AuthorThomas Hardy
NarratorFull Cast
Duration3h 45m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Plays and Dramatisations
Key StageKS4
PublisherBBC Audiobooks
VersionUnabridged
A new dramatisation of the Thomas Hardy classic, `Tess Of The d'Urbervilles', to be transmitted as the Radio 4 Classic Serial in four hour-long episodes. John Durbeyfield learns that he is descended from the Norman family of d'Urbervilles. He and his wife Joan encourage their daughter Tess to befriend the family of Stoke d'Urbervilles. In doing so she is seduced by their son Alec, and she bears him a child which dies. In order to make a fresh start, Tess goes to work in Wessex on the Talbothays farm, where she meets Angel Clare, the younger son of a parson who asks her to marry him - and after some uncertainty she agrees. However, when Angel learns of her past on their wedding night he rejects her. When he goes to Brazil, Tess begins work at another farm, in the employ of the tyrannical Farmer Groby. She once again meets Alec d'Urberville - and so begins a chain of events which culminate in tragedy for all.
Author: Dorothy L. Sayers
Author Dorothy L. Sayers
Narrator Full Cast
Duration 2h 20m
Ian Carmichael is Lord Peter Wimsey, with Patricia Routledge as his mother, in this BBC radio 4 full-cast dramatisation. Dorothy L. Sayers' first Lord Peter Wimsey tale introduces many of the author's best-known characters. Wimsey's mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver, rings her son with news of 'such a quaint thing'. She has heard through a frie...
View BookAuthor: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Anton Lesser
Duration 12h 20m
In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurks the shameful secret of his past and a personality pr...
View BookFar from the Madding Crowd (Movie Tie-in Edition)
Author: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Nicholas Guy Smith
Duration 15h 18m
This story of a proud rural beauty and the three men who court her is the novel that first made Thomas Hardy famous.Despite the violent ends of several of its major characters, Far from the Madding Crowd is the sunniest and least brooding of Hardy’s great novels. The strong-minded Bathsheba Everdene—and the devoted shepherd, obsessed fa...
View BookAuthor: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Martin Shaw
Duration 2h 23m
Rivalry and love and hate are explored in this intense study of two men's struggle for power. An interesting novel due to its depiction of a violent love/hate relationship between two men, this story highlights the strains of competition in pre-industrial rural society. Michael henchard attains the position of town mayor, but the lies that lead him...
View BookAuthor: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Michael Kitchen
Duration 9h 51m
The unhappily married Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social decorum when she falls in love with Swithin St. Cleeve, an astronomer who is ten years her junior. Her husband's death leaves the lovers free to marry, but the discovery of a legacy forces them apart.
View BookAuthor: Smith Alexander Mccall
Author Smith Alexander Mccall
Narrator Full Cast
SeriesThe No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Book 2
Duration 5h 50m
A second collection of eight BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations based on the popular books by Alexander McCall Smith. 'this full- cast production will charm listeners whether they already know and love these stories or are hearing them for the first time' - Audiofile Magazine 'How to Handle Men through the Application of Psychology': Precious Ram...
View BookAuthor: Arthur Conan Doyle
Author Arthur Conan Doyle
Narrator Various
Duration 2h 33m
London, 1907; Journalist Edward Malone, rejected by the woman he loves because he is too prosaic, decides to go in search of adventure and fame to prove himself worthy of her. Soon after, he meets Professor George Challenger, a controversial scientist who claims to have discovered a 'lost world' populated by pterodactyls and other prehistoric monst...
View BookThe Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion
Author: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Martin Jarvis
Duration 42m
A tale by Hardy, master of human tragedy, about a girl's sacrifice for her long-engagement and her doomed love for a visiting soldier.
View BookAuthor: Donald Stuart
Author Donald Stuart
Narrator Various
Duration 30m
William Franklyn stars as paperback hero Sexton Blake, with David Gregory as his assistant Tinker, in the original BBC Radio dramatisations from 1967. Lost from the BBC archives for over 40 years, these rediscovered episodes are presented on CD for the very first time. In the first episode of the series, Lilies For The Ladies, Blake investigates th...
View BookFear On 4: 13 Chilling BBC Radio 4 Dramas
Author: Various
Author Various
Narrator Various
Duration 6h 18m
An unsettling collection of full-cast dramas from the long-running BBC Radio 4 horror series. Throughout five series of Fear on 4 from 1988-1997, Edward de Souza was The Man in Black, a sinister raconteur who introduced a weekly half-hour of terror and suspense. Here, he welcomes us to his house of horrors as he presents thirteen terrifying tales t...
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