Showing titles in Literature & Fiction

Between 1954 and 1959, BBC Radio recorded 102 episodes of the hugely popular comedy classic, Hancock's Half Hour. The first modern sitcom, Hancock's Half Hour made stars of Tony Hancock, Sid James and Kenneth Williams, and launched Ray Galton and Alan Simpson as one of the most successful comedy-writing partnerships in history. Sadly, 22 episodes of the show went missing from the BBC archives, and have not been heard since their original transmission nearly 60 years ago - until Radio 4 lovingly recreated them over four highly-acclaimed series between 2014 and 2020.

You could say it all started with the red-eyed tramp with the slimy fingers who put the wind up Neville, the part-time barman, something rotten. Or when Archroy's wife swapped his trusty Morris Minor for five magic beans while he was out at the rubber factory.

Arthur Dent hadn't had a day as bad as this since the Earth had been blown up. Depressed and alone, Arthur finally settles on the small planet Lamuella and becomes a sandwich maker. Looking forward to a quiet life, his plans are thrown awry by the unexpected arrival of his daughter. There’s nothing worse than a frustrated teenager with a copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in their hands. When she runs away, Arthur goes after her determined to save her from the horrors of the universe. After all - he’s encountered most of them before.… Volume Five in the Trilogy of Five.

In a renovated Gothic church on Long Island lives Jonathan Hemlock, an art professor and a world-renowned mountain climber who finances his black-market art collection by working as a freelance assassin. Now, Hemlock is being tricked into a hazardous assignment that involves an attempt to scale one of the most treacherous mountain peaks in the Swiss Alps: the Eiger. His target is one of his three fellow climbers. The problem is that the CII can't tell him which one.

Jenny Eclair is one of Britain’s most-loved stand-up comedians, and the first woman to win the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe. She has written several acclaimed books, including the Sunday Times bestseller Older and Wider: A Survivor's Guide to the Menopause, and appeared on numerous TV and radio shows including Grumpy Old Women and Just a Minute. Collected here are some of her finest and funniest radio comedies, centred around women who are at a turning point in their lives.

Sir John Woodstock (James Fleet) is the Lord of the Castle and basically in charge of keeping order in the ramshackle medieval village. Although he hates all that torturing and usually lets the peasants off with a bit of community service. He lives in his huge but slightly falling down castle (but then it was built by the French, so what can one expect) with his daughter Anne (Martha Howe-Douglas) and very teenage son Henry (Steven Kynman). Anne’s best friend Charlotte (Ingrid Oliver) nearly always joins Anne on her constant quest to find fit men in the village.

Hobbes: Unhuman Series, Books I-IV. It contains: I - Inspector Hobbes and the Blood, II - Inspector Hobbes and the Curse, III - Inspector Hobbes and the Gold Diggers, and IV - Inspector Hobbes and the Bones.

Harry Flashman - the unrepentant bully of Tom Brown’s schooldays, now with a Victoria Cross - has three main talents: horsemanship, facility with foreign languages, and fornication. A reluctant military hero, Flashman plays a key part in most of the defining military campaigns of the 19th century, despite trying his utmost to escape them all. Expelled from Rugby for drunkenness, and none too welcome at home after seducing his father’s mistress, the young Flashman embarks on a military career with Lord Cardigan’s Hussars.

Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing f****n junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total f***n embarrassment tae the selfish, f****d-up brats ye've produced. Choose life.

On doctor's orders, Bertie Wooster retires to sample the bucolic delights of Maiden Eggesford. But his idyll is rudely shattered by Aunt Dahlia who wants him to nobble a racehorse. Similar blots on Bertie's horizon come in the shape of Major Plank, the African explorer, Vanessa Cook, proud beauty and 'moulder of men', and Orlo Porter, who seems to have nothing else to do but to think of sundering Bertie's head from his body.

There is a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. It’s not an easy thing to do and Arthur Dent thinks he’s the only human who’s been able to master this nifty little trick - until he meets Fenchurch, the girl of his dreams. Fenchurch knows how the world could be made a good and happy place. Unfortunately she’s forgotten. Convinced that the secret lies within God’s Final Message to His Creation they go in search of it. And in a dramatic break with tradition - actually find it....

Claire’s family has gone nuclear. Her precious moppets keep calling Childline when she feeds them broccoli, she’s utterly Ottolenghied out at weekends and her darling husband is having an affair with her best friend. The question isn’t whether she needs a glass of wine, but is there one big enough? Enter the Sauvignon Sisterhood, a new set of friends brought together by a shared love of liquid therapy. Together they might just be able to convince Claire that, like a good bottle of red, life really can get better with age.

In Prohibition-era America, young George Finch is setting out as an artist - without the encumbrance of a shred of talent. He falls in love with Molly, but Molly's imperious stepmother is having none of it. Poor George doesn't seem to stand a chance.

What to do if Matthew, your secret lover, finally decides to leave his wife, Sophie, and daughters and move into your flat, just when you're thinking that you might not want him anymore. Plan A: Stop shaving your armpits. And your bikini line. Tell him you have a moustache that you wax every six weeks. Plan B: Accidentally on purpose bump into his wife, Sophie. Give yourself a fake name and identity. Befriend Sophie. Actually begin to really like Sophie. Snog Matthew's son (who's the same age as you by the way - you're not a paedophile). Buy a cat and give it a fake name and identity.

Ever been offered a promotion that seems too good to be true? You know - the sort they'd be insane to be offering to someone like you. The kind where you snap their arm off to accept, then wonder why all your long-serving colleagues look secretly relieved, as if they're off some strange and unpleasant hook...It's the kind of trick that deeply sinister companies like J.W. Wells & Co. pull all the time. Especially with employees who are too busy mooning over the office intern to think about what they're getting into.

Tumbling from one love entanglement to another, 30-something teacher Izzy Comyn has a predilection for inappropriate men. Over the three hilarious series of Up the Garden Path, Izzy, played by Imelda Staunton, deals with the complicated ups and downs of her attempts to find true love.

Tara, Katherine and Fintan have been best friends since they were teenagers. Now in their early thirties, they've been living it up in London for 10 years. But what have they to show for a decade of hedonism? Sure, Tara's got a boyfriend - but only because she's terrified of spending five minutes alone. Katherine, on the other hand, has a neatness fetish that won't let anyone too close to mess up her life. And Fintan? Well, he has everything. Until he learns that without your health, you've got nothing....

When Cedric Charlton, an unsuspecting tax inspector, arrives at the door of the Pop Larkin farm, he soon forgets the purpose of his visit: The fun-loving Ma and Pop Larkin distract him at every turn with strawberries, cream, alcohol, and their attractive young daughter, Mariette. Well known by the popular TV series starring David Jason and Catherine Zeta-Jones, The Darling Buds of May is the quintessential feel-good country romp.

When horror writer Nick Steen gets sucked into a cursed typewriter by the terrifying Type-Face, Dark Lord of the Prolix, the hellish visions inside his head are unleashed for real. Forced to fight his escaping imagination - now leaking out of his own brain - Nick must defend the town of Stalkford from his own fictional horrors, including avascular-necrosis-obsessed serial killer Nelson Strain and Nick's dreaded throppleganger, the Dark Third.

For three decades, Rupert Hardacre was one of the big beasts of advertising: he worked hard, played hard, and lived hard. But he fell harder. Driven out of every reputable agency in town for drinking all their whiskey and sleeping with all their wives, he used the remains of his fortune to found Hardacre's, the best (and only) advertising agency on the M25. Now he's so confident that his name alone will take him back to the top, he's happy to leave all the actual work to the creative department.