AuthorOscar Wilde
NarratorGeraldine Mcewan, Simon Russell Beale
Duration1h 36m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Plays and Dramatisations, Classics
Key StageA Level
PublisherBBC
VersionAbridged
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 takes the discovery of an old black handbag to reveal the truth.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol & De Profundis
Author: Oscar Wilde
Author Oscar Wilde
Narrator Simon Callow
Duration 2h 11m
A stunning new reading of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol. One of the most famous and successful writers of his day, Oscar Wilde was celebrated as much for his flamboyant personality and his prodigious wit as for his provocative essays, touching fairy stories and satirical plays. But in May of 1895, shortly after the premi...
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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: 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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The Ultimate Gothic Horror Collection
Author: Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Sheridan le Fanu, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde
Author Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Sheridan le Fanu, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde
Narrator Malk Williams, Karen Cass, Julie Teal, Jonathan Keeble, Peter Noble
Duration 52h 28m
The Ultimate Gothic Horror Collection is a fully indexed collection of classic gothic stories which include; Frankenstein - Obsessed with discovering the cause of generation and life and bestowing animation upon lifeless matter, Frankenstein assembles a human being from stolen body parts but; upon bringing it to life, he recoils in horror at the cr...
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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 Perkins Gilman
Author Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Narrator Various
Duration 1h 32m
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Jessica Brown Findlay, Jamael Westman and Sheila Atim. 'The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing' Written with barely controlled fury after she was confined to her room for 'nerves' and forbidden to write, Gilman's pioneer...
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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: 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: 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: 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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