Our narrator stays on a Mediterranean island much longer than he intended to for a number of reasons. One reason is to prove his mother and his girlfriend wrong, who both say that to decamp to an island for a whole winter to write a novel is melodramatic and rather a clich‚. Most nights, to abate loneliness and pass the time, he talks to the...

One of the Runagates Club stories, where members of a dinner club take it in turns to relate a tale to the other guests. A man is shipwrecked on a desert island in the Archipelago. He has heard that either he will find nothing to eat or else he will be eaten by the local savages. Either way things don't look too promising. He is, in fact, captured...

Published in 1899, in "Grey Weather", a collection of short stories and poems by the author, Buchan.

Soames Forsyte's great desire to own things even extends to his captivating wife, Irene. Jealous of her friendships with others, he concocts a plan to move her away to the countryside, where he might come to own her completely. Resisting his bitter intentions, she falls for architect Philip Bossiney, who is unfortunately engaged to her best friend...

The second part of John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga, chronicling the downfall of an upper middle class family in the turbulent period of social change at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries. This book tells of the struggle between Soames and his beautiful wife Irene, who leaves him but cannot persuade him to grant a divorce. While Soa...

When Bill Masen leaves hospital and goes into the centre of London, he finds that looting is rife as people are grabbing anything from the shelves of shops that they think they might find useful - mainly food. While surveying the scene he comes across an attractive young woman who also wasn't blinded in the comet shower, Josella. Together they retu...

Gulliver's Travels has been in print since its first publication in 1726, due to its popularity with young and old alike. As well as a wildly imaginative tale of travel and adventure, it is a comment on human nature and an overblown explorer's story, rich in symbolism and humour. Lemuel Gulliver, an English surgeon, sets sail on expeditions to extr...

After a six-year hiatus, a man and a woman who used to be lovers or close friends meet in a caf‚. An insightful study of relationships and nostalgic ideals, this story also looks at the difference money, or the lack of it, can make, especially if one half of a couple (romantic or otherwise) is financially better off than the other.

Loretta, Mary, Anne and Sylvia are four young women who belong to a sisterhood composed of superior women, who for various reasons, determine to remain single and devote themselves to earnest work. They, do not rush into marriage recklessly like other young girls, who fear being single and perhaps penniless or uncared for. They enjoy their liberty...

Nunzia's sister keeps birds in a cage outside the bedroom that they share. Nunzia herself cares not at first for the birds, but all the same keeps her own secret locked in a cage inside her. What is the secret that makes the bird inside her flutter around her chest excitedly? And why does her secret result in her half-starving her family with doubt...

This story of obsession and loss is set in the thespian world. When a figure from the past comes back to retrieve something he lost, a pair of lovers are thrown into turmoil. The strange and powerful person has a story to tell.but what will the ending be?

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.

Set in the gold and quartz-mining community, this queer and amusing little vignette explains why Dick Baker's cat, who always had such a propensity for finding the premium gold-panning plots, takes strongly against quartz mining and never is to be swayed otherwise. A sweet, funny and well-written short, that showcases Twain's wit and skill brillian...

Our narrator tells the sad tale of her marriage, marred by a husband who breaks her heart spending his money in disreputable establishments, while she, Barbara, slowly withers away. Her beauty fading, she moves inevitably closer towards her only form of escape, her death. A melancholy and tragic tale, masterfully told.

Victor Frankenstein decides to build a `man' from assembled body parts stolen from corpses. He becomes obsessed with his 'project' and believes that he is pioneering scientific discovery - without considering the potential consequences. What results, of course, is a `monster', who looks grotesque and frightens any living soul who ever comes into co...

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, one of the oldest and largest investment banks in the world, with its headquarters in New York, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was the largest bankruptcy filed in US history and sent the already unstable global financial markets into an uncontrollable tailspin. Based on insider interviews, thi...

In this episode taken from the BBC Radio 4 series, Melvyn Bragg visits Merthyr Tydfil to look at the plight of the miners in the Depression. The industrial communities of South Wales, built first on iron smelting in the 18th century, and coal in the 19th, had known great prosperity. Merthyr Tydfil was once the largest town in Wales, and in 1914, 25...

Visiting the Hebridean island of Mull today, it's not long before someone mentions the steep decline in population that the Scottish highlands and islands suffered 150 to 200 years ago. And it was a depopulation that the crofters were powerless to do anything about-in a phrase that sounds a knell almost as chilling as today's 'ethnic cleansing', th...

Melvyn Bragg looks at how English has evolved over 1,000 years, looking at the disappearance of old dialects like that of Cumbria, and how it has been enriched by foreign languages, from Latin, Old French, and then dozens more as conquest, trade and immigration played their part in recent centuries.

Dr Heidigger's Experiment is a short story by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, about a scientist who claims to have been sent water from the Fountain of Youth. He calls together his old friends and invites them to taste the waters. The tale explores the transience of youth, and the desires that many have but few acknowledge.

This ghostly story by O.Henry tells the tale of Danny, on his first day away from home, in the 'Big City'. Looking around his new apartment, he begins to discover hints of who the previous occupant could have been. This story about beauty, warmth, loneliness and regret will touch the heart of any who read it.