Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in Biographies & Memoirs

What was life like for Shakespeare's first audiences? In a time of political and religious unrest and economic expansion, how did Elizabethan play-goers make sense of their changing world? What did the plays mean to the public when they were first performed? In this fascinating series, Neil...

In Blind Man's Bete Noire, Peter White explores some of the things which annoy him most about his blindness. The four programmes include The Countryside, Holidays, Being Introduced to Other Blind People and Going Slowly. Produced by Cheryl Gabriel...

BBC Radio 4 celebrates the remarkable life of Humphrey Lyttelton, jazz genius, radio legend and master of the breathtaking double entendre, as friends and admirers recall Humph’s highlights as chairman of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Presented by Stephen Fry, this programme features clips...

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Jack Rosenthal’s award-winning television play, starring Hugo Raine. At the tender age of thirteen Eliot Green is about to become a man - in the Jewish religion at least. In synagogue, in front of the whole congregation, he will read and sing in...

Two BBC Radio programmes exploring President John F. Kennedy's shocking assassination on 22 November 1963. In Something Is Terribly Wrong, first broadcast in 2003, Alan Thompson charts the confusion and disbelief after the assassination. He returns to key sites in Dallas, and talks to...

The humorous and moving tale of Miss Shepherd, an eccentric old lady who, by a bizarre series of twists and turns, lived in the author’s garden for many years. Alan Bennett reads his own acclaimed work, recently adapted as a West End smash hit starring Maggie Smith as the eccentric old lady...

Alistair Cooke looks back on a rich and varied life, one which has taken him across the ocean but never far away from the BBC. Drawing on archive recordings, this selection includes interviews from radio and television, Cooke's Letter From America, and a speech made to the Royal Television...

A special compilation of highlights from cuddly Ken’s television and radio shows. Kenny Everett was one of radio’s great innovators, the funniest DJ of our time and a one-off whose madcap comedy burst the boundaries of broadcasting. Introduced and presented by Barry Cryer, this recording...

Terry Wogan is one of Britain’s best-loved radio and television celebrities. Witty, charming and relaxed: he has undoubtedly captured the nation’s heart. Here, Terry tells his life story from his beginnings as a young Limerick boy to his incredible success as an enduring celebrity with shows...

This compilation brings together wonderful highlights of Kenneth Williams’ career. For more than 30 years, Kenneth Williams kept the nation in stitches with his outrageous gallery of comic creations and an effortlessly brilliant barrage of repartee and innuendo on radio and television. In...

Twelve editions of the groundbreaking BBC Radio 4 interview series presented by Dr Anthony Clare. A master of incisive interrogation, Dr Anthony Clare became renowned for In the Psychiatrist's Chair. From 1982 until 2001 he conducted in-depth interviews with prominent people from different walks...

Includes the BBC Radio 4 serialisation of ‘Margrave of the Marshes’, John Peel’s part-written autobiography completed by his wife, Sheila Ravenscroft and read by Michael Angelis and Carolyn Pickles. John Peel was one such, whose contribution to British culture is undeniable. His 40-year...

Northern Ireland was a very dark place in the 1980s. A hunger strike was looming, street violence and tit for tat murders were an everyday occurrence, but in a small corner of West Belfast something extraordinary was happening. In a factory in Dunmurry a unique new sports car was being built, a...

Meet Anne Lister, the 18th-century landowner, industrialist, explorer, lesbian and feminist icon. This is her story.... Anne was different from society’s expectations of a woman at the time: she not only did not wish to marry, but she also did not want to conform. Anne was interested only in women and had ‘marriage’ ceremonies with Mariana Lawton and later Ann Walker. She spent a great deal of time studying, managed her own estates, sought business opportunities, travelled widely and climbed mountains.

Twenty-four sensational docu-dramas based on real-life historical murder cases, presented by Nick Ross. In these four series, Nick Ross introduces two dozen true tales of murder from days gone by - complete with gory details. As he recounts infamous crimes from the 1900s to the 1960s, he transports us to a time when police cars had bells and the men from the Yard wore Trilby hats.

Lenny Kravitz, a lifelong fan of Curtis Mayfield, celebrates his life and musical achievements in this four-part series. Curtis was a prolific songwriter whose career was cut short following a tragic accident in 1990. He died in 1999, aged only 57. His songs influenced millions and he was an...

Angela Carter's relationship with radio began with an accidental sound effect. She went on to write two docu-dramas, Come Unto These Yellow Sands (about the Victorian painter Richard Dadd) and A Self-Made Man (about Edwardian novelist Ronald Firbank) and re-worked two of her short stories into...

With recollections from childhood to the present, written and recorded for BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, Shirley Williams describes her life as one of Britain's foremost political women this century. She describes her early life with her pioneering pacifist mother, Vera Brittain; her father...

This series, broadcast on Radio 4, is an assessment of the Bible's cultural, political, moral, social and personal impact, and a personal odyssey for John McCarthy as he questions the chapters he read during his time in captivity and discusses the meaning of truth and what it means to be human...

A celebration of one hundred years of outstanding comic performers from music hall, radio and television. Researched, compiled and presented by Russell Davies, the collection includes a wide range of personalities, from the Crazy Gang to John Cleese and from Tallulah Bankhead to Victoria Wood...