Showing results by narrator "Sian Thomas" in All Categories

No one does glamour, severity, girlish charm, or tight-lipped witticism better than Dame Maggie Smith. Michael Coveney's biography shines a light on the life and career of a truly remarkable performer, one whose stage and screen career spans six decades.

In Jilly Cooper’s latest, raciest novel, Rupert Campbell-Black takes centre stage in the cut-throat world of flat racing. Rupert is consumed by one obsession: that Love Rat, his adored grey horse, be proclaimed champion stallion. He longs to trounce Roberto’s Revenge, the stallion owned by...

The man who had died was Ismay's stepfather, Guy. Nine years on, she and her sister, Heather, still live in the same house in Clapham. But it has been divided into two self-contained flats. Their mother lives upstairs with her sister, Pamela. And the bathroom, where Guy drowned, has disappeared. Ismay works in public relations, and Heather in catering. They get on well. They always have. They never discuss the changes to the house, still less what happened that August day.

The Chosen Dead is the fifth gripping installment in Matthew Hall's twice CWA Gold Dagger nominated Coroner Jenny Cooper series, from the creator of BBC One's Keeping Faith. An unlikely suicide or a deadly conspiracy? When Bristol Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates the fatal plunge of a man from...

Deep in an Estonian forest, two women - one young, one old - are hiding. Zara is a prostitute and a murderer, on the run from brutal captors, men who know about inflicting punishment. Aliide offers refuge, but not safety: She has her own secrets, traitorous crimes of passion and revenge committed long ago, during the country’s brutal Soviet years. Both women have suffered lives of abuse. But this time their survival depends on revealing the one thing history has taught them to keep safely hidden: the truth.

Eva Ibbotson's charming and warm-hearted tale, The Secret Countess, was originally published as A Countess Below Stairs. Anna, a young countess, has lived in the glittering city of St Petersburg all her life in an ice-blue palace overlooking the River Neva. But when revolution tears Russia apart...

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989, Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells the story of Billi, a girl growing up in Europe between the two World Wars. Upon the death of her German baron father, Billi moves from the family château to live with her vibrant and erratic English mother on the French Riviera. From there she is sent for schooling in England, where she lives an itinerant life, boarding among a bohemian crowd, attending galleries and public lectures, and reading some of the greatest books of the era.

A BBC radio collection of full-cast dramatisations, bringing together Edith Wharton’s most popular and best-loved works.

In this comprehensive anthology, former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion has gathered together exceptional poems from the 14th century through to the present day, creating an extraordinary poetic journey for the listener. From the love poems of Shelley and Keats to the grim war elegies of Owen and Sassoon, there is a poem here for every sentiment, each with something different to offer.

A Life to Kill is the seventh thrilling installment in Matthew Hall's twice CWA Gold Dagger nominated Coroner Jenny Cooper series. If they're hiding something, we've got a right to know. We've got a right to know what Kenny died for . . . The day they've all been waiting for is at hand. The last...

It's storytime! Join Mother Goose and her three little goslings as they enjoy over fifty classic nursery rhymes, traditional lullabies and favourite action songs. The rhymes are linked together by enchanting original stories about Mother Goose and her goslings as they learn to waddle, swim and...

The Burning is the sixth thrilling installment in Matthew Hall's twice CWA Gold Dagger nominated Coroner Jenny Cooper series, from the creator of BBC One's Keeping Faith. A family tragedy. A buried secret. What lies hidden in the flames? A dense, bitterly cold fog has settled over the Wye Valley...

A portrait in her own words of the female Lawrence of Arabia, the subject of the PBS documentary Letters from Baghdad, voiced by Tilda Swinton, and the major motion picture Queen of the Desert, starring Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Damian Lewis, and Robert Pattinson and directed by Werner...

Poet and playwright Federico García Lorca is one of the most famous figures in 20th-century Spanish literature. A member of the 'Generation of '27' avant-garde movement that included Dalí and Buñuel, he became well known for his lyrical, symbolic works mixing modernism and the folkloric traditions of his native Andalusia. He was executed by Nationalist forces at the start of the Spanish Civil War, aged only 38. More than 80 years later, his poetry is revered worldwide and the plays in his 'Rural Trilogy' are widely regarded as masterpieces.

The Flight is the fourth thrilling installment in Matthew Hall's gripping, CWA Gold Dagger shortlisted Coroner Jenny Cooper series, from the creator of BBC One's Keeping Faith. A tragic accident or a terrible crime? When Flight 189 plunges into the Severn Estuary, Coroner Jenny Cooper finds...

Hidden by London’s wealth, energy and need for cheap labour, the city’s immigrant population is powerless, despised and often illegal. So when a young woman’s body is discovered on Hampstead Heath one cold morning, she could be anyone...Rich or poor, outsider or insider, five strangers are connected in undreamed-of ways as greed, courage, murder and kindness link their lives.

Dylan Thomas was the 20th Century's first rock star author, famed for his dazzling imaginative poetry and chaotic personal life. Best known for Under Milk Wood, he also wrote numerous poems, short stories and screenplays, and made regular BBC broadcasts. A legend in his own lifetime, he remained hugely popular after his death at the age of 39, influencing cultural icons from Bob Dylan to The Beatles....

A dazzling collection of comedies from the later Restoration period England's 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688 and the reign of new monarchs William and Mary signified a turning point for Restoration comedy with laws being passed to restrict playwrights' freedoms. The latter years are marked by a...

Focussing on three of the best-known Republican presidents of the 20th century, Jonathan Myerson’s riveting drama series looks at how their triumphs and disasters drove the party's electoral fortunes. Closely based on accounts by those who were there, this political trilogy reimagines the pivotal moments that changed history, and the part played by these famous and controversial leaders.

Harriet Goodman, brave, wry and handsome, is determined to triumph no matter what. With a decade of therapy under her belt and a new large inheritance, it seems there is nothing she cannot achieve. When she finds herself in charge of a school full of precocious little girls, rich in everything but care, she vows to make their childhoods amongst the happiest ever spent.