Showing results by narrator "Amanda Root" in All Categories

One of the greatest love stories ever written, Jane Eyre is the tale of a young woman entangled with the powerful Mr. Rochester. What lurks in the attic at Thornfield, the ancestral home of the surly Mr. Rochester? Will the governess Jane Eyre discover his secret, and having discovered it, live to regret that knowledge? Battling inside Jane are passion and prudence; she struggles to survive the turmoil they cause.

When Oberon, King of the Fairies, uses his magic upon four runaway lovers in a midsummer wood outside Athens, chaos ensues. Who really loves whom? Meanwhile, a band of well-meaning but bungling local actors have their rehearsal sabotaged by the mischievous Puck, who bewitches their leader, Bottom, and Titania, the Fairy Queen. The result is a lively and anarchic comedy which can only be resolved by an elaborate disentangling of spells.

Shakespeare's most sophisticated comedy is a riotous tale of hopelessly unrequited passions and mistaken identity. Duke Orsino is in love with the noblewoman Olivia. She, however, has fallen for his servant Cesario, who is actually Viola, a woman disguised as a man, who loves Orsino: Confusion is rife. Meanwhile, Olivia's arrogant steward Malvolio is cruelly tricked by her uncle Sir Toby Belch, his friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and the maidservant Maria into believing his mistress loves him.

Like Apollo, the sun god, he sears Nicola's soul. Just a single glance - that was all it took. Nicola is in love! And not just with an ordinary man. Her heart has been captured by Lord Sebastian, better known as "The God" - the most handsome and dashing man who ever lived. But are gods always quite as perfect as they are meant to be? Nicola is about to find out.

Eleven compelling BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramas telling the stories of the Russian tsars. Broadcast to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution, this extraordinary drama cycle by Mike Walker comprises 11 ambitious plays spanning over 400 years, exploring the lives of Russia’s key rulers from Ivan the Terrible to Vladimir Putin. 

Here is a BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Jane Austen's perceptive study of middle class morals and mores in the 19th century. The cast includes Hannah Gordon as the narrator, Amanda Root as Fanny Price, Jane Lapotaire as Mrs Norris, and Michael Williams as Sir Thomas Bertram.

"If war spares me," wrote Vera Brittain to her brother, Edward, in 1916, "it will be my one aim to immortalise in a book the story of us four." Seventeen years later, Vera was to achieve her aim with the acclaimed Testament of Youth. This series of letters was the inspiration behind Testament. Written between Vera; her brother; her fiancé, Roland Leighton; and their two best friends, Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow, they give a unique perspective on the most horrifying conflict the world has ever seen.

Persuasion is a tale of love and marriage, told with the irony and insight that sets Jane Austen's work apart. Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth have met and separated years before. The story of how their reunion forces a recognition of the false values and people that drove them apart gives Persuasion its enduring power.

The owl tree is not like any tree Joe has ever seen. It’s huge and leafy and shivers at times like a person; it even seems to speak. Granny Diamond once saw an owl perched among its branches and she has loved the tree ever since. It means the world to her. But her neighbour, Mr Rock, wants to cut it down. Why does he dislike the owl tree so much? Does the tree have a secret to tell Joe? And how can he, a boy too scared even to climb the tree, be the one to save it?

In this BBC radio full-cast dramatisation of one of Jane Austen's most beloved works, Catherine Morland's overactive imagination makes her life more complicated than she would have wished.... Catherine is obsessed with Gothic novels, often getting swept up by her taste for the dramatic and tragic. Did Mrs Tilney really die nine years previously, or has she been murdered or imprisoned in her chambers this whole time? Meanwhile, she is torn between two suitors, the handsome and clever Henry Tilney and the arrogant John Thorpe....