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The classic 1963 full-cast BBC Radio production, starring Richard Burton 'To begin at the beginning: it is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black...' When Richard Burton breathed the opening words of Under Milk Wood into a microphone, broadcasting history was made...

The Old English epic poem Beowulf, recorded in its original Saxon dialect for the first time. Performed by Icelandic poet, playwright, professional storyteller and performer Svanur Thorkelsson, Audible’s production gives listeners the opportunity to experience how it might have felt to hear bards recite sections of the 3000-line poem from memory in Anglo Saxon dining halls. Audible’s Beowulf recaptures the heroic style and vast scale of what can be considered ‘England’s first native audiobook’.

The brilliant conclusion to the Palliser novels, this touching story follows the elderly Duke of Omnium, the former prime minister of England, as he struggles to overcome his grief at the loss of his beloved wife, Lady Glencora. To complicate matters, he must also deal with the willfulness of his three adult children as he tries to guide and support them - his plans for them are quite different from their own. While his two sons, sent down from university in disgrace, rack up gambling debts, the duke’s only daughter yearns to marry the poor son of a country squire.

By the time Shakespeare came to write Macbeth - almost certainly in 1605/1606 - he had already completed three of the great tragedies with which modern audiences are so familiar: Hamlet (1601), Othello (1603), and King Lear (1605). Each of those plays gives us an eponymous hero who is in some significant way flawed, but for whom we also inevitably feel deep sympathy, whatever his errors or crimes. But in MacBeth, Shakespeare has chosen for his tragic hero a man guilty of the most terrible crime imaginable to a Jacobean audience, that of regicide - the murder of a king.

Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam return in the seventh series of Conversations from a Long Marriage. Playing a long-married couple who met in the Summer of Love and have stayed together ever since, their conversations are practical, passionate, hilarious - and familiar to every couple. Written by...

Three dramas by Barry Hines and an abridged reading of his classic Kes (A Kestrel for a Knave) Yorkshire-born author Barry Hines is renowned for his 1968 novel A Kestrel for a Knave (later turned into Ken Loach’s award-winning film Kes) and for scripting the BAFTA-winning BBC TV film Threads...

This "lost race" novel begins as an exciting African adventure. Leonard Outram is a British adventurer who is in Africa seeking his fortune. He becomes part of the rescue of a Portuguese woman from a large slave camp. Leonard, his companion Otter, and the girl set off and find the people of the mist. They then impersonate gods and priests with the hope of getting the people's hoard of jewels.

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.

On 19th century Earth artist Edvard Munch hears an infinite scream pass through nature. Centuries later his painting of that scream hangs in a gallery on the barren dust world Duchamp 331. Why is there a colony of artists on a planet that is little more than a glorified garage? What is the event that the passengers of the huge, opulent pleasure cruiser 'Gallery' are hoping to see? And what is hidden in the crates that litter the cargo hold?

Fanny Price, in Mansfield Park, tells her persistent suitor that "we have all a better guide in ourselves . . . than any other person can be." Sometimes, however, we crave external guidance: and when this happens we could do worse than seek it in Jane Austen's own subtle novels. Written to coincide with Austen's 250th birthday, this approachable and intimate work shows why and how—for over half a century—Austen has inspired and challenged its author through different phases of her life.

'A book to underline endlessly, to dog-ear, to carry around until battered, and then to tell all your friends to buy because you're too reluctant to give up your own copy. A wonder’ Polly Barton ‘Dazzling … one fine day, you open a book by an unknown writer, and a charge of pure talent...

"In classical Greece men called rhapsodes memorized and recited “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey.” My own rhapsode is the English actor Dan Stevens, whom fans of “Downton Abbey” will know as Matthew Crawley. He’s been performing the Robert Fitzgerald translation, and no Hellene could...

These two great poems date from Shakespeare’s early years and are full of passion and invention. In Venus and Adonis, the goddess of love pleads with the beautiful boy to submit to her advances and become her love - but he only wants to hunt boar. In the more serious Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare draws on the Roman tale of the Emperor Tarquin’s desire for Lucrece and its tragic consequencies. These poems give prominent parts to the two heroines, and Clare Corbett and Eve Best shine.

This wide ranging collection of essays allows the contemporary reader to grasp the extraordinary variety and depth of the statesman's mature thoughts on questions, both grave and gay, facing modern man. Churchill begins by asking what it would be like to live your life over again and ends by describing his love affair with painting. In between he touches on subjects as diverse as spies, cartoons, submarines, elections, flying, and the future.

In an era of public versus private personas, a young woman decides to shake up her ordinary life by becoming a contestant on a reality television show. The manufactured paradise has no clocks, no way to contact the outside world, and nothing but time, a pool, and gorgeous people. As the days or weeks or months pass by, she discovers more about herself through the people around her and challenges her notions of identity and love. In a paradise where the only game is to fall in love, what will she do to win?

This major new poetry collection from best-selling poet and priest Malcolm Guite features more than 70 new and previously unpublished works. It includes a sequence of 27 sonnets written in response to George Herbert’s exquisite sonnet "Prayer", as well as 45 more widely ranging new poems.

Since its debut in 1998, In Our Time has amassed a dedicated following of more than 2 million listeners. Hosted by Melvyn Bragg, with a panel of guest experts, each show features a plethora of fascinating facts and inspirational discourse on topics ranging from democracy to dark matter. This specially curated collection celebrates the rich diversity of poetry in English, focusing on 25 major works and writers from the mediaeval era to the 20th Century.

Proust ci dice che non ha narrato la "Recherche" per dei lettori, i suoi: "Infatti non sarebbero stati, secondo me, lettori miei, ma lettori di se stessi [...], li avrei muniti, grazie al mio libro, del mezzo per leggere in se stessi." Sembra impossibile, ma "Alla ricerca del tempo perduto" è un audiolibro che contiene un mondo, forse il mondo, e con esso la dimensione più umana di tutte: il tempo. E come una luce o un preludio, "Dalla parte di Swann" ci introduce, illumina quest'opera monumentale, i suoi temi e i suoi personaggi;

Als Josef K. eines Morgens aufwacht wird er überraschend verhaftet. Von einer mysteriösen Behörde soll ihm der Prozess gemacht werden. Im Laufe der Kapitel gerät K. in ein alptraumhaftes Labyrinth einer surrealen Bürokratie. K. dringt immer tiefer in dieses System ein, er erfährt Verschiedenes über die Hierarchien der "Gerichte", doch nie gelangt er zur höchsten Instanz, nie erfährt er, worin seine "Schuld" besteht. Gleichzeitig dringt das System immer weiter in K.s Leben ein. Schließlich muss er erkennen, dass der "Sinn dieser großen Organisation, dieser korrupten Bande", der Sinn dieses geheimnisvollen Prozesses die "Sinnlosigkeit" ist...

To everything there is a season. A time to be born, a time to die, and a time to get a few things off your chest.The sequel to Grumpy Old Men: The Official Handbook covers a year in the sad and sordid life of a Grumpy Old Man, sorting into dates and seasons the many and manifold bloody...