Showing results by narrator "Eleanor Bron" in All Categories

It began in a women's club in London on a February afternoon. A discreet advertisement in The Times, addressed to "Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine..." lures four very different women away from the dismal British weather to San Salvatore, a castle high above a bay on the sunny Italian Riviera. There, the Mediterranean spirit stirs the souls of Mrs Arbuthnot, Mrs Wilkins, Lady Caroline Dester, and Mrs Fisher, and remarkable changes occur.

Here is a new audio edition of the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of Anthony Trollope's gently satirical tales of provincial life, available together in one download. Nearly 20 hours of ironic, witty, and wonderfully written drama is contained in this audiobook. The cast includes Anna Massey, Alex Jennings, David Haig, Rosemary Leach, Kenneth Cranham, Emma Fielding, and Brenda Blethyn.

A dying woman confesses a terrible secret to her priest along with a cryptic list of nine names. Before he is able to uncover anything more, the priest is struck dead in the fog and the police discover the list in his shoe. Our hero Mark Easterbrook, a historian, learns of a secretive organisation known as The Pale Horse and of their supernatural connections in the village of Much Deeping. The list of names seems to foretell the deaths of several people and Mark must piece together the clues and unearth the connections between them all.

Simon Russell Beale stars in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of John le Carré's first novel, which introduced his most famous character, George Smiley. This dramatisation, set in London in the late 1950s, finds Smiley engaged in the humdrum job of security vetting. But when a Foreign Office civil servant commits suicide after an apparently unproblematic interview, Smiley is baffled. Refusing to believe that Fennan shot himself, Smiley decides to investigate.

The story follows the life of Tina, a young woman caught between the mother who adopted her - the beautiful, upstanding Delia - and her true mother, her plain, unmarried ‘aunt’ Charlotte, who gave Tina up to provide her with a socially acceptable life. The three women live quietly together until Tina’s wedding day, when Delia’s and Charlotte’s hidden jealousies rush to the surface.

Beautiful, sophisticated and endlessly ambitious Lily Bart endeavours to climb the social ladder of New York's elite by securing a good match and living beyond her means. Now nearing 30 years of age and having rejected several proposals, forever in the hope of finding someone better, her future prospects are threatened. A damning commentary of 20th-century social order, Edith Wharton's tale established her as one of the greatest British novelists of the 1900s.

gentle romance begins innocently enough in the stalls of a London theatre where Catherine is enjoying her ninth and Christopher his thirty-sixth visit to the same play. He is a magnificent young man with flame-coloured hair. She is the sweetest little thing in a hat. There is just one complication: Christopher is 25, while Catherine is just a little bit older. Flattered by the passionate attentions of youth, Catherine, with marriage and motherhood behind her, is at first circumspect, but finally succumbs to her lover's charms.

Four spine-tingling short stories from masters of the genre, read by Michael Maloney, Eleanor Bron and Andrew Sachs: 'The Phantom Coach' by Amelia B. Edwards; 'The Judge’s House' by Bram Stoker; 'The Tapestried Chamber' by Sir Walter Scott; 'The Man of Science' by Jerome K. Jerome.

Anne and Edmund Cornhill have a happy marriage and a charming house. They are content, complete, absorbed in their private idyll. Arabella, who comes to stay one lazy summer, is rich, rootless and amoral - and, as they find out, beautiful and loving.With her elegant prose the author traces the web of love and desire that entangles these three; but it is Arabella who finally loses out.

The master turns sleuth and spy in this quintet of radio dramas. Actor, playwright, songwriter, director, author and star - as far as we know, Noël Coward never added ‘detective’ or ‘undercover agent’ to his astonishing achievements. But could the intriguing gaps in his memoirs be hiding a thrilling secret life?

A BBC radio collection of full-cast dramatisations, bringing together Edith Wharton’s most popular and best-loved works.

Eugenia, an American expatriate brought up in Europe, arrives in rural New England with her charming brother Felix, hoping to find a wealthy second husband after the collapse of her marriage to a German prince. Their exotic, sophisticated airs cause quite a stir with their affluent, God-fearing American cousins, the Wentworth's - and provoke the disapproval of their uncle, suspicious of foreign influences.

Beatrice considers herself to be delicate and sensitive, idle and confused. Forced into early retirement, she has an unashamed and romantic desire to be rescued by the ideal man. But Beatrice's only family is her orderly sister, Miriam.

Marie Antoinette's dramatic life-story continues to arouse mixed emotions. To many people, she is still 'la reine mechante', whose extravagance and frivolity helped to bring down the French monarchy; her indifference to popular suffering epitomised by the (apocryphal) words: 'let them eat cake'. Others are equally passionate in her defence: to them, she is a victim of misogyny.

Archie Logan, a country doctor, and his wife Liza lead an orthodox-seeming life, and everything is well until Archie's father, a widower for over 30 years, falls in love. His choice, a woman of powerful charm, has a profound effect on all the Logans, adults and children alike. The house and family turn from being a refuge to being a cage. Archie and Liza risk losing everything they have built.

Dairy farmer Robin Meredith has just buried his Californian wife Caro who, though a central figure at the farm for more than twenty years, had remained a mystery to the family. With Caro gone, her adopted daughter Judy feels cut adrift. To Robin’s brother, Joe, Caro had been the emblem of a freedom he’d glimpsed in America and his grief is far deeper than the family suspects. Even Robin and Joe’s parents, entrenched in the adjoining farm, feel suddenly vulnerable to time and change as well.

May's second marriage to Colonel Herbert Brown-Lacey is turning out to be a terrible mistake. Her children find the Colonel's presence oppressive.

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923-2014) wrote brilliant novels about what love can do to people, but in her own life the lasting relationship she sought so ardently always eluded her. She grew up yearning to be an actress, but when that ambition was thwarted by marriage and the war, she turned to fiction. Her first novel, The Beautiful Visit, won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize - she went on to write 14 more, of which the best-loved were the five volumes of The Cazalet Chronicle.

Lifelong friends, now in their sixties, James, a teacher, and Hugh, a TV personality, both live with attractive women 25 years their junior. But the age difference is a time bomb, ticking away at the heart of both relationships. Kate's hunger for a life more in keeping with her own age threatens to bring her eight years with James to an end. And how is Julia to cope when her own career begins to blossom while Hugh's is withering before their eyes? The arrival of Miss Beatrice Bachelor, a razor-sharp Oxford spinster, fuels the discontent in both girls.

From schooldays to summer holidays, and from childhood fantasies to nostalgic reminiscences, writers have provided us with a rich seam of children’s poetry over the years.This delightful selection brings over seventy poems together, from such celebrated poets as A.A.