Showing results by narrator "Carole Boyd" in All Categories

On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination.

Cleopatra’s palace shimmered with onyx and gold but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Though her life spanned fewer than 40 years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Stacy Schiff boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order, a generation before the birth of Christ.

Summer 1939 and five cousins gather at the house with the camomile lawn for what, for many of them, will be the last summer of their youth.

Full-cast adaptations of three of Winifred Holtby’s best-known novels, plus short stories and bonus programmes about the author: Winifred Holtby was an acclaimed novelist, journalist, feminist and social reformer. Her work encompasses six novels, two short story collections, a play and the first critical study of Virginia Woolf, but she is best known for her posthumously published masterpiece South Riding, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Award. She died in 1935, aged just 37.

In June 1940 France fell to the Nazis. The effects of this momentous event on the lives of ordinary Parisians and the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation are brilliantly explored in Irène Némirovsky’s gripping and heartbreaking novel. Némirovsky herself was a tragic victim of the Nazi regime but she left behind her this exceptional masterpiece. In Suite Française she conjures up a vivid cast of wonderful characters who find themselves thrown together in ways they never expected.

When Lily Elliott's father dies she loses everything - not just a beloved protector and his wonderful ship the Lily-Jane, but also the way of life she has always known. As her mother sinks into a dream-world and the money which had always seemed sufficient turns out to have been mostly debts, Lily watches, bewildered, as destitution comes ever closer for the Elliott women and their loyal housekeeper. Then two rescuers appear.

A stranger enters the inner sanctum of the Ashby family posing as Patrick Ashby, the heir to the family’s sizeable fortune. The stranger, Brat Farrar, has been carefully coached on Patrick’s mannerisms, appearance and every significant detail of Patrick’s early life, up to his 13th year when he disappeared and was thought to have drowned himself.

Stephen Hawking is one of the most remarkable figures of our time, a Cambridge genius who has earned international celebrity as a brilliant theoretical physicist and become an inspiration and revelation to those who have witnessed his courageous triumph over disability. This is Hawking's life story by Kitty Ferguson, who has had special help from Hawking himself and his close associates and who has a gift for translating the language of theoretical physics for non-scientists.

Marion Sharpe and her mother seem an unlikely duo to be found on the wrong side of the law. Quiet and ordinary, they have led a peaceful and unremarkable life at their country home, The Franchise. Unremarkable that is, until the police turn up with a demure young woman on their doorstep.Not only does Betty Kane accuse them of kidnap and abuse, she can back up her claim with a detailed description of the attic room in which she was kept, right down to the crack in its round window.

Tempestuous Briar Macauley's single-minded stubbornness to prove to the world that she is the equal to any man leads her into so many disastrous circumstances that her parents despair of ever making a lady of her. Encouraged by her equally disreputable friends, the only man who can stand up to her untamed spirit is Will Lucas of Browhead Farm whose temper matches her own.

Angie is 18 years old, and, with the help of a mini skirt, a pair of false eyelashes and a tube of pale pink lipstick, has made herself into a beauty. She's living in London in the Swinging Sixties, and knows she's in the best city in the world at the best possible time. She's got that world at her pretty, white-booted feet as she dances the night away with every handsome bloke on the booming, strobe-lit floor of the Canvas Club.

The narrator is a young governess, sent off to a country house to take charge of two orphaned children. She finds a pleasant house and a comfortable housekeeper, while the children are beautiful and charming. But she soon begins to feel the presence of intense evil.

One of the most passionate novels of its time, Jane Eyre derives its strength from the honesty and directness of its heroine. The first person narrative involves us right from the start, letting us into Jane’s thoughts as she matures from rebellious child to passionate woman. Notice how social snobbery is condemned – particularly in the character of Aunt Reed and the conditions at Lowood ‘Orphans Asylum’.

Rose Beechworth is mistress of a charming country house - her own, left to her by her wealthy father. In the summer of 1914, Alice Weatherly turns Rose's world upside down. The young heiress longs to kiss Captain Charlie Summers goodbye and so she takes Rose to Liverpool's Lime Street station and into the heart of Charlie's brother Harry.

Charlotte Drummond knows she has a duty to obey her father. Girls, especially well-bred upper-class ones, are expected to be submissive to the men in their lives. But Charlotte's father is a cruel man, viciously beating her and her brothers for the slightest reason. He even wants to marry her off, at just sixteen years old; to a man she does not love. Lion-hearted Charlotte wants to defy him but to protect her brothers from his fury she agrees to become the wife of Brooke Armstrong.

It’s 2013, and 80-year-old Frances (has-been writer) is sitting on the stairs of No.3 Chalcot Crescent, Primrose Hill, listening to the debt collectors pounding on her front door. From this house she’s witnessed five decades of world history. While she waits for the bailiffs to give up and leave, Frances writes. She writes about the boyfriends she borrowed and the husband she stole from Fay, about her daughters and their children. The problem is that fact and fiction are blurring in Frances’s mind.

Vibrant and headstrong, Ally Pearce loves working on the Edith, her family's narrow boat, proving she's the equal of any man on the Leeds to Liverpool canal. Betsy, delicate, calculating and sensuously beautiful, wants only to become a 'lady' - and will use the most unladylike means to become one. When Dr. Tom Hartley enters the sisters' lives after a tragic accident both are attracted to him - but for very different reasons.

When Elizabeth Price engages private detective Roland ‘Orlando’ Gibbons to find out the truth about her husband’s suspected affair, she unwittingly sets off a chain of correspondence that reunites four formerly close-knit couples. They all live just a few suburban streets away from each other, they are all still married, so how – and why – did they become so estranged? In a series of letters, each protagonist is far more self-revealing than they would ever be in person.

When beautiful Tessa Harrison and her twin cousins take over their parents' Lancashire cotton mill, their luxurious upbringing has left them unprepared for their new responsibilities. For Tessa, there is an added but forbidden attraction at the mill. Foreman Will Broadbent, with his genuine understanding of the business and its workers, could not be more different from the dashing cousins. Yet, like the twins, he is hopelessly in love with this untameable girl.

Tomboy Grace Tooley meets Rupert Bradley when her eldest brother's sudden death forces her to take on burdens beyond her years. From then on, Grace gives her heart to her brother's wealthy friend, but he sees her as a mere girl and marries a woman from his own station in life. They meet again when the Great War has changed them both. Grace has suffered loss and pain and emerged as a strong, passionate woman.