Showing results by narrator "Samuel West" in All Categories

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.

Famed for being Dickens’s last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend is a sophisticated social analysis and damning satire of wealth, and the greed and corruption it can bring. First published between 1864 and 1865, Our Mutual Friend revolves around the inheritance of a large fortune left by John Harmon Sr., owner of a huge estate. Once John passes, his wealth is left to his son, but only under one condition: that he marries Miss Bella Wilfer, a shallow young woman preoccupied with money.

Beren was a mortal man, but Lúthien was an immortal Elf. Her father, a great Elvish lord, was deeply opposed to Beren, and imposed on him an impossible task that he must perform before he might wed Lúthien. Undaunted by Lord Thingol’s challenge, Beren and Lúthien embark on the supremely heroic attempt to rob Morgoth, the greatest of all evil beings, of a Silmaril, one of the hallowed jewels that adorn the Black Enemy’s crown.

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.

In this BBC full-cast production of Coriolanus, allies and enemies become blurred just as Rome is in sight... Coriolanus tells of a proud Roman general who captures the town Corioli but subsequently falls from favour with the Roman people. He allies himself with the Volscians and leads an attack...

Tim Cornish thought he'd gotten away with murder. For months after he'd killed his lover off the Alaskan coast, there hadn't been a word. But then the letters started to arrive. It seems that someone knows what Tim has done.... This compelling thriller delivers such a dark picture of romantic love that murder seems its natural mate. Frightening, suspenseful, and deeply unsettling, No Night Is Too Long is a modern crime masterpiece and will be enjoyed by readers of P. D. James and Ian Rankin.

First published between 1870 and 1893, Émile Zola’s 20-book cycle chronicling four generations of the Rougon-Macquarts was a shocking exposé of the decadence, degradation and moral decay of 19th-century France. It included some of his greatest novels, among them his masterpiece, Germinal. These innovative, ambitious dramas, first broadcast on Radio 4 over 24 hours in 2015-16, are a radical reimagining of Zola’s classic series, introducing us to 104-year-old matriarch, Dide, imprisoned in an asylum in southern France.

In Aramanth, exams are everything. When Kestrel rebels, her family are sentenced to the harshest punishment. To save them, Kestrel learns the secret of the wind singer and she sets out to discover the true source of the evil that grips Aramanth.

From a noted Cambridge zoologist, a wildly fun and scientifically sound exploration of what alien life must be like, using universal laws that govern life on Earth and in space. Scientists are confident that life exists elsewhere in the universe. Yet rather than taking a realistic approach to...

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...

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 complete first and second series of Mark Tavener’s BBC Radio 4 comedy thriller set in a crisis-ridden Cambridge college When prominent don and celebrity TV historian Peter Devanti dies after dining at High Table, his colleague Gilbert suspects foul play and invites his former student Simon...

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. When beautiful Clarissa Harlowe is forced to marry the rich but repulsive Mr. Solmes, she refuses, much to her family’s chagrin. She escapes their persecution with the help of Mr. Lovelace, a dashing and seductive rake, but soon finds herself in a far worse dilemma. Terrifying and enlightening, Clarissa weaves a tapestry of narrative experimentation into a gripping morality tale of good versus evil.

Read by Samuel West, known for his roles in Van Helsing and Notting Hill. Last Bus to Woodstock is the novel that began Colin Dexter's phenomenally successful Inspector Morse series. 'Do you think I'm wasting your time, Lewis?' Lewis was nobody's fool and was a man of some honesty and integrity...

Samuel West reads ten of Rudyard Kipling’s famous tales, as broadcast on BBC Radio 4. "How the Whale Got His Throat", "How the Leopard Got His Spots", "The Beginning of the Armadillos", "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin", "The Cat That Walked By Himself", "How the Camel Got His Hump", "The Crab That Played With The Sea", "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo", "The Butterfly That Stamped", "The Elephant’s Child".

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...

Service of All the Dead is the fourth novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series. The sweet countenance of Reason greeted Morse serenely when he woke, and told him that it would be no bad idea to have a quiet look at the problem itself before galloping off to a solution. Chief Inspector...

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.

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...

Last Seen Wearing is the second Inspector Morse novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series. After leaving home to return to school, teenager Valerie Taylor had completely vanished, and the trail had gone cold. Until two years, three months and two days after Valerie's disappearance...