representative family of propertied Victorians, the Forsytes. Flowering Wilderness is the eighth novel in his Forsyte Chronicles, which has become established as one of the most popular and...
When artist Tim Lefens walked into the care center for people with cerebral palsy, he had a life-changing experience. Because of his passion and determination, he and his student-artists emerged to...
The fifteen stories collected here demonstrate the genius of Katherine Mansfield, who was compared to Chekhov. These are not tales of violent incidents or dexterous plot but sensitive revelations of human behavior in ordinary situations. The men, women, and children whom Mansfield portrays are...
In the Maheus family, the father and three of seven children work brutal hours to extract coal far beneath the earth amid hazards of landslides, fire, poisoned air, and poisoned health. Then comes the idea of a workers’ revolt, and soon the settlement is aflame. Zola chronicles the conflicts,...
Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, a newly married couple with the right connections but little money, devise a shrewd plan to sponge off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas. How their plan unfolds is a charming comedy of Eros.
What was it about a small, humble folk instrument that allowed it to become an American icon? The guitar is "wall-to-wall popular in the United States," says Brookes in this chronicle of the guitar...
Thus gentle reader, I have given thee faithful history of my travels for sixteen years and above seven months; wherein I have not been so studious of ornament as truth
Swift’s masterpiece of satire tells of the fantastic voyages of the Englishman Lemuel Gulliver, whose travels take him to lands where the inhabitants are only six inches tall as well as to lands where they are sixty feet high, where horses have the capacity to reason, and where animals are...
Michael Sheen stars as Hamlet with Kenneth Cranham as Claudius, Juliet Stevenson as Gertrude and Ellie Beaven as Ophelia in the best-known and most powerful tragedy of modern times...
Thomas Gradgrind is an eminently practical man who believes in facts and statistics and has brought up his two children, Louisa and Tom, accordingly, suppressing the imaginative sides of their nature. They are raised without love and affection, and the consequences are devastating.
Marlow, the story’s narrator, tells his friends of an experience in the British Congo where he once ran a river steamer for a trading company. He tells of the ivory traders’ cruel exploitation of the natives there. Chief among these is a greedy and treacherous European named Kurtz, a man who has...
During her long career, Helen Hayes moved among the world's most famous and talented. She offers deft private portraits of such personalities as Joan Crawford, Charlie Chaplin, F. Scott Fitzgerald,...
Robb White knows everything there is to know about getting on the water and staying there as long as you possibly can. While still a young boy, he built his first boat, hewn from the tin roof of an...
Howard’s End is a charming country house in Hertfordshire which becomes the object of an inheritance dispute between the Wilcox family and the Schlegel sisters. Through romantic entanglements, disappearing wills, and sudden tragedy, the conflict over the house emerges as a symbolic struggle for...
Often cited as the greatest American novel, the story chronicles the journey and relationship between Huckleberry Finn and a runaway southern slave, Jim, as they flee south on the Mississippi River.
Ugly and deformed but humble and loyal, Quasimodo is the hunchback living in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. He is trapped between his love for a Gypsy girl and his love for the archdeacon, his benefactor.
This boxed set features Jack London's thrilling classics, The Call of the Wild and White Fang. London’s adventurous nature, intuitive feeling for animal life, and superb storytelling skills have given his tales an enduring place in the annals of American literature.
Jack Rosenthal had always resisted writing an autobiography, until he hit on an original way of writing it: it would be a screenplay, himself as the central character, the story that of his own life.
This riveting biography follows Stewart from his childhood shaped by a strong-willed father to the fateful encounter with actress Margaret Sullavan, his first professional theatrical experiences on...
When Thomas Broadbent, an Englishman, visits Ireland for the first time, he is accompanied by his friend Larry Doyle, an Irishman who is returning to his homeland after being away for many years...
Political intrigue and fierce battle rage in this tense and dynamic production in which a country is torn apart under the legacy of Julius Caesar, 'the colossus'.
Ever since that long gone age of railways - Whenever that was - Stations have needed porters. That special breed of men who during those long periods between trains, can find endless tasks to perform.
Kenneth Branagh heads an outstanding cast in playing one of Shakespeare's strongest characters. The eighth production in the widely admired series of Shakespeare plays.
"Le Morte d'Arthur remains an enchanted sea for the reader to swim about in, delighting at the random beauties of fifteenth-century prose."--Robert Graves
Whitman succeeded in his ambition to create something uniquely American. His poems are woven into the very fabric of the American character, from his solemn dirge "O Captain! My Captain!" to the jo...
Born in Dublin in 1865, Yeats drew strength from the Irish tradition, as can be seen in this special audiobook which presents the most important poems in the context of his life and ambitions.
