Samuel Beckett, one of the great avant-garde Irish dramatists and writers of the second half of the twentieth century, was born on 13 April 1906. He died in 1989. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. His centenary will be celebrated throughout 2006 with performances of his major plays, but the most popular of them all will be, without dou...

A tender love story, a serpentine villainess, a glittering setting in London society and a shower of Wildean witticisms are only a few of the reasons this play has enjoyed hugely successful revivals in London and New York. This 1895 drama also seems eerily prescient, as it explores the plight of a promising young politician, desperate to hide a sec...

Charlotte Keatley's powerful, poignant drama follows four generations of mothers and daughters through the sweeping societal changes of the 20th century'A landmark play, the theatrical equivalent of breaking the four-minute mile' GuardianWritten in 1985, this groundbreaking play premiered at Contact Theatre, Manchester, in 1987. It subsequently won...

A lord, his wife, her admirer and an infamous blackmailer converge in the irreverent satire that launched Wilde’s succession of classic social comedies. This delicious comic feast serves up a scandal about good girls, bad husbands and hilarious hypocrisy - utterly contemporary and divinely funny.

Four of Thornton Wilder's most acclaimed works, adapted for BBC Radio - plus bonus material exploring his life and careerThornton Wilder is one of America's most important literary figures. He won the Pulitzer Prize three times - for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth - and is the only person to be...

Finalist: Audio Publishers Association Audie Ward, Best Theatrical Production World War II is over and a family, mourning a son missing in action, plants a memorial tree and tries to go with their lives. A storm blows down the tree and a devastating family secret is uprooted, setting the characters on a terrifying journey towards truth.

Nine classic plays from the award-winning American dramatist, plus a selection of his poetryEugene O'Neill's revolutionary 20th century dramas changed the direction of American theatre, introducing European realism and experimental techniques to the US stage. He wrote more than 50 plays, portraying characters on the margins of society and tackling...

Anne-Marie Duff stars as Blanche DuBois in BBC Radio 3's landmark production of Tennessee Williams' masterpieceTennessee Williams's iconic play tells the story of a catastrophic confrontation between fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski.Blanche DuBois arrives unexpectedly on the doorstep of her sist...

When a young woman is offered the choice ofsaving a man's life at the price of her own chastity,what should she do? The political and moral corruption of Vienna has driven Duke Vincentio into hiding while his deputy governor, Angelo is left to revive the old discipline of civic authority. Angelos First act is to imprison Claudio, a young nobleman...

Paterson Joseph, John Hurt, Lesley Manville and Harriet Walter are among the stellar cast of this landmark BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Leo Tolstoy's epic saga. 'Tolstoy's imagined world is recreated on air brilliantly by the extraordinary cast' The Spectator One of the greatest novels of all time, War and Peace explores historical, social, ethical...

Michael Kitchen stars as John Jarndyce in a BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Dickens’ classic tale of London and the law.

Brought to you by Penguin.From the world of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials - now a major critically acclaimed BBC series.She had asked: What is he? A friend or an enemy?The alethiometer answered: He is a murderer.When she saw the answer, she relaxed at once.Lyra finds herself in a shimmering, haunted otherworld - Cittàgazze, where soul-...

Brought to you by Penguin.Now a major BBC series'Without this child, we shall all die.'Lyra Belacqua lives half-wild and carefree among the scholars of Jordan College, with her daemon, Pantalaimon, always by her side.But the arrival of her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, draws her to the heart of a terrible struggle - a struggle born of stolen childre...

Brought to you by Penguin.From the world of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials - now a major critically acclaimed BBC series.'We're going to the land of the dead and we're going to come back.'Will and Lyra, whose fates are bound together by powers beyond their own worlds, have been violently separated.But they must find each other, for ahead of th...

Seven BBC radio full-cast productions of Noël Coward's classic plays – plus bonus material including a profile of Coward and extracts from his diariesRenowned for his wit, style and sophistication, Noël Coward was one of the greatest playwrights of the twentieth century. His plays, set in the glittering world of high society in whic...

It's the middle of the high-flying, go-getting 80's in Magge Thatcher's England and Marlene finally has something to celebrate - she's just been made Managing Director of Top Girls Employment Agency. But with no friends to speak of, and a past she'd just as soon forget, the guests at Marlene's party are a collection of famous women from history. So...

Terence Alexander stars in these two classic crime dramas, adapted from the novels of John CreaseyMeet The Honourable Richard Rollison - a.k.a the Toff. A debonair aristocrat and ace amateur sleuth, he's the scourge of London's criminal underworld: sometimes working alone, sometimes hand-in-glove with the police. But wherever he goes, he leaves his...

Ken Narasaki's adaptation of the novel by Japanese-American author John Okada is set during the aftermath of the U.S. government's incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent during World War II, and the resettlement of Japanese Americans to the West Coast. In the play, Ichiro returns to Seattle, where he struggles to transition into post-w...

Three vintage crime serials, adapted from John Creasey's hugely popular thrillersRoger West is a home-loving, hard-hitting and very human policeman. Nicknamed 'Handsome' West, he's more than just a pretty face - he's also Scotland Yard's youngest, smartest detective and a crime-solving supremo. Six of his adventures were dramatised for radio betwee...

Brought to you by Penguin. Four Hundred Souls is an epoch-defining history of African America, the first to appear in a generation, told by ninety leading Black voices.The story begins with the arrival of twenty Ndongo people on the shores of the first British colony in mainland America in 1619, the year before the arrival of the Mayflower. In eigh...

All five series of the BBC Radio 4 crime drama featuring Detective Superintendent Julie Enfield, starring Imelda StauntonDogged DSI Julie Enfield probes eight gruesome cases in these dark, atmospheric radio dramas.Terminus finds her investigating the 'Lucky Charm' murders, as she searches for an elusive serial killer who haunts the railway station....