AuthorEvelyn Waugh
NarratorJeremy Northam
Duration5h 16m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Classics, LGBTQ+ Literature
Key StageA Level
PublisherCSA Word
VersionAbridged
The inspiration for a major film releasing 2008 starring Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon. A study of faith and disillusionment in a glamorous upper-class world, Waugh's most famous novel is partly autobiographical and is a gripping multi-character-study of aristocratic life behind closed doors. Charles Ryder meets Sebastian, a member of the aristocratic Flyte family, at Oxford. He then begins to spend time at the family home, Brideshead, where he is welcomed into the fold and enjoys a decadent high-society lifestyle. Things start to unravel, however, when Charles notices the cracks in the veneer: his perception of the naivety of the family's devotion to the Catholic faith, and his friend's increasing drink habit. Tangled webs of love and obsession also threaten to break up the at first happy idyll. Examining the complexity of relationships and the strength of belief, `Brideshead Revisited' is an intense listen and a riveting one.
Author: Evelyn Waugh
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Rik Mayall
Duration 2h
The gloriously farcical story of Paul Pennyfeather, sent down from Oxford in outrageous circumstances, who finds himself a position as a schoolteacher at Llanabba Castle alongside a cast of oddballs, rascals and criminals. Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, a parent of staggering glamour and truly suspect mo...
View Book
Author: Evelyn Waugh
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Jonathan Keeble
Duration 6h 20m
Sent down from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly unsurprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, rascals, and fools, including Prendy and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with...
View Book
Author: Evelyn Waugh
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Michael Cochrane
Duration 5h
A sharply comic novel with shades of Waugh's own experiences, 'The Ordeal of Gilbert Penfold - A Conversation Piece', recounts a period of mental confusion and breakdown in the life of Gilbert Penfold, an established novelist of mature years. Prone to moments of paranoia and memory-loss, he attempts to cure himself with a tropical cruise. But his a...
View Book
Author: Evelyn Waugh
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Various
Duration 3h 47m
A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Evelyn Waugh's tragi-comic novel of the lives and loves of the English aristocracy. The action moves between 1944 and 1923, to tell the story of Charles Ryder and his infatuation with the decadent Sebastian Flyte.
View Book
Karen Pirie Book 5: Broken Ground
Author: Val Mcdermid
Author Val Mcdermid
Narrator Cathleen Mccarron
SeriesKaren Pirie, Book 5
Duration 12h 57m
When a body is discovered in the remote depths of the Highlands, DCI Karen Pirie finds herself in the right place at the right time. Unearthed with someone's long-buried inheritance, the victim seems to belong to the distant past - until new evidence suggests otherwise, and Karen is called in to unravel a case where nothing is as it seems. It's not...
View Book
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Author Jeffrey Eugenides
Narrator Nathan Osgood
Duration 24h 17m
'I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.' So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and her truly unique family secret, born on the slopes of Mount Olympus and passed on through thr...
View Book
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...
View Book
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...
View Book
Author: Evelyn Waugh
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Nathaniel Parker
Duration 4h 42m
Evelyn Waugh's acidly funny and daring satire, Vile Bodies reveals the darkness and vulnerability that lurks beneath the glittering surface of the high life. In the years following the First World War a new generation emerges, wistful and vulnerable beneath the glitter. The Bright Young Things of twenties' Mayfair, with their paradoxical mix of inn...
View Book
Tony Hill and Carol Jordan Book 9: Splinter the Silence
Author: Val Mcdermid
Author Val Mcdermid
Narrator Saul Reichlin
SeriesTony Hill and Carol Jordan, Book 9
Duration 12h 47m
When psychological profiler Tony Hill comes across a series of suicides among women tormented by vicious online predators, he begins to wonder if there is more to these tragedies than meets the eye. Could it be murder? But what kind of serial killer wants his crimes to stay hidden? Tony and DCI Carol Jordan begin the hunt for the most dangerous and...
View Book
