Showing results by narrator "Samuel West" in All Categories

The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn is the third novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series. Morse had never ceased to wonder why, with the staggering advances in medical science, all pronouncements concerning times of death seemed so disconcertingly vague. The newly appointed member of...

Often described as ‘the father of realism’, Henrik Ibsen was a pioneer of modernist drama. He influenced playwrights as diverse as George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, and is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare. Included in this collection are adaptations of his tragicomic masterpiece The Wild Duck, his complex and compelling play Rosmersholm, the epic drama Brand and the tragedy John Gabriel Borkman.

The Secret of Annexe 3 is the seventh novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series. Morse sought to hide his disappointment. So many people in the Haworth Hotel that fateful evening had been wearing some sort of disguise – a change of dress, a change of make-up, a change of partner, a...

Brought to you by Penguin. Birdsong is a mesmerising story of love and war spanning three generations between WW1 and present day. THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 1910. Amiens, Northern France. Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman, arrives in the French city to stay with the Azaire family. He falls...

When Peter Pan flies into the Darlings’ room one dusky evening, he convinces Wendy and her brothers to come with him to the magical world of Neverland, where children never grow old. It’s the beginning of an amazing adventure featuring a cast of classic characters, from the mischievous Lost Boys and jealous fairy Tinker Bell, to the villainous Captain Hook and his pirate band. But will the Darlings choose to stay in Neverland or return to London to grow up like normal children?

In 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young Scottish woman, goes to occupied France on a dual mission: to run an apparently simple errand for a British special operations group and to search for her lover, an English airman called Peter Gregory, who has gone missing in action.

Sir John Betjeman’s unique relationship with the BBC left a lasting legacy of poetry, readings and performances. A First Class Collection features a selection of some of his most memorable and best-loved poetry. Betjeman was one of the best-known and loved Poet Laureates and over a hundred...

Iris Murdoch's first novel is set in a part of London where struggling writers rub shoulders with successful bookies, and film starlets with frantic philosophers. Its hero, Jake Donaghue, is a drifting, clever, likeable young man who makes a living out of translation work and sponging on his friends. A meeting with Anna, an old flame, leads him into a series of fantastic adventures.

In this BBC full-cast production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena run to the woods and stumble into a life separate from time itself. Fairy magic wreaks havoc and midsummer madness takes over as lovers tread the delicate line between fantasy and reality...

A bumper collection of accessible classics from the perennially popular BBC Radio 4 series This diverse, wide-ranging anthology features readings of 10 of the greatest books in the English language, taken from the BBC's Book at Bedtime and performed by a stellar cast of narrators. Here are...

Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger award, The Wench is Dead is the eighth novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series. As portrayed by John Thaw in ITV's Inspector Morse. That night he dreamed in Technicolor. He saw the ochre-skinned, scantily clad siren in her black, arrowed stockings. And...

Winner of the CWA Silver Dagger Award, The Dead of Jericho is the fifth novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set Inspector Morse series. Morse switched on the gramophone to 'play', and sought to switch his mind away from all the terrestrial troubles. Sometimes, this way, he almost managed to forget...

Four full-cast BBC Radio productions of Shakespeare's finest history plays Introduced by Sir Richard Eyre, these four iconic productions, featuring star casts, bring Shakespeare's gripping histories to life in all their rich complexity. Henry IV, Part One Young Prince Hal struggles with his...

The year is 1199, the place the Welsh Marches. Young Arthur de Caldicot is given a shining stone in which his legendary namesake is revealed. In 100 short chapters that brilliantly evoke life in a medieval manor, stories of the boy King Arthur begin to echo and anticipate the secrets and...

Dramatisations of some of Kipling’s finest fiction for adults, including ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ and The Light That Failed Well-known for his poems and stories set in India during British Imperial rule, Rudyard Kipling was the first English author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature...

John Keats' letters paint an unforgettably vivid and moving picture of the richly productive but also tragic final years of the poet's life. As he ponders on the nature of the writer's craft, he must first confront his brother's death from tuberculosis and then the imminent prospect of his own, tormented by the fear that he will not live to consummate his relationship with Fanny Brawne.

Judea, AD 26. Two men's lives run almost in parallel. One is a prince of Jerusalem. The other is known as 'He that is born King of the Jews'. When Judah Ben Hur visits his childhood playmate Messala, now a Roman tribune, he hopes to rekindle an old friendship. But their meeting has devastating consequences. Betrayed and falsely accused of attempted murder, Judah's property is confiscated and his family arrested—and he himself is sent to the galleys. 

In this BBC full-cast production of Richard II, the male ego and narcissism of monarchs are hung out to dry... Written entirely in verse, the rhythms of the language in this epic tragedy encompass its themes of dignity and kingship with fitting grandeur and pathos, as the capricious and...

The British Classics Collection – Volume 2 steps into the grand world of 18th, 19th, and 20th-century British literature to create a compelling anthology featuring iconic works that span time and genres. From the whimsy of Alice in Wonderland to the mystery of The Woman in White, the philosophical insights of The Waste Land and the unforgettable detective stories of Sherlock Holme, this volume offers a rich variety of British literary masterpieces.

Young Claudio has fallen for the lovely heiress Hero, who also loves him. Their path to the altar looks smooth, until the evil Don John intervenes. All ends happily, thanks to his incompetent assassins and the lucky discoveries of the bungling constable Dogberry. Central to the play, one of Shakespeare's best-loved comedies, are Beatrice and Benedick, masters of wit and sworn foes to marriage - until a plot is hatched to bring them together.