AuthorOscar Wilde
NarratorFull Cast
Duration2h 22m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Plays and Dramatisations, Classics
Key StageKS4
PublisherBBC Audiobooks
VersionUnabridged
Martin Clunes and Michael Sheen star in this full-cast production of Oscar Wilde's well-known comedy. Oscar Wilde's dazzling comedy about mistaken identities and secret engagements still delights audiences over a century after its first performance in 1895. Algernon Moncrieff, a bachelor-about-town, has invented an invalid friend called Bunbury in order to get out of tiresome family engagements. At the same time, his friend Jack Worthing has invented a wicked brother called Ernest to disguise his own misdemeanours. When Algernon poses as Ernest to win the heart of Cecily Cardew, confusion reigns, and it takes the discovery of an old black handbag to reveal the truth... This star-studded BBC Radio production features Martin Clunes as Algernon, Michael Hordern as Lane, Michael Sheen as Jack, Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell, Samantha Bond as Gwendolen, Miriam Margolyes as Miss Prism, and Amanda Root as Cecily. The Classic Radio Theatre range presents notable radio productions of much-loved plays by some of the most renowned playwrights, and starring some of our finest actors.
Author: Oscar Wilde
Author Oscar Wilde
Narrator Greg Wise
Duration 9h 15m
After meeting Lord Henry Wotton, who remarks that 'youth is the only thing worth having', Dorian Gray becomes obsessed with preserving his looks. He wants to remain as youthful and fresh as he appears in his recently completed portrait by Basil Hallward. When Dorian states that he would give his soul to stay young, he has no idea of the horrors he'...
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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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The Importance of Being Earnest
Author: Oscar Wilde
Author Oscar Wilde
Narrator
Duration 1h 49m
Wilde's `trivial comedy for serious people' makes fun of the English upper classes with light-hearted satire and humour. The plot centres on the lives of Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff who have both taken to bending the truth in order to add a dash of excitement to their lives. It all seems harmless enough but their deception is eventually di...
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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: 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...
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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: Oscar Wilde
Author Oscar Wilde
Narrator Martin Jarvis
Duration 2h 30m
The affair between Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of the Marquess of Queensbury, led to a series of three trials in 1895, and Wilde's imprisonment for two years. He died three and a half years later in Paris at the age of 46. This recording recreates these sensational trials from the original transcripts.
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Author: Oscar Wilde
Author Oscar Wilde
Narrator Simon Russell Beale
Duration 4h 54m
Written during his time in Reading Gaol, De Profundis is Oscar Wilde's moving letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, whose relationship with Wilde led to the poet's imprisonment. Here Wilde repudiates Lord Alfred and reflects on his ordeal, acknowledging how the depths of his sorrow have helped liberate him towards a fuller, freer wisdom. Brimming with bea...
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Author: Oscar Wilde
Author Oscar Wilde
Narrator Rupert Graves
Duration 2h 52m
Haunting and poignant, the great Oscar Wilde's famous supernatural story of youth and age is narrated brilliantly by Rupert Graves. Wilde's only novel combines sparkling wit, social satire and luxurious description. Full of many of his most famous witticisms, it is essentially a novel about the lust for eternal youth versus the inevitable reality o...
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Author: Oscar Wilde
Author Oscar Wilde
Narrator Geraldine Mcewan, Simon Russell Beale
Duration 1h 36m
To avoid tiresome family engagements, Algernon Moncrieff, a bachelor-about-town, has invented Bunbury, an invalid friend whose bedside he is frequently obliged to attend. At the same time, his friend Jack Worthing has invented a wicked brother called Ernest to disguise his own misdemeanours. When Algernon poses as Ernest, confusion reigns, and it t...
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