AuthorJohn Galsworthy
NarratorMartin Jarvis
SeriesThe Forsyte Saga, Book 2
Duration5h 9m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Classics
Key StageA Level
PublisherCSA Word
VersionAbridged
The second part of John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga, chronicling the downfall of an upper middle class family in the turbulent period of social change at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries. This book tells of the struggle between Soames and his beautiful wife Irene, who leaves him but cannot persuade him to grant a divorce. While Soames cannot accept Irene's dissent, he insists his sister deal as she must with her own failed marriage. Irene gains independence through her friendship with Soames' Uncle, Old Jolyon, who leaves her a fortune in his will, and she flees the country, but Soames follows her. The series is praised for its vivid, memorable characters and portrayal of the power changes at the end of the Victorian era.
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: 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: John Galsworthy
Author John Galsworthy
Narrator Stephen Kemble
SeriesThe Forsyte Saga, Book 6
Duration 12h 7m
Michael Mont is succeeding in his public life in Parliament, but holds grave doubts about his private life and his wife, Fleur. Fleur's original love, Jon Forsyte, her cousin and the son of her father's ex-wife, returns to England where a meeting is inevitable. Fleur's undying love for Jon is disclosed.
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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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Author: John Galsworthy
Author John Galsworthy
Narrator Full Cast
SeriesThe Forsyte Chronicles, Book 3
Duration 6h 40m
A Radio 4 dramatisation of John Galsworthy's gripping trilogy that concludes the Forsyte Saga, featuring a star cast including Sophie Thompson, Dorothy Tutin, John Moffatt and Miranda Foster. The End of the Chapter is an adaptation of Galsworthy's three novels chronicling the lives of the Cherrells, cousins of the Forsytes. Maid in Waiting starts i...
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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: 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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Author: Kenneth Grahame
Author Kenneth Grahame
Narrator Alan Bennett
Duration 1h 17m
When the Water Rat invites the unassuming Mole to spend his first day ever in a boat on the river, and wise Badger comes along for the ride as well, so begins a marvellous season of adventure for the three friends. Mr Toad (he of Toad Hall) completes a happy foursome, but his tendency to get into hot water leads him into some rather hair-raising sc...
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Author: John Galsworthy
Author John Galsworthy
Narrator Full Cast
SeriesThe Forsyte Saga, Book 1
Duration 8h 27m
Galsworthy's epic story chronicles the decline and fall of the Forsytes through almost fifty years of material triumph, emotional disaster and a terrible feud that splits them asunder. Beginning in 1886, The Man of Property starts with the family wealthy, successful and united. But the actions of the arrogant Soames Forsyte and his beautiful wife I...
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Author: John Galsworthy
Author John Galsworthy
Narrator Joseph Millson
Duration 3h 32m
Joseph Millson and Jessica Raine star in a brand new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation continuing John Galsworthy's saga of the Forsyte family spanning 50 years. Galsworthy's novels The Silver Spoon and Swan Song, dramatized here in 7 episodes, continue to follow Fleur Forsyte, as she falls in love with Jon, and later, escaping heartbreak, mar...
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