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Showing 127 to 144 of 144 results:
Author: E M Forster
Format: Online
Author E M Forster
Narrator Susannah Harker
Duration 4h 44m
Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster which tells a story of social and familial relations in turn-of-the-century England. The main subject matter comprises the difficulties and benefits of relationships between people of divergent outlook, gender, or class; a further concern of the book is the need to accept and link multiple outlooks on the wor...
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Author: Val Mcdermid
Format: Online
Author Val Mcdermid
Narrator Sarah Beeny
Duration 1h 8m
DCI Marion Bettany, played by Helen Baxendale, continues her investigation into Colin Arnott's murder, but the residents of Shilwick are curiously reluctant to help. Colin's plans to turn a deconsecrated chapel into a performing arts centre had ruffled feathers throughout the village, and Bettany wants to know if that's a strong enough motive for m...
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Author: Evelyn Waugh
Format: Online
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Jeremy Northam
Duration 5h 16m
The inspiration for a major film releasing 2008 starring Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon. A study of faith and disillusionment in a glamorous upper-class world, Waugh's most famous novel is partly autobiographical and is a gripping multi-character-study of aristocratic life behind closed doors. Charles Ryder meets Sebastian, a member of the aristo...
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Author: Val Mcdermid
Format: Online
Author Val Mcdermid
Narrator Charlotte Coleman
Duration 57m
A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Val McDermid's bestselling Kate Brannigan mystery Clean Break, starring Charlotte Coleman. Manchester-based private eye Kate Brannigan is not amused when thieves steal a Monet from a stately home where she had arranged the security. She sets off on a chase that takes her across Europe bringing her head to he...
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In Flander's Fields and Other Poems About War
Author: John McCrae, Wilfred Owen
Format: Online
Author John McCrae, Wilfred Owen
Narrator Ralph Cosham
Duration 53m
In WWI, possibly the most horrific modern war, two soldier poets described inner impressions telling us much about war and the people who fight them.
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Author: Evelyn Waugh
Format: Online
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Michael Cochrane
Duration 5h
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...
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Author: Evelyn Waugh
Format: Online
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Rik Mayall
Duration 2h
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...
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Author: Sarah Waters
Format: Online
Author Sarah Waters
Narrator Zulema Dene
Duration 18h 10m
Nancy's place is in her father's seaside restaurant in Whitstable, Kent, shucking shellfish and stirring soup. At night she often ventures to the nearby music hall and the moment she spies a new male impersonator, the beautiful Miss Kitty Butler - still something of a curiosity in England circa 1888 - she falls head-over-heels in love with her. Fol...
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Author: Ali Smith
Format: Online
Author Ali Smith
Narrator Julia Damassa
Duration 7h
Five disparate voices inhabit Ali Smith's dreamlike 'Hotel World', set in the luxurious anonymity of the Global Hotel, in an unnamed northern English city. The disembodied yet interconnected characters include Sara, a 19-year-old chambermaid who has recently died at the hotel; her bereaved sister, Clare, who visits the scene of Sara's death; Penny,...
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Author: Daphne Du Maurier
Format: Online
Author Daphne Du Maurier
Narrator Sarah Robson
Duration 10h 30m
After the death of her mother, Mary Yellan travels to Jamaica Inn on bleak Bodmin Moor to live with her Aunt Patience. The coachman warns her of the strange happenings there, and Mary suddenly finds her life to be in the hands of strangers: her uncle, Joss Merlyn, whose crude ways repel her; Aunt Patience, who seems mentally unstable and perpetuall...
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The Complete Ripley Radio Mysteries
Author: Patricia Highsmith
Format: Online
Author Patricia Highsmith
Narrator Full Cast
Duration 4h 43m
Tom Ripley detests murder unless it is absolutely necessary. He prefers someone else to do the dirty work. But if he's called on to act there is no one more cool, calculating and clever. In these dramatisations, BBC Radio 4 brings all Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels together in one thrilling series. In The Talented Mr Ripley, Tom makes a bid for...
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Author: Oscar Wilde
Format: Online
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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Author: Evelyn Waugh
Format: Online
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Nathaniel Parker
Duration 4h 42m
Evelyn Waugh's acidly funny and daring satire, Vile Bodies reveals the darkness and vulnerability that lurks beneath the glittering surface of the high life. In the years following the First World War a new generation emerges, wistful and vulnerable beneath the glitter. The Bright Young Things of twenties' Mayfair, with their paradoxical mix of inn...
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Author: E M Forster
Format: Online
Author E M Forster
Narrator Juliet Stevenson
Duration 5h 15m
Lucy Honeychurch, accompanied by her vigilant guardian, Charlotte Bartlett, makes her first foray into the world, touring Italy and discovering a country very different to the English countryside she was brought up in. Torn between two lovers, she has to make a decision that will transform her from a girl to a woman. A talented pianist with a good...
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Author: E M Forster
Format: Online
Author E M Forster
Narrator Meera Syal
Duration 5h 3m
Adela Quested travels to India with her chaperone Mrs Moore, on the premise of deciding whether to marry Mrs Moore's son Ronny Heaslop, the city magistrate. Finding her India very disappointingly English, Adela jumps at the chance the two women are given to travel to the distant Marabar caves with Aziz, a charismatic young Indian Doctor. When Adela...
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Author: Alice Walker
Format: Online
Author Alice Walker
Narrator Brigitte Bennett
Duration 7h 42m
Set in the deep American South between the wars, this is the tale of Celie, a young black girl born into poverty and segregation. Raped repeatedly by the man she calls 'father', she has two children taken away from her, is separated from her beloved sister Nettie, and is trapped into an ugly marriage. But then she meets the glamorous Shug Avery, si...
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Author: Evelyn Waugh
Format: Online
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Various
Duration 3h 47m
A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Evelyn Waugh's tragi-comic novel of the lives and loves of the English aristocracy. The action moves between 1944 and 1923, to tell the story of Charles Ryder and his infatuation with the decadent Sebastian Flyte.
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Author: Daphne Du Maurier
Format: Online
Author Daphne Du Maurier
Narrator Various
Duration 56m
Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Daphne du Maurier's classic tale of horror. The idea for this famous story came to du Maurier one day when she was walking across to Menabilly Barton farm from the house. She saw a farmer busily ploughing a field whilst above him the seagulls were diving and wheeling. She developed an idea about the birds becoming...
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