Showing results by narrator "Anna Massey" in All Categories

Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" ("A Moorish Captain") by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565. Othello revolves around four central...

Young and susceptible, Catherine Morland expects dark secrets and many dangers to be lurking in the hidden recesses of Northanger Abbey. In fact, the real obstacles lying in her path are more mundane, but just as serious as her imagined horrors.

A BBC Radio 4 black comedy by Michael Butt, originally broadcast as the ‘Afternoon Play’ on 19 October 2009. Max is set to inherit a small fortune when he turns 25, but standing between him and the money is his sister Katrin. And then there's the grandmother. It's dog-eat-dog on the mean...

These fairy tales are nasty. This is the land of goblins and sorceresses, with serious lines in revenge, not the land of unicorns and once upon a Barbie. The tales that the Brothers Grimm collected during their time as linguistics professors, first at the University of Göttingen and then in Berlin, at the request of the King of Prussia, were an attempt to map the folklore of the German-speaking people.

Sense and Sensibility is the story of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, and their very different responses to love, loss, and the crushing of their hopes and dreams. Austen chooses this novel to comment on the financial situation of women. The Dashwood Sisters are virtually penniles in a world where the "marriage market" is largely governed by money. They lose their home on their father's death and receive more kindness from strangers than from their own brother.

We came into the world like brother and brother; And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another. - Dromio of Ephesus The Comedy of Errors is likely the very first play Shakespeare ever wrote, and for that reason alone it deserves a special place in literary history. Yet, despite the...

In A Dry Season is the tenth novel in Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks series, following on from Dead Right. During a blistering summer, drought has depleted Thornfield Reservoir, uncovering the remains of a small village called Hobb's End – hidden from view for over 40 years. For a curious...

In the polluted and poverty-ridden Coketown, Louisa and Tom Gradgrind endure a cold and loveless childhood at the hands of their self-satisfied and unimaginative father Thomas. Starved of affection, Louisa is forced into a miserable marriage with the self-made industrialist Josiah Bounderby...

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her.

Anne Elliot made a big mistake: she let the love of her life get away. But seven years later, he comes back from the sea. As with all Jane Austen novels, this draws much of its appeal from the author's talent for observation and satire. The snobberies of a genteel world are exposed by its demurely mischievious heroine.

A classic Agatha Christie short story, available individually for the first time on audio. What is the mystery of the velvet-suited doll that appears to move from place to place? Is someone responsible, or can it be possible that it possesses its own sinister qualities?...

Northanger Abbey tells the story of a young girl, Catherine Morland who leaves her sheltered, rural home to enter the busy, sophisticated world of Bath in the late 1790s. Austen observes with insight and humour the interaction between Catherine and the various characters whom she meets there, and tracks her growing understanding of the world about her.