Many of the original cast from Alan Bennett's acclaimed National Theatre production appear in this special dramatisation for BBC Radio 4 including Richard Briers as Rat, Adrian Scarborough as Mole and Terence Rigby as Albert with Alan Bennett as the narrator. A wonderful, highly-acclaimed dramatic performance of a classic novel.

Henry Fleming, a new recruit in the American Civil War, is desperate to prove his courage but is unprepared for the horror he must witness. A powerful story of fear and duty.

When father mysteriously has to go away for a time, three children and their mother leave their comfortable home in London for the country. The children seek solace in the nearby railway station, making friends with Perks the porter and with the station master himself. But will their father ever return?

Jay Gatsby causes quite a stir when he buys a mansion on the east coast of America and sets about hosting the most lavish parties. Anyone who is anyone wants to be seen at his glittering parties, but Gatsby himself always seems to be watching and waiting. Who or what is he waiting for?

Late one night on his way to Limmeridge House in Cumberland, drawing teacher Walter Hartright meets a mysterious woman dressed in white. Who is she, and what is her connection to the teacher's new pupil, a beautiful heiress?

The story of a handsome and ambitious carpenter's son, Julian Sorel, and of his life torn between the military (the scarlet) and the church (the black). Sorel is determined to rise above his humble peasant origins and make something of his life. To do this, he realises he must adopt the code of hypocrisy by which early 19th-century French Resoratio...

The story of a family overshadowed by the Marshalsea, London's debtors' Prison. The Father of the Marshalsea is William Dorrit. He is tended by his daughter Amy, Little Dorrit, to whom the prison is home. She becomes the novel's liberator in her selfless devotion to her father and her redeeming love for Arthur Clennam.

The aristocratic Anna Karenina is a sophisticated woman who seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. Yet she becomes increasingly aware of the emptiness of her life and exchanges her privilaged existence as the wife of Karenin for a passionate affair with the impetuous Count Vronsky - with tragic consequences.

After the death of her parents, Mary Lennox is brought back from India as a forlorn and unwanted child to live in her uncle's great lonely house on the moors. Then one day, she discovers the key to a secret garden and, as if by magic, her life begins to change.

A tale of comical misadventure with Mister Pickwick and his companions - the amorous Tupman, the 'poetic' Snodgrass and the `sporty' Winkle - all battling to extricate themselves from a seemingly endless succession of comic trials and tribulations.

After he is wrongly accused of a crime and expelled from his community, weaver Silas Marner becomes a miser and a recluse. A strange sequence of events, and the appearance of a small child, transforms his life and awakens him to the redemptive power of love.

In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont Neuf in Paris, Therese Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin Camille. The tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on an affair with her husband's friend Laurent, and their passion for each other soon causes the lovers to commit a shocking crime that will haunt the...

Set in the summer of 1939 on the day of the annual village pageant at Pointz Hall, the novel weaves together the musings of several disparate characters and their reactions to the imminence of the Second World War, which provides the novel with its dark undercurrent. Before the book was published in the spring of 1941, Virginia Woolf had taken her...

Jacob's Room is Virginia Woolf's first truly experimental novel. It is a portrait of a young man, who is both representative and victim of the social values which led Edwardian society into war. Jacob Flanders first appears as a child playing by the seaside. The novel follows his progress to school, Cambridge, London, Paris, Italy, Greece and to hi...

A retelling of John Bunyan's classic story that is filled with drama, excitement and adventure. On his journey of a life-time to the City of Gold, Christian meets an extraordinary cast of characters, such as the terrible Giant Despair and the monster Apollyon. Together with Hopeful, his steadfast companion, he survives the snipers and mantraps, the...

'The Waves', more than any of Virginia Woolf's other novels, conveys the complexities of human experience. Tracing the lives of a group of friends, 'The Waves' follows their development from childhood to youth and middle age. The novel is most remarkable for the rich poetic language that conveys the aspirations, triumphs and regrets of her characte...

The well-intentioned, wealthy physician Dr Jekyll is fascinated by the duality of human nature. He discovers a drug which can separate the good and evil sides of his character. But can he stop his dark side, the hideous Mr Hyde, from taking control?

Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly old skinflint. He hates everyone, especially children. But at Christmas the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future come to visit him, scare him into mending his ways, and he finds, as he celebrates with Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim and their family, that geniality brings its own reward.

When the body of Sir Charles Baskerville is found in his garden, there are no signs to explain his death. Did he die of fright? Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson have a mysterious case to solve - is the Baskerville family really haunted by a phantom beast 'with blazing eyes and dripping jaws' which roams the mist-enshrouded moors around the isolated Ba...

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...

Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote only one major work as a gift for his ruling Prince, Lorenzo de Medici. When the senior civil servant role he had held for fourteen years came to an end due to the downfall of the Republic in 1512, he poured out his ideas and resentment in his writings. 'The Prince' has remained a classic ever since; valued for...