Showing results by narrator "Siobhan Redmond" in All Categories

Award-winning 'Queen of Crime' Val McDermid has sold over 17 million books worldwide, and been translated into over 40 languages. Her Wire in the Blood series was adapted for TV, starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris, and ran for six seasons. Included here are full-cast adaptations of several of her acclaimed novels, as well as four tales specially written for BBC Radio.

At her execution Mary, Queen of Scots wore red. Widely known as the colour of strength and passion, it was in fact worn by Mary as the Catholic symbol of martyrdom. In 16th-century Europe, women's voices were suppressed and silenced. Even for a queen like Mary, her prime duty was to bear sons. In an age when textiles expressed power, Mary exploited them to emphasise her female agency.

Based on the real-life memoirs of the 19th Century investigator who inspired Sherlock Holmes, Inspector James McLevy, this atmospheric mystery series features the fictional casebook of Edinburgh's finest thief-taker. Accompanied by his loyal partner, Constable Mulholland, McLevy prowls the murky streets of 1840s Leith bringing criminals to justice—assisted by the madam of Edinburgh's finest bawdy-house, the deliciously immoral Jean Brash.

Jeremiah Bourne is a boy with a remarkable gift. He can travel in time. Not by using a time machine, or stepping through a dimensional portal. It just happens to him, as though by accident. One minute he’s in the present day, the next, he’s 100 years in the past, standing in the London of 1910. Jeremiah has two questions: how did he get there - and how can he get back? On his quest for the answers, he enlists the help of Phyllis Stokes of The Society for Theosophical Research and her equally eccentric brother, Roger Allcot Standish, magistrate, spiritualist and dedicated nudist.

Inspired by the real-life memoirs of Edinburgh's first detective, James McLevy, here are more fantastic fictional adventures featuring the tenacious Victorian crime-solver. Once again, McLevy and his faithful sidekick Constable Mulholland patrol the dark wynds and back alleys of 1840s Leith tracking down evildoers—aided by a surprising ally: the beautiful and resourceful brothel-keeper Jean Brash.

In a nationwide poll conducted by BBC Television's Bookworm to find the nation's favourite poem, Rudyard Kipling's "If" was voted number one. This compilation brings together over 40 poems from the poll, including the top 10, all stirringly read by John Nettles, Siobhàn Redmond, Greg Wise, and Emma Fielding.

First published in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson's rollicking historical novel Kidnapped was an instant bestseller. It was followed by an 1893 sequel, Catriona, which Stevenson regarded as his 'high water mark', declaring that he would 'never do a better book'. Included here is the epic 10-part BBC radio dramatisation of both action-packed tales.

Isabel Aird is aghast when her husband is appointed doctor to an extraordinary waterworks being built miles from the city. But Isabel, denied the motherhood role that is expected of her by a succession of miscarriages, finds unexpected consolations in a place where she can feel the presence of her unborn children and begin to work out what her life in Victorian society is for.

Forced to run for his life after killing two suspects, assaulting the Chief Constable and inadvertently causing the death of Lieutenant Roach, McLevy has fled Leith for San Francisco. Somewhat rashly, and against her better judgement, Jean Brash has decided to accompany him. Arriving in America, it seems they’ve jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. San Francisco is as cold and foggy as Leith, and home to just as many criminals. With the Gold Rush at its height, the city is a madhouse, its inhabitants driven by greed.

As Heather Brodie kisses her lover goodnight, her disabled husband lies dead, his throat cut from ear to ear. Who wanted Gavin Brodie dead? Many people, including Gavin Brodie himself. Crushed by an incurable illness, he pleaded to be allowed to die. When Alice Rice is brought in to investigate, another terminally-ill man is found murdered. Is it just a coincidence? Or is there a serial killer with a mission to get rid of the sick and infirm?

Just because you're in love, doesn't mean you're meant to spend your life together, right? Having read Women are from Mars and Men are from Croydon and Set Sail on the SS Relationship, unemployed ex-soldier Andy thinks it's about time he and his left-wing lawyer girlfriend Julie headed into deeper waters. But there's plenty in their way, from comically grim airport trips and fancy dinner parties, to nearly causing the assassination of the Prime Minister and discovering Andy's dad has been living a double life.

When impoverished watchmaker Caron invents a pioneering device that could revolutionise timekeeping, his fortunes begin to change. Marrying a young, upper-class widow, he takes on a new noble name - de Beaumarchais - and sets out to conquer Louis XV's court. But his attempts to rise through the ranks of Versailles society are blocked by royal clockmaker Lepaute - as well as courtly crushes, rumours of war and illicit printing.

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.

For fans of Elementary, Ripper Street and Sherlock Holmes - meet Jean Brash, a feisty, self-made woman turned sleuth in murky Victorian Edinburgh where crime and high society meet. After Mistress of the Just Land, the second adventure in David Ashton's Jean Brash series.... A theatre company arrives in Leith to perform King Lear. A robbery is planned, a gruesome murder committed, both of which set Inspector James McLevy on the prowl.....

New Year's Day - and through the misty streets of Victorian Edinburgh, an elegant female figure walks the cobblestones with a certain vengeful purpose. Jean Brash, the mistress of the Just Land, brings her cool intelligence to solving a murder, a murder that took place in her own bawdy house (the best in Edinburgh and her pride and joy). A prominent judge, strangled and left dangling, could bring her whole life to ruin, and she didn't haul herself off the streets, up through low, dirty houses of pleasure and violent vicious men, to let that come to pass.

Midwinter, and it’s a freezing night in Leith, near Edinburgh’s red-light district. A policewoman’s flashlight stabs the darkness in a snow-covered cemetery. The circle of light stops on a colourless, dead face.

So begins the hunt for a serial murderer of prostitutes in Gillian Galbraith’s third Alice Rice mystery, The Dying of the Light. Partly inspired by the real-life killings of prostitutes in Ipswich, this novel explores a hidden world where sex is bartered for money and drugs.

When the body of a half-clothed woman is discovered in an Edinburgh park, a murder investigation is launched. The victim has not been reported missing and there are few clues to her identity. Soon after, the naked corpse of a prominent clergyman is found, also in a park. DS Alice Rice wonders if the same killer is at work, and if so, what is the connection between the apparently motiveless attacks? The Road to Hell, the fourth in the series, takes the policewoman to new personal depths.

Five full-cast dramas by the celebrated Scottish writer Liz Lochhead, plus a short story Liz Lochhead is a widely recognised poet, playwright and performer. She was the Makar, Scotland’s national poet, between 2011 and 2016, and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2015. The six...