Until the time of her death in 2003, actress Thora Hird worked regularly with the playwright Alan Bennett. In this audiobook, Bennett recalls his work and friendship with Thora, and introduces three examples of their collaboration.

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. Solving the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci...

After an impulsive affair with his student sours, David Lurie retreats disgraced to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding. For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power is shifting in South Africa. He and Lucy become victims of a disturbing attack whic...

Where else to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples? All along the coast, the Roman Empire's richest citizens are relaxing in their luxurious villas. The world's largest navy lies peacefully at anchor. Only one man is worried. The engineer Marcus Attilius has just taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the enormous aqueduct t...

This is the complete first series from BBC Radio 4, including the pilot episode, which won the Sony Award. The audiobook includes the creations Daffyd, the only gay in the village; Emily 'I'm a lady!'; incoherant young offender Vicky Pollard; and Marjorie Dawes from FatFighters. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND ADULT THEMES.

Henry Chester, a Victorian artist, is in search of the perfect model. In nine-year-old Effie he finds her. Ten years later, lovely, childlike and sedated, Effie seems the ideal wife. But something inside her is about to awaken.

When Eragon finds a polished blue stone in the forest, he soon realises he has stumbled upon a legacy nearly as old as the Empire itself when the stone brings forth a dragon hatchling. Overnight his simple life is shattered, and he is thrust into a perilous new world of destiny, magic and power. With only an ancient sword and the advice of an old s...

Arthur and George grew up worlds apart in late 19th-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, while George remains in hard-working obscurity. But as t...

This audiobook is the story of Clare and Henry, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself pul...

Donald Cameron, a young Scotsman, is commissioned to write a book on the outsider's view of the English. During his investigation into the foibles of English social life he encounters civil servants, newspaper editors, minor poets and a glamorous film star in such classically English situations as the country house weekend and one of the most famou...

An elegantly observed journal of a year in the life of the musical play 'By Jeeves', written and directed by two theatre geniuses, Alan Ayckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Beginning in January 2001, the production travels from Pittsburgh to Toronto - but will it make it to Broadway?

Eventually becoming the 1960s film that made Michael Caine a star, 'Alfie' is the tale of a free-wheeling young man, who, thanks to his hedonistic lifestyle and numerous sexual escapades, cannot find true happiness and peace of mind.

In 1666, The Great Plague scorched London whilst the north of England remained untouched until, in a small community of leadminers and hill farmers, a bolt of cloth arrived from the capital. The tailor who cut the cloth had no way of knowing that the damp fabric carried with it bubonic infection. So begins the 'Year of Wonders', based on real-life...

A collection featuring a series of short stories, anecdotes, musings, essays and fables by Alphonse Daudet and extracts from the magazine 'The Idler' amongst others, written by the author of 'Three Men in a Boat', Jerome K. Jerome.

A collection of love stories including: 'The Sphinx Without a Secret' by Oscar Wilde; 'For Better or Worse' by W.W Jacobs; 'Angela' by W.S Gilbert; 'Mr & Mrs Dove' by Katherine Mansfield'; 'Georgie Porgie' by Rudyard Kipling; 'Genefer' by Sabine Baring-Gould; 'The Singing Lesson' by Katherine Mansfield; 'The Patch on the Quilt' by Sapper; 'The...

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...

Constance Chatterley feels trapped in her sexless marriage to the invalid Sir Clifford. Unable to fulfil his wife emotionally or physically, Clifford encourages her to have a liaison with a man of their own class. But Connie is attracted instead to her husband's gamekeeper and embarks on a passionate affair that brings new life to her stifled exist...

Jimmy Crocker, aka Piccadilly Jim, is a lively young American ex-newspaper man who meets Ann Chester, the girl of his dreams, in London. As they set sail together for New York, Jim struggles with a secret - he once wrote a bad review of her first book of poetry, and Ann has no idea, yet.

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...

'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' tells the story of a group of working men who are joined one day by Frank Owen, a journeyman-prophet with a vision of a just society. Owen's spirited attacks on the greed and dishonesty of the capitalist system rouse his fellow men to rise up and fight for a fairer Britain. A classic novel about the English wo...

Holly Martins arrives in post war Vienna to discover that his old friend Harry Lime has just died in a car accident. On hearing from Major Calloway of his criminal activities and racketeering, Martins vows to clear his friend's reputation and uncover the truth to discover what really happened to Harry Lime.