Showing results by narrator "Frances Barber" in All Categories

This is the story of Shane and Timothy Spall and their Dutch barge, The Princess Matilda. After a summer on the Thames they head out to sea with only a road atlas and a vast amount of ignorance - and it is absolutely terrifying! A decade before, Tim had been diagnosed with acute leukaemia and was given only days to live. Shocked at how life can pass you by, they decided that if and when Tim got better, they would buy a boat. The Spalls' adventures have already been the subject of two BBC4 series.

23 November, 1963. It is the day after John F. Kennedy's assassination - and the faces of the dead are everywhere. PC Reg Cranfield sees his late father in the mists along Totter's Lane. Reporter Mae Callon sees her grandmother in a coffee stain on her desk. FBI Special Agent Warren Skeet finds...

The obituaries for Gerald Candless were respectful. He had been, after all, an admired and popular writer, and his sudden death at his home in Devon was a loss to literature as well as to his family and friends. The trouble was, as his daughter Sarah soon discovered, that it seemed that her father had taken on a different identity that he wasn't Gerald Candless at all. But if he wasn't Gerald Candless, who was he?

In this BBC full-cast production of Antony and Cleopatra, the soldier and noble prince Mark Antony's enthralment with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra is proving controversial. Will the tumultuous relationship ultimately end in tragedy? Antony and Cleopatra is an intense love story, exploring the...

The abridged, downloadable audiobook edition of How to Be Good, Nick Hornby's No.1 bestseller in the UK and Ireland. Read by the actress Frances Barber. According to her own complex moral calculations, Katie Carr has earned her affair. She's a doctor, after all, and doctors are decent people...

Abandoned at birth, little Mercy Hanley shows a fierce determination few others can match. Her inner fire burns brightly, even in the harsh conditions of turn-of-the-century Birmingham. For behind Mercy's pale and haunting face, there is a mind of steel, as her harsh foster mother, Mrs Gaskin...

Doctor Elehri Mussurana has spent a lifetime on her work. She's guarded her pet project close to her chest, letting only one person share her secret - her husband and lab partner Ernst Wharner. As their experiment reaches its final, glorious fruition, they watch in awe as sparks fly in a sealed...

Christmas is the season of good cheer and harmony among men, but things are not working out quite that way in the Bunker household. As a motley collection of friends and relatives fill the house with their own wishes, dreams and attitudes, the stage is set for seasonal disharmony and romantic...

Doug Lucie's satirical sequel to 'Hitched' revisits the bride and groom, Emma and Richard, two years after their big day. The honeymoon is well and truly over and wedded bliss hasn't turned out to be, well, blissful. With their relationship at crisis point, Emma returns from America with her...

Padua holds many suitors for the hand of fair Bianca, but Bianca may not be married until her spinster sister, Kate, is wed. Could any man be rash enough to take on Kate? The witty adventurer Petruchio undertakes the task. While he sets about transforming Kate from foul-tempered termagant to loving wife, young Lucentio and his clever servant, Tranio, plot to win Bianca.

When Jonny went missing everything changed. His mother's heart is full of terror and sadness instead of joy. His father's study overflows with newspaper cuttings and profiles on missing people instead of the academic texts that were there before. His sister, once carefree, now carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. His bedroom at home remains untouched and ready for his return. The hands on the clock continue to turn and yet Jonny hasn't returned. Where is he?

A collection of comedies and dramas about modern women’s lives and loves, starring Jenny Eclair Jenny Eclair is one of Britain’s most-loved stand-up comedians, and the first woman to win the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe. She has written several acclaimed books, including the Sunday...

Ukrainian-born humorist, dramatist and novelist Nikolai Gogol is widely believed to have led the realist revolution in Russian literature. His surreal, absurdist satires liberated comedy from its sentimental traditions and influenced writers both within Russia and worldwide, among them Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka and Flannery O’Connor.

In The Dalek Generation, by Nicholas Briggs, the Doctor is determined to find out the truth about Sunlight 349, one of the apparently benevolent Dalek Foundation worlds. In Shroud of Sorrow, by Tommy Donbavand, it’s the day after John F Kennedy’s assassination, and the Doctor and Clara discover that the faces of the dead are everywhere.

Sir Lenny Henry has had a long and successful career as a comedian, impressionist, actor and presenter. Having starred in several plays in the West End and on radio, he was inspired to complete an MA in screenwriting and in 2011 penned his first radio drama, Corrinne Come Back and Gone, which opens this collection. He continued his writing career with three more Radio 4 plays and nine episodes of his comic monologue series Lenny Henry’s Rogues Gallery. Collected here for the first time, listen to these poignant and humorous original dramas.

A wise and hilarious novel from the bestselling author of Funny Girl, High Fidelity, and About a Boy. A brutally truthful, compassionate novel about the heart, mind, and soul of a woman who, confronted by her husband’s sudden and extreme spiritual conversion, is forced to learn “how to be...

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, known as Colette, was a French author and woman of letters. She was also a mime, actress, and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaking world for her 1944 novella Gigi, which was the basis for the 1958 film and the 1973 stage production of the same name. Gigi became a celebrated stage musical and film; the stage production made a star of Audrey Hepburn, who was personally chosen by Colette for the role, and a dramatized adaptation is the centrepiece of this collection.