Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in Classics

Four full-cast adaptations of Rosamund Lehmann’s best-known novels, plus short stories and a bonus programme about her life and work.

An acclaimed novelist, short story writer and critic, Leslie Poles Hartley is best known for his 1953 novel The Go-Between, which won the W. H. Heinemann Award and was adapted as a BAFTA-winning film starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates. Included here is a radio dramatisation of that classic tale, alongside adaptations of three further novels and five short stories.

Long before he'd produced any of his great works, Oscar Wilde was already famous for being famous. Armed only with some witty epigrams, a carefully crafted persona and his genius for self-promotion, he had conquered America and transformed himself from nobody to star. This radio collection opens with four plays from Radio 4's Born to be Wilde season, offering a 21st-century perspective on the making of one of the first true celebrities. First up are two sparkling and surprising productions of his two most popular comedies, marking the peak of his theatrical career.

A thrilling new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Jules Verne's classic novel. 'Descend, bold traveller into the crater of the Jokul of Snæfell, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the kalends of July and you will attain the centre of the earth. Which I have done.'

Three BBC radio adaptations of famous novels by the prolific 19th-century author Mrs Oliphant - plus an episode of Reading Aloud, with extracts from her autobiography. Sometimes called ‘the feminist Trollope’, Margaret Oliphant wrote more than 100 works of fiction in a wide variety of genres, ranging from novels of small-town life to historical tales and supernatural stories. Included here are three of her best-loved works, brimming with dry wit, perceptive irony and flawed but fascinating heroines.

In this BBC radio full-cast dramatisation of one of Jane Austen's most beloved works, the devoted Dashwood sisters are forced by tragic circumstances to set about the delicate task of finding suitable husbands. John Willoughby quickly and seemingly irreversibly captures Marianne's heart. Her sister, Elinor, finds few suitors and even fewer reasons to open up in a society fuelled by social status....

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.

A BBC radio recreation of the Marx Brothers’ lost shows, starring Michael Roberts and Frank Lazarus. First broadcast on America’s NBC network between 1932-33, Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel charted the exploits of shady lawyer Waldorf T Flywheel (played by Groucho Marx) and his dopey assistant, Emmanuel Ravelli (played by Chico Marx). The original recordings were lost, but the scripts were rediscovered and edited by Michael Barson. These were published as Flywheel, Shyster & Flywheel: The Marx Brothers Lost Radio Show and licensed for a dramatic adaptation by the BBC.

The TARDIS arrives in County Durham, England, in 1958. Seaham Chemical Beach was once a scene of heavy industry, long since abandoned, but now local residents are having nightmares and seeing apparitions. It isn’t long before the Doctor and Ruby are affected by the beach’s peculiar atmosphere. As they begin to forget exactly who they are, Ruby hears a distant voice calling her on. Whose memories are filling the travellers’ heads, and what is the significance of Ghost Beach, in the Sea of Despair, on the planet Farfrom? Even more importantly – who is Reg?

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.

Tim McInnerny stars as Allan Quatermaine in this dramatic full-cast BBC Radio 4 adaptation of H Rider Haggard's classic Victorian novel. A chance meeting with Sir Henry Curtis and his friend John Good leads professional game hunter Allan Quatermaine on a dangerous expedition to the uncharted, hostile heart of Africa.

Pretty Edith Ottley is married to pompous Bruce and has a son, Archie. She seems content with her life in Knightsbridge until she meets the charming and handsome Aylmer Ross. The physical attraction between the two is electric, and they could make the perfect couple. However, there is more to husband Bruce than meets the eye, and when Edith discovers this fact, will that help to change her mind?

Novelist and poet George Meredith is widely regarded as the last great Victorian author. He influenced writers including Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize seven times. This BBC collection features dramatisations of his most famous novel, The Egoist, and his witty bildungsroman The Adventures of Harry Richmond.

Forerunner to the renowned operas, The Figaro Plays by Pierre Augustin Caron De Beaumarchais are a celebration of how intelligence and wit can bring any servant level with their aristocratic masters. Considered scandalous in their time, the plays went on to be adapted by Rossini (The Barber of Seville) and Mozart (The Marriage of Figaro) to become some of the most popular and acclaimed operas of all time. These original plays show us the stories behind these popular operas.

Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon is best-known for A Scots Quair, a trilogy of novels comprising Sunset Song, Cloud Howe and Grey Granite that are considered to be among the most important works of the 20th century Scottish Renaissance. Featured here are the BBC Radio dramatisations of the first two novels, as well as a special documentary feature exploring the landscape and legacy of Sunset Song.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon was one of the most important and influential female novelists of the 19th Century, and the founder (alongside Wilkie Collins) of the popular 'sensation fiction' genre. This collection features her best-known novel, Lady Audley's Secret, a thrilling tale of bigamy, murder and arson that outraged Victorian society on its first release—and was an instant bestseller. Also included are two atmospheric short stories and an edition of Sensational Women exploring her life and work.

Nina Stibbe came to fame with Love, Nina, a memoir of her time working as a nanny in 1980s literary London. It won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2014 National Book Awards, and was adapted into a hit BBC TV series. She has since written six more books, four of them novels, and a sparkling selection of her work is included here, alongside two fascinating interviews with Nina herself.

Widely acknowledged as the master of the supernatural, M. R. James penned many of his classic ghost stories to be read aloud to friends, by candlelight, in his study on Christmas Eve. These five adaptations, originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4, perfectly capture the mood of nerve-jangling...

Unabridged readings of four spine-tingling stories. This suspenseful anthology collects together four gripping tales of gruesome scientific experiments and chilling supernatural events - all read in full by some of the very best voice actors. With over 18 hours of electrifying listening, tracked by chapter, these classic tales will have you on the edge of your seat.

A collection of RD Wingfield’s finest thrillers from the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties Best known for his ‘Inspector Jack Frost’ series of novels, RD Wingfield also penned a string of gripping thrillers for BBC Radio. Initially thought lost, many of the 14 dramas in this collection were...