Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in World Literature

1994 saw one of Peter Cook's most acclaimed performances since his 1960s' heyday. Chris Morris' surreal and inventive questions brought out the very best of eccentric aristocrat Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling - a character whom Cook had carried with him through 'Beyond the Fringe' and 'Not Only...

Ben Whishaw and Philip Glenister star in these six plays telling the story of the fabled 5th Century king. Britain, 493 AD. When 17-year-old stable boy Arran is visited by Merlin, he is forced to confront his true origins and seize his destiny. Pulling the sword from the stone, he is proclaimed...

In 1944 Captain Charles Ryder travels with a company of soldiers to Brideshead. He has been there before, and the great house serves as a potent reminder of the decadent, stylish lifestyle now destroyed by the austerity of the Second World War. Charles' mind travels back twenty years to when...

From 1938 to 1969 crime novelist and detective Paul Temple, together with his Fleet Street journalist wife Steve, solved case after case in one of BBC radio's most popular serials. They inhabited a sophisticated, well-dressed world of chilled cocktails and fast cars, where the women were chic...

Warm and witty, direct and droll, the sharply funny Pam Ayres has been amusing and entertaining her many fans for more than 30 years since her first television appearance on Opportunity Knocks. Her humorous observations of daily life touch a chord with anybody who's ever been bewildered by the...

An unparalleled collection of Full-Cast BBC Drama adaptations of Sean O’Casey’s powerful, poignant works One of Ireland’s foremost playwrights, Sean O’Casey is renowned for his groundbreaking plays depicting the lives of poor, working-class Dubliners struggling with social and political...

One of the most important and influential Russian writers of the 19th century, Fyodor Dostoevsky is admired worldwide for his great realist novels, exploring questions of morality, philosophy and the nature of existence. This compilation contains the BBC radio productions of his four most famous novels - as well as three lesser-known works and two bonus documentaries - collected together for the first time.

Often described as ‘the father of realism’, Henrik Ibsen was a pioneer of modernist drama. He influenced playwrights as diverse as George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, and is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare. Included in this collection are adaptations of his tragicomic masterpiece The Wild Duck, his complex and compelling play Rosmersholm, the epic drama Brand and the tragedy John Gabriel Borkman.

A radio adaptation of Alan Bennett's short autobiographical play, originally directed by Nicholas Hytner for the National Theatre. Alan looks back on his early life with affection and sadness, revisiting some of the themes and conversations of his memoir 'A Life Like other People's'. Both he and his mother are seduced by the idea that other people's lives are much richer and fulfilling than their own.

A full-cast BBC Radio dramatisation of Arundhati Roy's Booker Prize-winning novel - plus bonus interview with the author Arundhati Roy's debut novel The God of Small Things took the literary world by storm, winning the Booker Prize in 1997. It went on to sell over six million copies in 40...

Shelagh Delaney was just 19 when her debut play, A Taste of Honey, premiered in 1958. One of the great ‘kitchen sink dramas’, it was ground-breaking in its portrayal of working-class Northern women, gay and Black men, and influenced popular culture from The Smiths to Coronation Street. This collection opens with a 2004 radio production of A Taste of Honey, followed by seven dramas specially written for BBC Radio, all showcasing Delaney’s extraordinary gift for depicting the experiences and emotions of ordinary women and children.

Nothing escaped the eye of the satirical eye of Britain's phenomenally successful all-Asian sketch show that was Goodness Gracious Me. The complete BBC Radio series 1-3 fore-ran the award-winning BBC TV series that ran in the late 1990s, and features the same cast. Prepare for your heart to pound in the Indian recreation of Brief Encounter, sing along to the profound words of wisdom with Fifty Ways to Leave your Mother, and enjoy pop classics such as Hindi People and Punjabi Girl.

Sir Terence Rattigan was one of Britain's greatest playwrights, renowned for his well-crafted dramas of upper-class manners and repressed sexuality. He was hugely popular throughout the 1940s and early '50s, and had the rare distinction of having plays running in three West End theatres simultaneously. Having fallen out of fashion in the '60s, his work is now enjoying a huge revival. Included here are some of his most esteemed plays, adapted for radio and brought together in chronological order in one statement collection.

Writer and director David Hare is one of England's leading political dramatists, celebrated for his many award-winning plays analysing the morality of contemporary Britain. This collection comprises some of his most acclaimed pieces, as well as a fascinating radio interview with Hare himself.

Brendan Behan is widely remembered as a hard-drinking, wise-cracking writer who turned up roaring drunk for interviews and cared little for authority. But he was more than just a hell-raising celebrity. His wit, expressive use of language and understanding of human nature made his writing famous around the world, and his masterpieces The Quare Fellow, Borstal Boy and The Hostage rank among the greatest works of 20th century Irish literature. Dramatisations of all three appear here, alongside a short interview with Behan himself and a fascinating biographical programme celebrating his genius.

Two classic tales from acclaimed British science fiction writer John Wyndham. In The Chrysalids, ten-year-old David is a happy, ordinary boy, untroubled except for occasional strange dreams about a mysterious city – until he befriends Sophie, who is unlike anybody he has met before: she has...

H. E. Bates is probably best known for his comic novel The Darling Buds of May, which introduced the lovable Larkins to the world and sparked three hugely popular TV adaptations. In his 68 years, Bates wrote over 20 further novels, more than 300 short stories, children’s books, poems, plays and non-fiction. This collection brings together three full-cast BBC Radio dramatisations and fourteen excellent readings, rounding off with extracts from H. E. Bates autobiographies.

A BBC Radio 4 production of Wynyard Browne’s classic play about a 1950s family homecoming at Christmas. It is Christmas Eve and the family are gathering at Reverend Martin Gregory’s Norfolk vicarage. A soldier son destined for Oxbridge, two elderly aunts with a passion for chatter, a cousin...

Johann Wolfgang Goethe was a colossus of German literature and a true Renaissance man. A novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher, he wrote the first international bestseller, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and his epic masterpiece Faust is one of the most famous and celebrated dramas of all time.

Elizabeth Bowen was one of the 20th century's most distinctive writers. An associate of the Bloomsbury Set, she was a keen observer of upper-middle-class life and relationships. Best known for her novels of the Anglo-Irish gentry and wartime London, her fiction displays recurring themes of loss, rootlessness and displacement. This collection contains five of Bowen's best-loved works, and hears from the author herself in three radio talks on the art of novel-writing.