Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in Historical Fiction

1546, and the great heretic hunt is underway across England. The radical Protestant preacher Anne Askew has been arrested and condemned to death and Shardlake is ordered to attend the burning. It's a grisly, cruel spectacle that leaves him feeling disturbed. Rumours are circulating that Anne had connections to his protector, Queen Catherine Parr - and if she falls, he could be next.... His unease deepens when a messenger arrives from Whitehall Palace: the queen is in trouble and asking for his help.

Now a much-loved modern classic, the Country Girls Trilogy was fiercely controversial when first published in the 1960s. Banned by the Irish censors and burned by the church, the books nonetheless achieved widespread acclaim and international success and launched Edna O’Brien’s literary career. These three BBC radio adaptations follow the lives and loves of best friends Kate and Baba, two teenage girls growing up in repressive rural Ireland in the years before the sexual revolution.

Stephen Fry narrates this full-cast dramatisation of the famous Victorian comic novel, a portrait of English society and its mores, with Emma Fielding as Becky Sharp. Duration: 5 hours approx.

Shardlake returns in this atmospheric BBC Radio 4 full-cast adaptation of the fourth novel in C. J. Sansom's bestselling Tudor crime series.Spring, 1543. London's streets are filled with preachers; strange signs and portents are seen everywhere; and young men, maddened by differing interpretations of the Bible, are drawn into dangerous fundamentalism.

A collection of BBC dramatisations and readings of William Boyd's award-winning novels and short stories. One of Britain's foremost contemporary writers, William Boyd is renowned worldwide for his bestselling novels, which have been translated into over 30 languages. He has won numerous awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award (for A Good Man in Africa), the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for An Ice-Cream War) and the Costa Book Award (for Restless).

1939, and naïve young newlywed Harriet Pringle arrives in Bucharest with her husband, Guy - just as Europe is about to rip itself apart. She believes she knows everything about the man she has married, but soon realises she knows nothing. Guy is oblivious to her needs and desires, seeming only to care about his job as a university lecturer, his friends and the beautiful, voluptuous Sophie. Struggling to build a life in a strange city, in the face of imminent invasion, Harriet feels bereft - and increasingly isolated.

When Biggles receives a letter from an old wartime chum asking for help, he responds at once. With his comrades Algy, Ginger and Flight Sergeant Smyth, our hero flies to Fort Beaver in Canada, where winter is closing in around the remote airfield. There he discovers that his buddy Wilks is being menaced by a sinister character called 'Brindle' McBain and his cronies.

1730. Driven by a wild romantic impulse, Francis Herries uproots his family from Doncaster to the lakeland valley of Borrowdale. Accompanied by his housekeeper/mistress, Alice, they settle in his tumbledown ancestral home, Herries, in the shadow of the Cumberland fells. Proud, stubborn and temperamental, Francis cuts himself off from his brother, spurns his long-suffering wife and becomes embroiled in drink and debauchery. When he sells Alice at Keswick Fair, his reputation is ruined, and the locals dub him 'Rogue' Herries.

An atmospheric BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation based on C. J. Sansom's best-selling Tudor crime novel featuring hunchback lawyer detective Matthew Shardlake. Autumn, 1541. King Henry VIII has set out on a spectacular Royal Progress to York, aiming to strike fear and awe into his rebellious northern subjects. Shardlake and his assistant, Barak, arrive in the city a day ahead of the 3,000-strong procession.

1951. With the Festival of Britain in full swing, the country is looking forward to a brighter, more prosperous future. But young Brian Oldman cannot forget the past. Traumatised by a murder he witnessed when he was just six, he holds a terrible secret, but there is a more devastating secret he has yet to discover. Falling under the spell of his mother, Cath, he is drawn into London's criminal underworld, where territory battles are raging between the old guard and the new.

Kenneth Branagh stars in BBC Radio 4's ambitious eight-hour dramatisation of Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman's epic masterpiece set during the Battle of Stalingrad. This powerful work, completed in 1960, charts the fate of both a nation and a family in the turmoil of war. Its comparison of Stalinism with Nazism was considered by Soviet authorities to be so dangerous that the KGB placed the manuscript under arrest and Grossman was informed his book would not be published for at least 200 years.

Paterson Joseph, John Hurt, Lesley Manville and Harriet Walter are among the cast of BBC Radio 4's epic full-cast dramatisation. Adapted for radio by Timberlake Wertenbaker, Leo Tolstoy's epic story follows the fortunes of three Russian aristocratic families during the Napoleonic War. First broadcast on New Year's Day 2015, the drama also features Alun Armstrong, Natasha Little, David Calder, Phoebe Fox, Sam Reid and Joanna David. Duration: 10 hours approx.

Back in Folkestone, the residents are dealing with the aftereffects of a devastating air raid. Howard Argent is kept busy at the Bevan while Ulysses Pilchard experiments with electroshock therapy. Meanwhile, women’s suffrage, prostitution and unmarried mothers are hot topics, and Kitty Lumley experiences the sharp end of intolerance.

Charles Dickens was, for a time, editor of a daily newspaper. This series takes an imaginative look at how Dickens would have tackled bringing the news to the masses. We follow Dickens the editor as he contends with railway crashes, gory deaths in the River Thames, having his editorial judgment scrutinised, working with tyrannical landowners, entering the murky worlds of opium and prostitution and, most tragically of all, investigating a child's death. He and his newspaper tackle financial plotting, encountering a young and secretive Disraeli, and the prospect of war overseas.

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose by Nick Warburton, starring Steven Mackintosh.

When Open Book asked various authors to champion a favourite neglected classic on the programme, Michael Morpurgo chose The Snow Goose - perhaps no surprise, with his own story 'War Horse' depicting a friendship between a boy and his horse which takes them both into the horror of World War I.

Young and idealistic, he is full of enthusiasm when he first arrives in the small mining village of Drineffy, where he is to work as assistant to the elderly Dr Page. But he soon encounters corruption, apathy, and appalling medical practices and becomes determined to storm the citadel of the medical establishment and make a difference.

This BBC Radio collection includes the Booker nominated A Month in the Country. Be transported to the Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where, in the aftermath of the First World War, survivor Tom Birkin spends a summer uncovering a medieval mural in the local church.

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.

H. E. Bates is probably best known for his comic novel The Darling Buds of May, which introduced the lovable Larkins to the world and sparked three hugely popular TV adaptations. In his 68 years, Bates wrote over 20 further novels, more than 300 short stories, children’s books, poems, plays and non-fiction. This collection brings together three full-cast BBC Radio dramatisations and fourteen excellent readings, rounding off with extracts from H. E. Bates autobiographies.

One of the best-selling and most famous sagas of the last four decades, The Shell Seekers is an enduring classic which has touched the hearts of millions worldwide. Set in Gloucestershire, London, Cornwall and Ibiza, and shifting between 1939 and 1985, this poignant drama explores themes of memory, fate, trauma and connection.