Showing results for "bbc" in Spies & Politics

The complete collection of acclaimed BBC Radio dramas based on John le Carré's best-selling novels, starring Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley. With a star cast including Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron, Brian Cox, Ian MacDiarmid, Anna Chancellor, Hugh Bonneville and Lindsay Duncan, these enthralling dramatisations perfectly capture the atmosphere of le Carré's taut, thrilling spy novels.

Set in an exciting world of criminal masterminds, espionage and adventure, the adventures of special agent Dick Barton and his friends Jock and Snowey were essential listening for an entire generation. Originally running on the BBC Light Programme between 1946 and 1951, few of the BBC's original recordings still survive. However, in 1949 a number of early Barton tales were rerecorded for transmission overseas starring Douglas Kelly.

Described by Len Deighton as ‘a classic writer of espionage fiction’, Ted Allbeury based his many acclaimed spy novels on his own real-life experiences. In World War II, he served as an intelligence officer with Special Operations Executive, and subsequently ran agents across the border between East and West Germany during the Cold War. He began writing in his fifties, and went on to pen over 40 bestselling books, five of which are dramatised here alongside three plays specially written for BBC Radio and two bonus documentaries.

‘You’re not to disturb, annoy or offend. They’re walking on a knife edge out there, anything could tilt the balance.’ Missing: one junior diplomat and 43 of the British Embassy’s most confidential files. The timing is alarmingly significant: with neo-Nazi riots and radical student...

Ted Willis began his creative life in amateur theatre and journalism before moving into writing for films, TV and radio, and was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most prolific writer for television. His best-known creation was the hit police procedural Dixon of Dock Green which he based on the stories told to him by a policeman friend. This radio anthology includes five of his best-loved crime tales from the 1960s, '70s and '80s.

A thrilling full-cast adaptation bringing Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell universe to life Veteran Fourth Echelon agent Sam Fisher has a new mission recruiting and training the next generation of Splinter Cell operatives for the National Security Agency's covert action division. But when a lethal...

Suave, unflappable and ambitious, veteran politician Charles Bannister knows his way around the corridors of power. As chief whip, he's adept at keeping MPs in line and squashing potential scandals—aided by his brother-in-law, MI6 Agent Henry Colvil, who whispers useful titbits of information in his ear. His position seems invincible—but nothing is forever, and when the tides of politics turn, Charles finds himself under threat. In these six series, we follow his fortunes and those of his close friend Home Secretary Dougal Baxter. Together, the duo rise, fall and rise again.

A full-cast environmental mystery set against the evocative backdrop of the Norfolk fens Mist rising over the fens. The haunting cry of the nesting bittern. But not everything is as pristine as it appears to be. The protection of nature and the pursuit of progress collide in this thrilling...

BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of three of Eric Ambler’s best-selling spy thrillers, plus Nick Perry’s play The Battle of San Pietro and a bonus documentary, Ambler at 80. Eric Ambler has been hailed as ‘the father of the modern spy story’. His tense, gritty thrillers introduced a new realism to the classic espionage mystery, and influenced novelists from Graham Greene to John le Carré. This collection brings together three of his best-known novels, adapted for radio with a full cast.

Berkely Mather (real name John Evan Weston-Davies) was a British author who wrote sixteen novels ranging from historical adventures to espionage fiction. Included here are some of his best radio thrillers, beginning with The Sand Leopard, charting the exploits of Geth Straker, captain of the Peregrine. The trouble-hunting mariner is commissioned to sail to the Red Sea in search of sunken Second World War bullion – but are his two new crew members what they seem?

Anton Lesser stars as a Berlin detective who stumbles upon the 20th century's most terrifying secret in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Robert Harris's bestselling novel. The year is 1964, and it's a week before Hitler's 75th birthday. Nazi Germany won the Second World War...

The godfather of the hard-boiled detective novel, Dashiell Hammett is widely acknowledged as one of America's greatest mystery writers. This collection brings together the BBC radio adaptations of his works for the first time, including the iconic The Maltese Falcon featuring his most famous...

A double serving of thrilling vintage spy drama featuring the tenacious Captain Jim Nicholson A treat from the archive: two classic dramas from the writer of Z-Cars , Robert Barr, set during the height of the Cold War. The Dark Island is a thrilling story of espionage set among the remote, mist-veiled islands of the Outer Hebrides. Two Intelligence Officers discover an escape route for defectors from Britain. The route, ending behind the Iron Curtain, involves the use of Russian trawlers plying outside territorial waters.

The time, now - the place, outside your window. Three surveillance operatives are on an unspecified job, working for an unspecified employer. Together, they are Beagle Team. Good surveillance operatives have patience, alertness and discretion - this is a series about the other type of surveillance operative.

Jeffery Archer is a New York Times best-selling author, published in over 37 languages across 97 countries. Jeffrey Archer's debut novel Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less from 1976 is dramatised here in seven parts by Betty Davis; as well as his later work A Matter of Honour, which was recently rediscovered in the collection of an amateur archivist after the recording was lost on delivery to the BBC archives. The sound quality of A Matter of Honour may be affected as a result.

Simon Russell Beale stars in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of John le Carré's first novel, which introduced his most famous character, George Smiley. This dramatisation, set in London in the late 1950s, finds Smiley engaged in the humdrum job of security vetting. But when a Foreign Office civil servant commits suicide after an apparently unproblematic interview, Smiley is baffled. Refusing to believe that Fennan shot himself, Smiley decides to investigate.

Christopher Marlowe turns government spy in these four comedy crime dramas. Murder and intrigue are all in a day's work for Kit Marlowe, England's leading playwright and undercover agent in Her Majesty's Secret Service. Amid the squalor and splendour of Elizabethan London, he probes a series of baffling mysteries, aided by his trusty underworld accomplice Bartholomew Ratsbane.

Julian Rhind-Tutt is Magnus Pym in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast adaptation of John le Carré’s superb spy novel Winner of AudioFile Earphones...

Francis Urquhart, Chief Whip of the Conservative Party, wants to get to Number 10 and will stop at nothing in his pursuit of power. This full-cast dramatisation packs a powerful punch in the fast-paced political thriller based on Micheal Dobbs bestselling novel of the same name.

CIA agent Eloise Page (Kim Cattrall) is a long-serving CIA agent who joined the Agency on its first day in 1947 and rose to become one of its most powerful women. Eloise takes the listener on a journey through the highs and lows of US foreign policy, spanning the staggering world events that shaped her career, as well as portraying her relationships with early CIA leaders, Allen Dulles (Ed Harris) and Richard Helms (Johnny Flynn).