Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in World Literature

Sir John Betjeman’s unique relationship with the BBC left a lasting legacy of poetry, readings and performances. A First Class Collection features a selection of some of his most memorable and best-loved poetry. Betjeman was one of the best-known and loved Poet Laureates and over a hundred...

Tolstoy's story of one woman's fate is brought powerfully to life in this BBC Radio full-cast dramatisation starring Teresa Gallagher and Toby Stephens. Anna Karenina enjoys a privileged and aristrocratic lifestyle as the wife of influential government official Alexy Karenin. Yet their ten-year...

From Little Nell to Miss Havisham, Dickens’ Women tells the story of Charles Dickens’ life through his beloved characters. Co-written and performed by Miriam Margolyes, best known for her role as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films, this one-women show is a celebration of her...

Since its debut in 1998, In Our Time has amassed a dedicated following of more than 2 million listeners. Hosted by Melvyn Bragg, with a panel of guest experts, each show features a plethora of fascinating facts and inspirational discourse on topics ranging from democracy to dark matter. This specially curated collection celebrates the rich diversity of poetry in English, focusing on 25 major works and writers from the mediaeval era to the 20th Century.

One of Britain's leading contemporary playwrights, Howard Brenton is well known for his controversial state-of-the-nation plays, dark comedies and powerful political satires. He has written over 50 works for the theatre and numerous screenplays, including 13 episodes of the hit TV series Spooks. Included here are some of his most acclaimed dramas, including the award-winning Pravda, co-written with David Hare.

Alfred Lord Tennyson is one of Britain’s greatest and most popular poets. Even during his lifetime, he was considered a national institution: Queen Victoria appointed him Poet Laureate in 1850, a position he held for 42 years, and in 1884 he became the first writer to be granted a baronetcy. In a long and fruitful career, he penned numerous classic works, and this BBC Radio collection showcases some of the very best. We begin with two of his masterpieces, dramatised by award-winning poet Michael Symmons Roberts.

Four gripping historical dramas centred around key figures who shaped America in the 20th century. Award-winning writer Mike Walker has created many acclaimed docudramas and historical dramas for Radio 4, including The Stuarts, Tsar, Caesar! and Plantagenet. This collection includes four nuanced dramas featuring a trio of controversial men who stamped their mark on American history: J Edgar Hoover, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Baines Nixon. Among the casts are William Hootkins, Bob Sherman, Lorelei King, Nathan Osgood and Alex Lanipekun.

When psychologist Kris Kelvin arrives at the scientific research station hovering high above the surface of Solaris, he finds the place deserted except for two scientists, who have been driven mad by some unknown horror. The researchers had been trying to investigate the ocean planet, and probe...

Madame Ranyevskaya and her daughter Anya have returned home from Paris to discover that their family estate – which includes their beloved cherry orchard – has to be sold to cover the family’s debts. They believe a miracle can save their orchard. But will their stubborn pride and fond...

'For myself/ I knew as soon as I could read and write/ That I must be a poet. Even today,/ When all the way from Cambridge comes a wind/ To blow the lamps out every time they're lit/ I know that I must light mine up again.' From his earliest boyhood memories of Highgate and Archibald, his old...

When the hot-headed Professor Challenger claims that extinct species of animals are still to be found living on an isolated Amazonian plateau, Dr Summerlee, Lord John Roxton and intrepid reporter Edward Malone find themselves committed to a journey of a lifetime. Arriving in the Amazon, they...

Sir Terence Rattigan was one of Britain's greatest playwrights, renowned for his well-crafted dramas of upper-class manners and repressed sexuality. He was hugely popular throughout the 1940s and early '50s, and had the rare distinction of having plays running in three West End theatres simultaneously. Having fallen out of fashion in the '60s, his work is now enjoying a huge revival. Included here are some of his most esteemed plays, adapted for radio and brought together in chronological order in one statement collection.

John Singer is a lonely deaf-mute who comes to stay as a lodger in Mick's house. No-one knows where he's from. A disparate group of people who live in the town are drawn towards Singer's kind, sympathetic nature: the owner of the café where Singer eats every day, an angry socialist drunkard, a frustrated Black doctor. Each pours their heart out to Singer, their silent confidant. And he in turn changes their disenchanted lives in ways the could never imagine.

In this BBC full-cast production, King Lear tests his three daughters' love, with disastrous consequences. Some of the most stirring scenes Shakespeare ever wrote resonate powerfully in this dramatic radio production. Tortured madness, pure evil, and the fatal struggle for power grip the...

Bill Masen wakes in his hospital bed, eyes bandaged. Something is wrong: it’s unusually quiet and no one has come to his room. When he removes his bandages he finds a world that has changed utterly. Most of the population are completely blind – only those who didn’t watch the night sky can...

Man and Superman was the first drama to be broadcast on the BBC's Third Programme on October 1st, 1946. To celebrate Radio 3's 50th anniversary, the play was directed by Sir Peter Hall, and preserved for all time in this lush audio dramatisation. 'A comedy and a philosophy', Man and Superman is...

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' by poet and writer Lavinia Greenlaw. One of the great works of English literature, this powerful, compelling story explores love from its first tentative beginnings through to passionate sensuality and eventual tragic...

From 1938 to 1969 the fictional crime novelist and detective Paul Temple, together with his Fleet Street journalist wife Steve, solved case after case in one of BBC radio’s most popular series. When young drama student Mary Dreisler is found murdered in her flat, her father instantly sends...

Three of the ever-popular Sheridan’s finest plays Born in Dublin in 1751, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was a theatre impresario, statesman and the most celebrated playwright of his time. His brilliantly witty comedies of manners have become part of the literary canon, and are frequently performed...

Full-cast radio adaptations of two classic mysteries by the writer of The Phantom of the Opera Gaston Leroux was one of the pioneers of the detective story, alongside Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe. Best known for The Phantom of the Opera, he also wrote a series of crime novels featuring...