Well-known war correspondent and artist Dick Heldar returns to London and falls in love with his childhood sweetheart, Maisie. Then he learns he is going blind due to a war injury. As his vision fails, he must choose between the love of a woman and the love of the men who stood by him at the front.
Suetonius wrote Lives of the Twelve Caesars in the reign of Vespasian around 70AD. He chronicled their extraordinary careers, presenting perspicacious insights into the men as much as their reigns.
From the author of such children’s classics as The Secret Garden and A Little Princess comes this enchanting story of a young boy discovering his true destiny. Twelve-year-old Marco has spent his life traveling with his father in secrecy, forbidden to speak about their country of origin,...
Iin Macbeth Shakespeare has chosen for his tragic hero a man guilty of the most terrible crime imaginable to a Jacobean audience, that of regicide - the murder of a king.
Maid in Waiting is the beginning novel in the last trilogy of John Galsworthy's Forsyte Chronicles. In this seventh installment, the story continues of the lives and times, loves and losses, fortunes and deaths of the fictional but entirely representative family of propertied Victorians,...
In this collection of musical portraits, jazz pianist and radio host Marian McPartland pays tribute to such legendary figures as Benny Goodman, Bill Evans, Joe Morello, Paul Desmond, Alec Wilder, M...
Here are the beloved adventures of the mischievous hero Robin Hood and his brave and merry band of outlaws who forged a chivalrous code to protect the oppressed and despoil the oppressors. Breathtaking escapes, hilarious escapades, and classic characters make this a favorite story everywhere.
MICHAEL PALIN's diaries begin in the late 1960s and tell how Python emerged and triumphed. Enjoying an unlikely cult status early on, the group then proceeded to tour in the United States and Canada..
Michelangelo Buonarroti was a sculptor, architect, and painter of genius and a poet and writer of great accomplishment. In all his work, Michelangelo impressed his contemporaries as a divine genius...
Middlemarch is a multilayered work centering around two expertly constructed characters: Dorothea Brooke, an idealistic young woman who traps herself into a loveless marriage, and Tertius Lydgate, an ambitious young doctor. This work is epic in scope and unsurpassed in its depiction of human nature.
This blends several kinds of comedy with a powerful atmosphere of magic and mystery and a satisfying set of contrasts - between city and country, reason and imagination, love and infatuation.
From her birth in Newgate Prison, where her mother is under sentence of death for theft, to her final position of wealth, Moll Flanders demonstrates a spirit of industry and an indomitable will. One of the earliest social novels of English life, Moll Flanders features one of the most lively,...
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast...
One of the outstanding novels in the canon of American literature, My Ántonia tells of the life of early American pioneers in the vast frontier farmlands of Nebraska. Infused with a gracious passion for the land, it renders a deeply moving portrait of a community and the free-spirited girl at...
Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, reveals what it's like to be at the center of an American institution, one that reinvented the sitcom, rocked the networks to the core, and changed fore...
With an introduction by Paul Auster, this delightful true-life story by a great American writer emerges from obscurity to shine a delightful light upon family life -- then and now.
Nicholas, the hearty young hero, takes us on a journey through nineteenth-century England in a delightful series of adventures accompanied by some of Dickens’s best swaggering scoundrels and most unforgettable eccentrics.
It is 1793, France, the year of the guillotine. Already Louis XVI has been sentenced to the scaffold, and terror reigns. In Ninety-Three, Victor Hugo’s inspired last novel, that tumultuous year’s events are woven into an epic masterpiece which captures brilliantly the moment that shaped the...
A BBC Radio 4 full-cast production of Homer’s epic seafaring adventure, dramatised by award-winning poet Simon Armitage and starring Tim McInnerny and Amanda Redman.
Tim McInnerny stars as the murderous Bill Sikes with Pam Ferris as Mrs Mann and Edward Long as Oliver in a BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of one of Dickens' best known novels.
Aeschylus here dramatizes the myth of the curse on the royal house of Argos. The action begins when King Agamemnon, returning victorious from the Trojan War, is treacherously slain by his wife. It end
This terse and startling novel is the story of a struggle for possession and of its devastating consequences. Three women seek to secure the affections of one man, while he, in turn, tries to satisfy them all. But in the middle of this contest of wills stands his unwitting and vulnerable young...
Set in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful but love-starved Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic, where she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how...
The horrors of the Inferno and the trials of Purgatory are left far behind. Ultimately, in Paradise, Dante is granted a vision of God's Heavenly court - the angels, the Blessed Virgin and God Himself.
Pensées (Thoughts) is a collection of Pascal’s notes and ideas for a book in defense of faith in a rational world. These fragments give evidence of a profoundly original thinker who has resolved his conflict between a scientific mind demanding proof and a spiritual position maintained by faith.
