Showing results for "bbc" in 20th Century

Between 1947 and 1957, Ealing Studios produced a series of immensely popular, darkly funny film comedies that made the West London borough famous throughout the world. Almost 50 years later, four of these timeless films were recreated for BBC Radio 4, and are now collected together for the first time.

A sensational spin-off memoir based on the hit TV sitcom 'Allo 'Allo!, about a hapless café owner in occupied France Living under the tyranny of the Nazi jackboot, proud patriot René Artois (Gorden Kaye) is determined to do his bit for France – so when the Resistance commandeers his café to...

Including poems specially adapted into melody and song for this audiobook. One of The New York Times Best Audiobooks of 2024 A BBC ‘BETWEEN THE COVERS’ BOOK CLUB PICK 'I didn't want it to end' - Maggie O'Farrell 'Powerful . . . written with a calm, luminous precision' - Colm Tóibín An...

Series 1-5 of the groundbreaking BBC Radio 4 drama charting life on the home front during World War One First heard on radio between 4 August 2014 and 9 November 2018, each episode of Home Front is set exactly one hundred years before the broadcast date, and each follows one character’s day...

Full-cast dramatisations of three insightful novels by Christopher Isherwood, plus a bonus interview Novelist and playwright Christopher Isherwood is best known for The Berlin Stories of pre-Hitler Germany, which inspired the musical Cabaret. Many of his works have been adapted for stage and...

A major BBC Radio 4 drama series following the lives of those on and behind the battlefront of World War I Meticulously based on unit war diaries and eye-witness accounts, each of these 42 episodes of Tommies traces one real day at war, exactly 100 years ago. We follow the fortunes of Mickey...

Series 6-10 of the epic BBC Radio 4 drama charting life on the home front during the First World War – plus special episode Home Front: A Lightening First heard on radio between 4 August 2014 and 9 November 2018, each episode of Home Front is set exactly one hundred years before the broadcast...

A stunning adaptation of a First World War masterpiece showing man's inhumanity to man German playwright Karl Kraus's early twentieth-century satirical play about the First World War was originally 15 hours long, but his classic satire The Last Days of Mankind, has been deftly distilled into a...

Brought to you by Penguin. Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, and Logan Mountstuart's - stretching across the twentieth century - is a rich tapestry of both. As a writer who finds inspiration with Hemingway in Paris and Virginia Woolf in London, as a spy recruited by Ian Fleming and...

Series 11-15 of the major BBC Radio 4 drama charting life on the home front during the First World War – plus special extended episode Home Front: A Fragile Peace First heard on radio between 4 August 2014 and 9 November 2018, each episode of Home Front is set exactly one hundred years before...

Brought to you by Penguin. Frank and Chrissy meet a few days into ’70. Frank has been travelling around California for a while with friends, when someone tells him about a house in the desert two hours east of LA where the walls are steel and the glass shimmers. Frank tells himself: I have to...

1939, and naïve young newlywed Harriet Pringle arrives in Bucharest with her husband, Guy - just as Europe is about to rip itself apart. She believes she knows everything about the man she has married, but soon realises she knows nothing. Guy is oblivious to her needs and desires, seeming only to care about his job as a university lecturer, his friends and the beautiful, voluptuous Sophie. Struggling to build a life in a strange city, in the face of imminent invasion, Harriet feels bereft - and increasingly isolated. 

A two-part radio dramatisation of Vasily Grossman's dark, honest account of the Battle of Stalingrad; a prequel to Life and Fate - plus Stalingrad: Destiny of a Novel. With this astonishing prequel published in its first ever English translation by Richard and Elizabeth Chandler, we are transported back to the very beginning of Vasily Grossman’s panoramic tale, as the ‘harsh whirlwind’ of war approaches the city of Stalingrad.

A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick Perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and 1917 If someone you loved went missing, would you ever stop searching for them? 1921. The Great War is over and while many survivors have been reunited with their loved ones, Edie’s husband Francis has not come...

The incredible true story of the French Resistance plot to destroy the Atlantic Wall in Normandy, dramatised in six parts for BBC Radio Adapted from Richard Collier’s 1958 novel Ten Thousand Eyes, this riveting vintage drama by Robert Barr tells the story of the heroes and heroines of the...

Novelist, poet and critic Kingsley Amis was one of Britain’s greatest postwar writers. A master of comic fiction, he came to fame in 1954, and won the 1986 Booker Prize for The Old Devils. Included in this collection are dramatisations of seven of his short stories and two novels, all imbued with his characteristic wit and social satire. These are complemented by readings of selected correspondence and an interview with Amis himself.

Rosamunde Pilcher's beloved saga of one family's passions and heartbreaks – plus an interview with the author ‘A deeply satisfying story written with love and confidence’ Maeve Binchy Recovering from a heart attack, Penelope Keeling discharges herself from hospital and returns to her cosy...

A landmark drama series telling the compelling real-life WW1 love story of English soldier Eric Appleby and his Irish sweetheart Phyllis Kelly. Eric Appleby was an engineering student from Liverpool who joined the Royal Field Artillery when war began in 1914. Posted to Athlone, he met and fell in love with solicitor's daughter Phyllis Kelly at a dance. Their romance was interrupted when he was sent to fight in the trenches on the Western Front, but they kept their love alive through a series of wonderfully crafted letters. 

In the early hours of 5 June 1944, Captain Rob Collins, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who is languishing in hospital, receives a call that will take him on a journey through England that will change his life. Mike Walker's play is an epic journey across England poised on the edge of a historical moment. It is set on June 5th, the day before the invasion. It is a portrait of England waiting for the invasion that will change the course of history, but an invasion only a very few know that is about happen. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliet Stevenson and Claudia Harrison.

What drove Harry Houdini - magician, escapologist, and one of the most famous men in the world? Whether it was escaping from handcuffs, a straitjacket or from a box filled with water, Houdini wowed audiences with his seemingly death-defying performance... This BBC Radio collection shares the...