Showing results for "bbc" in Women's Fiction

A light-hearted comedy drama about a mother, daughter and grandmother living together under one roof – based on the stories by Guardian columnist Michele Hanson What does it feel like to be middle-aged? For Gillian it feels like being twenty-seven in your own head, sixty-five in the mirror...

BBC Radio dramatisations of some of Muriel Spark’s best works, plus bonus episode of The Essay: All Miss Brodie’s Girls Muriel Spark was one of Scotland’s brightest and most original literary talents. In a career spanning over 60 years, she published over 20 novels, as well as essays...

Barbara Pym is one of the 20th-century's wittiest, and most underrated, novelists. Her perceptive comedies of manners, centred around the domestic lives and loves of unassuming middle-class Englishwomen, won her many devoted readers and saw her hailed as a modern-day Jane Austen. Yet she spent 15 years out of print in the 1960s and '70s, until Philip Larkin championed her work in the Times Literary Supplement. Her seventh novel was subsequently shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and writers from Jilly Cooper to Alexander McCall Smith continue to laud her talent today.

Elizabeth Gaskell was one of Victorian England's pre-eminent female novelists. Admired by Charles Dickens, who described her as his 'dear Scheherazade', she mingled storytelling and social realism to superb effect in her highly acclaimed fiction. This comprehensive collection comprises dramas and readings of her finest works and some lesser-known pieces.

Mary Webb’s award-winning novel adapted for radio with a full cast, plus a dramatised biography of the celebrated author Novelist and poet Mary Webb is as closely associated with Shropshire as Thomas Hardy with Dorset and the Brontës with Yorkshire. She wrote six books set against the...

From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, The Neapolitan Novels is an exploration of the friendship between Lila and Lena, two bright young girls who grew up in the tough, rough streets of postwar Naples. This is no normal friendship; it's a friendship that loves, hurts, supports and destroys - and yet it is one that lasts a lifetime. These four full-cast BBC adaptations bring the streets of Naples vividly to life.

The eldest of the notorious Mitford sisters, Nancy Mitford was renowned for her comic novels of upper-class life. An aristocrat and socialite, she mingled with the 'Bright Young Things' in interwar London, and went on to satirise their foibles in razor-sharp, wickedly funny prose. Collected here are adaptations of her two best sellers, the semi-autobiographical The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, her delightful biography of Louis XV's chief mistress, and a pair of fascinating programmes exploring her own unconventional life.

*THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 2024* 'Gorgeous! Warm and funny and brimming with tenderness and heart' GRAHAM NORTON 'Full of Sara Cox's natural warmth and wit' PRIMA 'Relatable, observant and funny' WOMAN & HOME Josie's life is fine. Absolutely, completely fine. Nice husband, brilliant...

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Marian Keye's heartbreaking stunner of a novel, The Mystery of Mercy Close, read by the actress Niamh Daly. Helen Walsh doesn't believe in fear - it's just a thing invented by men to get all the money and good jobs - and yet she's sinking. Her...

A BBC TWO BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK (BOOKER PRIZE GEMS) London 1862. Sue Trinder, orphaned at birth, grows up among petty thieves - fingersmiths - under the rough but loving care of Mrs Sucksby and her 'family'. But from the moment she draws breath, Sue's fate is linked to that of...

Irene Bruce spends her days pulling pints in Millport, the only town on the Isle of Cumbrae, a few miles off the west coast of Scotland. Frustrated and going nowhere fast, she yearns to escape to the mainland for a better life - or at least a bit of fun. Just over the water, there are clubs, cinemas and discos, so why is she stuck at home with tea, Scrabble and her boring sister Moira?

Brought to you by Penguin. The Sunday Times bestselling novel, soon to be a major series on BBC One and BBC iPlayer starring Keeley Hawes in 2025. Throughout her lifetime, Jane Austen wrote countless letters to her sister. But why did Cassandra burn them all? 1840: twenty three years after the...

A BBC TWO BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK (BOOKER PRIZE GEMS) 'Molly Keane is a mistress of wicked comedy' VOGUE 'She was . . . marvellous' GUARDIAN 'Dark, complex, engaging . . . a wonderful tour de force' MARIAN KEYES I do know how to behave - believe me, because I know. I have always known...

Bloomsbury presents Falling Animals by Sheila Armstrong, read by Aoife McMahon. *A BBC 2 BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2024* ‘Vivid, sensuous ... A subtle tale of loss, loneliness and disconnection’ PAUL LYNCH, IRISH INDEPENDENT ‘Lush, lyrical...

Fifteen highly original and darkly unsettling supernatural stories, performed by some of Britain's finest actresses 'This is what we know about The Hotel. It is bigger on the inside than on the outside. Do not go into Room 63. Doors and windows do not stay in the same places. The Hotel listens...

The radio premiere of Erica Jong's uninhibited feminist classic about female sexuality. Isadora Wing has been married to psycho-analyst Bennett for five years. But she has become restless and yearns for men, for solitude, and for the perfect, guiltless, ‘zipless f**k’. Having overcome her...

A chilling collection of classic gothic horror and ghost stories adapted or written by women In this breathtaking collection of gothic horror and eerie tales, draw the curtains and pull the blankets close for two classic Victorian horror tales in new adaptations, Dracula starring Nicky Henson...

Based in the little town of Bridgeford, High-Lites salon boasts the most misanthropic hairdresser in Britain: sharp-tongued, mean-minded Bev. With the help of her soft-hearted (though slightly dim) assistant, Shirley, she tends to the tresses of a motley crew of local characters. As she cuts their hair, she finds out everything that's going on in their lives - and wastes no time in spreading some gossip of her own.

Five full-cast dramas by the celebrated Scottish writer Liz Lochhead, plus a short story Liz Lochhead is a widely recognised poet, playwright and performer. She was the Makar, Scotland’s national poet, between 2011 and 2016, and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2015. The six...

Dorothy L. Sayers' classic play cycle based on the life and times of Jesus Dorothy L. Sayers was best known for her mystery novels featuring aristocratic amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. But she was also a poet, playwright and committed Christian, and in The Man Born to Be King she combined art...