In this seminal story of naval life during the Napoleonic War, Frederick Marryat’s young hero embarks upon a life at sea and finds it to be a rough school indeed. Peter Simple is a towering tale from the great age of sail, filled with keen wit, vivid characters, and gripping adventure.
These days, English professors teach anything and everything but classic English literature. They prefer to indoctrinate their students in Marxism and feminism and propagandize against our “oppressive” Western culture. Take a fascinating tour through our great literature, in all its politically...
Georgia O'Keeffe, one of the most original painters America has ever produced, left a remarkable legacy when she died. Her bold, brilliant canvasses had a stunning, profound, and lasting influence ...
Natty Bumppo in his ninetieth year is still competent as a frontiersman and trapper. He is drawn into conflict with society in the form of an immigrant party led by the surly Ishmael Bush. Once again this great man of nature is called upon to exhibit his courage and resourcefulness to rescue...
Purgatory is the second part of Dante's The Divine Comedy. We find the Poet, with his guide Virgil, ascending the terraces of the Mount of Purgatory inhabited by those doing penance.
Anna Leath, an American widow living in France, has engaged in a love affair with George Darrow, a diplomat. However, when Darrow is on his way to consolidate marriage plans at Anna’s French chateau, he encounters Sophy Viner, who is as sprightly and spontaneous as Anna is restrained and demure....
Clym Yeobright, a diamond merchant in Paris, returns to his home in Egdon where he falls in love with the sensuous Eustacia Vye. She marries him, hoping he will take her away to Paris. But Eustacia’s dreams of escape are not to be realized. Clym Yeobright, the returning native, cannot bring her...
*Stop Press* BBC's Robin Hood audiobook download available in January ! Meanwhile, listen to Richard Armitage, who plays Guy of Gisbourne, talk about his character..
Auguste Rodin was not only the greatest sculptor but also one of the most remarkable personalities of modern times. Grunfeld's exhaustive biography documents artistic and personal struggles against...
Mr. Frank Softly was sent to one of the most fashionable and famous of the great public schools. He said, “I ran away three times, and was flogged three times. I made four aristocratic connections, I learnt to play at cricket, to hate rich people. . . and to receive kicks and serious advice...
Though he was Greek, Plutarch wrote his Lives in the first century, a world dominated by the Roman Empire. Here he considers some of the major figures who had left their stamp.
Douglas Henshall, Sophie Dahl and Susannah York star in Shakespeare's passionate story of doomed love. The full beauty and meaning of some of the most lyrical lines ever written can truly be heard.
In this novel, Eliot re-creates the upheavals of fifteenth-century Florence through the noble and courageous Romola, who finds herself increasingly disillusioned by the career of Savonarola and repelled by her unscrupulous, self-indulgent husband.
“Who is this man, this Scarlet Pimpernel?” Each day this question grew more pressing to the rulers of the French Revolution. Only this man, this maddeningly elusive figure, threatened their total power, defying the vast network of fanatics, informers, and secret agents that the Revolution spread...
From the BBC Sound Archives, one of Shakespeare's most famous and memorable speeches, with Paul Scofield and Peggy Ashcroft as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, bringing these ominous words vividly to life.
“But, however much or little ‘A Modern Comedy’ may be deemed to reflect the spirit of an Age, it continues in the main to relate the tale of life which sprang from the meeting of Soames and Irene in a Bournemouth drawing-room in 1881….”—John Galsworthy
Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes 'unstuck in time' after he is abducted by aliens.
Squire Dale, the embittered old bachelor who lives in the great house at Allington, has loaned the nearby small house rent free to his widowed sister-in-law and her two daughters, Lily and Bell. The action centers on the strained relations between the two houses and on the romantic entanglements...
The audiodrama of this twelfth-century French epic allows listeners to hear the story as they might have in medieval time, when a traveling troubador would recite the poem in the village square. It describes the heroic exploits of Roland and the campaign of Charlemagne. Fired by the religious...
As read by the legendary Sir John Gielgud-- perhaps the greatest interpreter of the Bard we shall ever know-- the sonnets in this selection come alive...
This is no ordinary celebrity biography pieced together by an outsider. Steve Martin and author Morris Walker had a close relationship growing up. They were class clowns together, charming the girls and the teachers with their wit and eventually going on the road as comedians. You’ll meet the...
Doctor Dolittle, a little, lovable, old doctor, has so many animal pets that his people patients will not come to him any more. In fact, he likes the animals better, and he can talk to them, too! Soon his fame spreads all over the world and when the monkeys in Africa are stricken with an...
In his old age, Soames Forsyte has mellowed into a patient and benign figure, guarding with especial tenderness the welfare of his daughter, Fleur. But all his watchfulness and devotion are powerless to avert the tragedy when Fleur revives her old love affair with Jon Forsyte.
