AuthorGeoffrey Chaucer
NarratorPhilip Madoc, Anton Lesser, Clive Swift
SeriesThe Canterbury Tales, Book 1
Duration3h 22m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Classics
Key StageA Level
PublisherNaxos
VersionAbridged
Chaucer's greatest work, written towards the end of the fourteenth century, paints a brilliant picture of medieval life, society, and values. The stories range from the romantic, courtly idealism of 'The Knight's Tale' to the joyous bawdiness of the Miller's; all are told with a freshness and vigour in this modern verse translation that make them a delight to hear.
Author: Emile Zola
Author Emile Zola
Narrator Leighton Pugh
Duration 19h 55m
Germinal is one of the most striking novels in the French tradition. Widely regarded as Zola's masterpiece, the novel describes the working conditions of French coalminers in the 1860s in harsh and realistic terms it is visceral, graphic and unrelenting. Its strong socialist principles and vivid accounts of the miners' strikes meant that the novel...
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Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
Author Geoffrey Chaucer
Narrator Maxine Peake
Duration 1h 53m
A BBC Radio 4 full-cast Unabridged of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde by poet and writer Lavinia Greenlaw. One of the great works of English literature, this powerful, compelling story explores love from its first tentative beginnings through to passionate sensuality and eventual tragic disillusionment. Lavinia Greenlaw's new version for radio bring...
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Simon Vance
Duration 31h 21m
The most gorgeously theatrical of all Dickens's novels, Nicholas Nickleby follows the delightful adventures of a hearty young hero in nineteenth-century England. Nicholas, a gentleman's son fallen upon hard times, must set out to make his way in the world. His journey is accompanied by some of the most swaggering scoundrels and unforgettable eccent...
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Author: Charlotte Bronte
Author Charlotte Bronte
Narrator Charlotte Ritchie
Duration 21h 29m
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Charlotte Ritchie, best known for her roles as Oregon in Channel 4's Fresh Meat, Hannah in the BBC Three comedy Siblings, and as Barbara Gilbert in BBC drama Call the Midwife. With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding sch...
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Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Author Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Narrator Richard E. Grant
Duration 2h 12m
He is the Little Prince, the mysterious, innocent and beautiful boy who appears to a pilot stranded in the desert and makes an extraordinary request. He has captured the hearts of millions of readers around the world since his story first appeared in 1943, written down by an aristocratic French aviator who soon after disappeared during a flight acr...
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Author: Emile Zola
Author Emile Zola
Narrator Traci Svensgaard
Duration 6h 41m
In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Th‚rŠse 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 each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime t...
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The Pardoners Tale, the Frankeleyns Tale & the Nonne Preestes Tale
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
Author Geoffrey Chaucer
Narrator Richard Bebb
Duration 2h 38m
These three tales from 'The Canterbury Tales' are read in the original Middle English under the direction of Britain's foremost Chaucer scholar, Derek Brewer. The tales and their story-tellers display extraordinary variety and come from different sections of 'The Canterbury Tales'. Chaucer's portrait of the Pardoner himself, laced with hostile sati...
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Author: Jerome K Jerome
Author Jerome K Jerome
Narrator Blake Morrison
Duration 7h 33m
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Blake Harrison, star of The Inbetweeners, also known for his role on screen in A Very English Scandal and Todd Margaret, as well as on London's West End in Waitress. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by David Carroll. Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. a...
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Author: Jonathan Swift
Author Jonathan Swift
Narrator Jasper Britton
Duration 35h 15m
Lemuel Gulliver, a slightly staid ship's doctor, relates the tales of his astonishing travels. He encounters the tiny, warring Lilliputians; the giant, sceptical Brobdingnagians; the ludicrously intellectual Laputans; and the idealistic - if rather stolid - Houyhnhnms and their bestial servants, the Yahoos. An immediate best-seller when it was firs...
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Author: Albert Camus
Author Albert Camus
Narrator James Jenner
Duration 11h 2m
In the small coastal city of Oran, Algeria, rats begin rising up from the filth only to die as bloody heaps in the streets. Shortly after, an outbreak of the bubonic plague erupts and envelops the human population. Albert Camus' The Plague is a brilliant and haunting rendering of human perseverance and futility in the face of a relentless terror bo...
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