Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in Literary Fiction

On a windswept Northern shore, at the very tip of what will one day become Scotland, the islanders believe the worst they have to fear is a Viking attack. Then the burning comes. They cannot run from it. Water will not stop it. It consumes everything - yet the burned still speak. The Doctor is...

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Henry Fielding's rollicking comic masterpiece. Found one evening in the bed of the rich and benevolent Mr Allworthy, baby Tom grows up in the guardianship of the kindly squire. He develops into a good-hearted fellow who is nonetheless resented by...

This epic love story follows the engaged couple Renzo and Lucia as they navigate a perilous journey to be together amidst Spanish occupation, war, famine, and plague. Their struggle against the tyrannical Don Rodrigo, who seeks Lucia for himself, is interwoven with themes of faith, justice, power, and truth. Celebrated for its historical significance and cultural impact, the novel has inspired countless artists and remains a staple in Italian education and literature, praised by luminaries such as Giuseppe Verdi, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, and Pope Francis.

'It's down there. In the darkness. In the pipeline. Waiting.' The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria to the south coast of present-day Earth. Something nasty is lurking in the gas pipelines of the North Sea, and before long the nearby refinery is under attack. Landing on a...

BBC Radio 4's extraordinary evocation of the experience of moonrise over the Severn Estuary, by award-winning poet Alice Oswald. Originally broadcast as the 'Afternoon Play' on 10 March 2011. Set to original music by Roger Goula, the subject of 'A Sleepwalk on the Severn' is moonrise, which...

This dramatisation of Jonathan Franzen's acclaimed, epic, award-winning novel revolves around the troubles of an elderly Midwestern couple and their three adult children, tracing their lives from the mid-20th century to 'one last Christmas' together near the turn of the millennium. A family saga, that sits against the backdrop of this century's changing face of America, the novel was published 10 days before 9/11 but is widely considered an observation of what happened to the American psyche after 9/11.

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.

Gulliver is shipwrecked on the Island of Lilliput where the natives are tiny people living in a miniature society. With his unique overview of this realm, Gulliver discovers a world of petty politics and small minds. Coerced into a war between two nations who disagree on the best way to eat boiled eggs, Gulliver finds himself betrayed by friends and battered by enemies - escape is his only option if he wants to survive! Gulliver's adventures in Lilliput are hilarious, disturbing and profound.

London, 1946. Struggling to cope with the idea of raising her daughter in a hostile environment, African Caribbean nurse Hope makes the difficult decision to entrust her precious baby to her best friend, Eunice, to take back home to Antigua. But their plan goes disastrously wrong. In the decades that follow, all of them will witness - and play a part in - the seismic changes rocking the British Isles, as the old establishment crumbles, immigration builds and the country adjusts to the realities of a post-war, post-colonial future.

India in 1947 is a country in the grip of chaos, a country torn apart by internal strife. When the Doctor and Donna arrive in Calcutta, they are instantly swept up in violent events. Barely escaping with their lives, they discover that the city is rife with tales of 'half-made men', who roam the...

John Singer is a lonely deaf-mute who comes to stay as a lodger in Mick's house. No-one knows where he's from. A disparate group of people who live in the town are drawn towards Singer's kind, sympathetic nature: the owner of the café where Singer eats every day, an angry socialist drunkard, a frustrated Black doctor. Each pours their heart out to Singer, their silent confidant. And he in turn changes their disenchanted lives in ways the could never imagine.

Best known for her posthumously published novel Suite française, Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903. Her family fled the Russian Revolution for Paris, where she found fame as a novelist. But when the Nazis occupied France, she was arrested as a Jew and sent to Auschwitz, where she died aged just 39. This collection includes four of her best works, dramatised for radio with a full cast.

A comprehensive anthology of dramatisations and readings of Tagore's finest works, plus bonus documentaries Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. A novelist, poet, playwright, composer, artist and philosopher, he wrote both the...

In between dating, shopping, drinking, dancing and having fun, the girls of Riyadh live by Saudi Arabia’s strict cultural traditions. Well, not quite... They’re still trying to be good Muslims and please their families. But can you be a 21st century woman and a Saudi woman? A full-cast dramatisation of Rajaa Alsanea's best-selling novel, revealing the social, romantic, and sexual tribulations of four young women from the elite classes of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

A sparkling BBC Radio dramatisation of E M Forster's classic comedy of manners, set in Edwardian England and Italy Young, naive Lucy Honeychurch is visiting Italy for the first time, accompanied by her older cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett. On arrival at the Pension Bertolini, a mix-up...

Three semi-autobiographical plays by Victor Pemberton telling the story of one family across the 20th century Novelist and playwright Victor Pemberton was best known for scripting Doctor Who and working on Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock. His many plays for BBC Radio included The Slide, Kill the...

Jane Austen's acclaimed comedy of manners contains a truly memorable cast of characters, including the snobbish Mrs Ferrers, impetuous Marianne, selfish John Dashwood, and his awful, grasping wife. Annette Crosbie captures all the wit and charm of the romance in this BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour reading.

One of the 21st century's most celebrated authors, Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize twice: for 2009's Wolf Hall, the first in her phenomenally successful Thomas Cromwell trilogy, and its 2012 sequel Bring Up the Bodies. The third novel in the series, 2020's The Mirror and the Light, won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. This collection includes three of her best works of contemporary fiction, ranging from the Gothic to the blackly comic.

BBC Audio presents Persuasion, Jane Austen's last novel. Anne Elliot had never forgotten the personable Captain Wentworth, who reappears in Anne Elliot's life several years after she had been persuaded to break off their engagement. He makes no secret of his angry indignation. Newly wealthy from...

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation by Jon Sen of Thomas Hardy's tragic tale of star-crossed lovers in the West Country. 'Two on a Tower' is Hardy's ninth novel and contains perhaps his most complete treatment of the theme of love across the class and age divide, and also the fullest...