These seven stories are based on Jack London’s youthful adventures as an oyster pirate. In the early 1900s, San Francisco Bay was plagued by oyster pirates who plundered in broad daylight. At sixteen, London’s common sense suggested he change sides. Thus he joined the Fish Patrol. Catching the...
At the farthest reaches of the British Empire, four men swear an oath to keep a terrible secret, a secret drenched in blood which is the key to immense wealth...
In this episode from the series, Sir Laurence Olivier stars in a fully dramatised adaptation of the famous Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde classic by Robert Louis Stevenson...
Theatre Royal: In this episode from the series, Ralph Richardson stars in a fully dramatised adaptation of the famous Private Rooms classic by J.B.Priestley...
In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Thérèse Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband’s earthy friend Laurent. But their passion for...
This historical romance, perhaps the greatest cloak-and-sword story ever written, relates the adventures of four fictional swashbuckling heroes and their escapades against the master of intrigue, Cardinal Richelieu, and the quintessential wicked woman, Lady de Winter.
A literary as well as a philosophical masterpiece, Thus spoke Zarathustra survived an initially poor reception, to be recognised as a seminal text in modern culture.
In To Let, Jon and Fleur, now both nineteen years old, fall in love. However, when Jolyon informs his son of the past feud between the families, Jon decides that he cannot marry Fleur. Meanwhile, Soames learns that his second wife, Annette, has been unfaithful to him, and the Forsyte family...
Stephen Glennard, a young lawyer, sells a package of love letters, written to him over the years by distinguished novelist Margaret Aubyn, to raise money to pay for his forthcoming wedding to another woman. After the wedding, his secret comes back to haunt him, and when he confesses to his wife,...
In this book that implicitly condemns slavery, David Wilson is called “Pudd’nhead” by the townspeople, who fail to understand his combination of wisdom and eccentricity. He redeems himself by solving a murder mystery and a case of transposed identities.
The year 1866 was marked by a mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon. For some time, sea vessels had been threatened by “an enormous thing,” a long phosphorescent object, infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale—until Captain Nemo put his submarine, the Nautilus, into...
Produced by the Sci-Fi Channel and Seeing Ear Theatre - these two plays are adapted for voice by Neil Gaiman from two of his short stories (both stories can be found in Smoke & Mirrors).
Published in 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin brought the abolitionists' message to the public conscience - no woman before or since has so moved America to take action against an injustice.
Dylan Thomas wrote this as a radio play for voices and this is the only recording ever made with Thomas in the cast. This play is full of humour, a joyful sense of the goodness of life and love...
Under Western Eyes, Conrad’s novel of political treachery and oppression, begins with a bomb that kills a hated Russian minister of police, along with innocent bystanders. A young student named Razumov hides the perpetrator, then betrays him and becomes a spy among his exiled comrades. He faces...
Country vicar Dr. Primrose has a good heart, a good family and a good income, but suddenly, his idyllic life is cruelly devastated by a series of misfortunes. Despite all the calamity, however, he never loses sight of Christian morality, and this eventually brings him justice and the restoration...
Lucy Snowe is a stoic young Englishwoman. Beset by adverse circumstances, on a momentary whim she travels to Belgium to seek her livelihood as a teacher in a girls’ boarding school. There, surrounded by giddy pupils, under the control of the cunning school matron, wooed by an...
The Voyage Out opens as a group of lively, eccentric British tourists embark on a sea voyage from London to a resort in South America. The focus soon turns to Rachel Vinrace, a shy, awkward young woman headed on a voyage of self-discovery through love, illness, and, finally, death. A wry and...
When a Martian spacecraft lands on Woking Common, mankind is terrorised by aliens in tall, armoured capsules which stalk the countryside on three legs...
Every generation finds in The Way of All Flesh a reaffirmation of youth’s rightful struggle against the tyranny of harsh parents and its admirable will for freedom of personal expression. This is a fascinating character study of a young man who survives the influence of a hateful, hypocritical...
In this opening novel of the second trilogy in the Forsyte Chronicles, Fleur and Michael Mont begin to question their marriage when a love triangle develops between them and their mutual friend, author Wilfred Desert.
What befalls a star-crossed triangle of friends and lovers in this novel illustrates exquisitely what happens when a woman’s desire for both her lover and riches makes the object of her affection question his own true worth in her eyes.
The Winter's Tale was one of the very last plays Shakespeare wrote, a moving romance whose themes are sin, forgiveness, death, rebirth, and the power of Time and Nature to heal all wounds.
An intimate history of Shakespeare, following him through a single year that changed not only his fortunes but the course of literature for many generations to come...
