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Alfred Lord Tennyson is one of Britain’s greatest and most popular poets. Even during his lifetime, he was considered a national institution: Queen Victoria appointed him Poet Laureate in 1850, a position he held for 42 years, and in 1884 he became the first writer to be granted a baronetcy. In a long and fruitful career, he penned numerous classic works, and this BBC Radio collection showcases some of the very best. We begin with two of his masterpieces, dramatised by award-winning poet Michael Symmons Roberts.

A king's mad jealousy tears his family apart in this rich, tragicomic play, one of Shakespeare's last. When King Leontes suspects his wife, Hermione, has been unfaithful, he sends her to prison, where she gives birth to a daughter. Assuming the baby is not his, Leontes orders that she be left to die on a desert shore. He spends the next 16 years grieving over his error, until the fateful day his long-lost daughter Perdita returns.

Hear the finest actors who have performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company perform some of the Bard's most treasured speeches. This recording includes world-class actors John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Peggy Ashcroft, and Edith Evans in a collection of favourite Shakespearean scenes.

Count Claudio falls in love with Hero, the daughter of his host. Hero's cousin Beatrice (a confirmed spinster) and Benedict (an eternal bachelor) are each duped into believing the other is in love with them. Claudio is deceived by a malicious plot and denounces Hero as unchaste before they marry. She faints and is believed dead but recovers to be proved innocent by a chance discovery. Benedict wins Beatrice’s love defending her cousin’s honour, and to his surprise, Claudio is reunited with Hero, who he believed dead.

King Leontes of Bohemia suspects his wife, Hermione, and his friend, Polixenes, of betraying him. When he forces Polixenes to flee for his life, Leontes sets in motion a chain of events that lead to death, a ferocious bear, an infant left in the snow, young love, and a statue coming to life. Sir John Gielgud and Dame Peggy Ashcroft lead a cast recording of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.

John Ashcroft breaks his silence about historic events that transpired during his term of office as attorney general, including the largest terrorist attack in U.S. history, the enactment and defense of the USA Patriot Act, the Robert Hanssen spy scandal, the execution of Timothy McVeigh, and the recently discovered domestic surveillance program authorized by President Bush.