Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in World Literature

A deliciously black satirical comedy about the dinner party from hell. The fastidious host, Paige, decides to throw a dinner party in honour of her husband, Lars, who is celebrating the success of his pop psychology book, Beyond Belief. She carefully plans a surprise menu that will mark the occasion and anxiously checks with the waiter she has employed to make sure that everything is perfectly prepared. Her lucky guests include a postfeminist vegetarian artist, a distinguished microbiologist, a TV journalist and an uninvited guest who ends up staying for dinner.

Irascible phonetics professor Henry Higgins makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can train Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle to talk ‘like a lady’ and pass as a duchess at the Ambassador’s Ball. As the day of reckoning approaches, can Eliza convince the assembled aristocrats that she’s one of them? And what will become of her afterwards? This effervescent radio version of Shaw’s classic comedy features a stellar cast, including award-winning comedians Alistair McGowan as Henry Higgins, Morgana Robinson as Eliza Doolittle and Al Murray as Alfred Doolittle.

Kipling, our narrator, tells this strange story: he was running a newspaper in a big Indian city. In the hot stillness of one night when he was putting the paper to bed, two men came into his office. They were red-bearded giant Daniel Dravot and his friend Peachy Carnehan. These two 'gentlemen at large', as they called themselves, lately of the British army, had put together an insane and dangerous plan: they wanted to be Kings of Kafiristan, a mountainous region of Afghanistan.

At a certain age, women gain a huge confidence about themselves because they realise that life’s too short to waste. These six women are in their 40s and each has a very different – and sometimes surprising – story to tell, from the husband who unexpectedly disappears, to the dreaded ‘other woman’, and the sisters who take an adventurous trip on the Nile together.

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.

Jean-Baptiste Pocquelin, better known by his pen-name Molière, was France's greatest satirical dramatist. Such was his influence on the French language that it is often referred to as 'the language of Molière', and he has been dubbed 'the French Shakespeare'. A leading 17th Century comic actor and director, his genius encompassed all aspects of stage comedy, and his plays continue to appeal to audiences today. Included here are six of his masterpieces, as heard on BBC Radio.

J.R.R. Tolkien: An Audio Portrait is a compilation of radio and TV archive material from the '60s and '70s featuring interviews with J.R.R. Tolkien, his relatives, and his colleagues in which he talks about The Lord of the Rings, his other Hobbiton books, life as an academic, correspondence received from fans, and his views on the 20th century. This audiobook is presented by Brian Sibley.

It’s 1985 and the Stage Left Theatre Collective is founded by a group of friends with a shared vision: Emma, the artistic manager and Robert the literary manager, director Saul, playwright Alan, and finance manager, Frank. This funny, moving and pin sharp drama follows the fate of the company and its members over the course of four decades. We catch up with the characters as they negotiate changing cultural and economic climates.

One of Britain's leading contemporary playwrights, Howard Brenton is well known for his controversial state-of-the-nation plays, dark comedies and powerful political satires. He has written over 50 works for the theatre and numerous screenplays, including 13 episodes of the hit TV series Spooks. Included here are some of his most acclaimed dramas, including the award-winning Pravda, co-written with David Hare.

A founding father of American literature, James Fenimore Cooper was one of America's first professional novelists, and a pioneer of both the Western and the historical romance. Included here are his 1826 masterpiece The Last of the Mohicans and his 1821 classic The Spy, widely considered the world's first espionage novel. 

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.

BBC Radio adaptations of Nick Payne's finest works, brought together on audio for the first time—plus bonus features. Nick Payne is a world-renowned playwright and screenwriter. He won the George Devine Award for his first major play If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet, and Constellations won the Evening Standard Award for Best Play. This collection contains Constellations and Elegy, his two acclaimed plays exploring science, time and love, with new introductions by Nick Payne himself. Also included are three dramas specially written for BBC Radio.

Actor, writer and director Mahesh Dattani is the first playwright in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award by India’s National Academy of Letters. Included here are all three of his plays featuring Uma Rao – PhD student, daughter-in-law of Bangalore's deputy commissioner of police, and wife of the superintendent. Priyanga Burford (neé Elan), stars as the intrepid sleuth, with full casts including Shiv Grewal, Saeed Jaffrey, Ajay Chhabra, Amerjit Deu and Nitin Chandra Ganatra.

Faith, Hope and Glory charts the lives of three African-Caribbean families, connected forever by the theft of a beautiful pram in Tilbury in 1946. As they live through the eighty years since then, they witness and take part in the emergence of the modern United Kingdom.

Ever since it was first drilled more than 150 years ago, oil has been both a blessing and a curse. It has enabled economic growth, provided an efficient energy source, fuelled our entire infrastructure - and caused wars, pollution and global warming. These seven dramas, set between 1951 and 2045, and taking us from postwar Iran to futuristic Lancashire, examine the role oil has played in shaping our world: recounting incredible stories of wealth, power, politics and corruption.

Sent away from her poverty-stricken parents in Portsmouth to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, nine-year-old Fanny Price is abruptly transplanted to a new, luxurious home: Mansfield Park. Overwhelmed by the grandeur of her surroundings, she feels out of place—and as she grows up, her spoiled cousins, Tom, Maria and Julia, never let her forget her humble beginnings. Only her cousin Edmund treats her with kindness, and the two become close companions.

A collection of fabulous tales of genies, heroes, flying carpets and fantastic voyages, The Arabian Nights has enchanted generations of children and adults. Forged in the Islamic Golden Age, it was brought to Europe in the 18th Century, where it became an instant sensation. Included here are seven full-cast dramatisations, starring Carolyn Backhouse as Shahrazad and Derek Jacobi as the King, as well as a bonus edition of In Our Time exploring the story behind the tales.

A collection of dramas set in South and Central America by acclaimed dramatist Mike Walker. An award-winning dramatist, author and feature writer, Mike Walker has written numerous original dramas for BBC Radio 4, including his epic chronicles Tsar, Caesar!, The Stuarts and Castle of the Hawk. Collected here are five of his gripping dramas from the 1980s and '90s, set around the Amazon rainforest and Nicaragua.

Beautiful and intelligent young Anna suffers in her loveless marriage, dreaming of the romantic life she should be living, and the love that others around her should be sharing honestly with one another. When she meets the dashing Vronsky he seems to offer everything she has been craving, but the cost she will pay is higher than she could have imagined. Meanwhile Konstantin Levin, a gentle landowner who shares Anna's belief in sincerity, attempts to channel his beliefs into his land, his family, and his love for beautiful aristocrat Kitty.

Master builder Halvard Solness is a self-made man. With no professional qualifications, he has built himself up through ruthless ambition and achieved a position of power and domination in his home town. But his success has come at a cost. His marriage is empty, destroyed by a personal tragedy that has left him wracked with guilt and pain, and he is increasingly frightened of failure and being displaced by the next generation. Then a mysterious young woman, Hilde Wangel, appears from the mountains, claiming to have met Solness 10 years earlier, when she was only 13.