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Sholem Aleichem
Tevye the Milkman
Read by Neville Jason
Tevye the Milkman, a uniquely charming Jewish novel from Tsarist rural Russia, provided the principal character for Fiddler on the Roof. Here we have the full story, with all its Jewish humour, wisdom and despair. The central character, Tevye the Milkman, goes around the community in the Russian countryside delivering milk and cheese, but also dispensing wisdom from the Talmud laced with his commo... More >
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Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
Read by Duncan Steen
One of the most significant books ever written by a head of State, the Meditations are a collection of philosophical thoughts by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 ce). Covering issues such as duty, forgiveness, brotherhood, strength in adversity and the best way to approach life and death, the Meditations have inspired thinkers, poets and politicians since their first publication more than 500 ... More >
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Jane Austen
Lady Susan
Read by Harriet Walter, Kim Hicks, Carole Boyd, and cast
Lady Susan was the first of Jane Austen’s novels to be completed. An epistolary novel in eighteenth-century style, it tells the story of the recently widowed Lady Susan Vernon, intelligent but highly manipulative, who is intent on gaining financially secure relationships for both herself and her wayward but shy teenage daughter Frederica. Less known than Austen’s six great later novels, it demonst... More >
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Jane Austen
Mansfield Park
Read by Juliet Stevenson
When timid, ten-year-old Fanny Price is plucked from her large, raucous and somewhat impoverished family in Portsmouth to live with wealthy relatives in Mansfield Park her life is changed for ever. Immediately forming a strong attraction for her cousin Edmund, she develops into a genteel and mature young woman, whose love for him remains undimmed despite the diversion brought into both their lives... More >
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Jane Austen
Emma
Read by Juliet Stevenson
Arrogant, self-willed and egotistical, Emma is Jane Austen’s most unusual heroine. Her interfering ways and inveterate matchmaking are at once shocking and comic. She is ‘handsome, clever and rich’ and has ‘a disposition to think too well of herself’. When she decides to introduce the humble Harriet Smith to the delights of genteel society and to find her a suitable husband, she precipitates herse... More >
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Jane Austen
Persuasion
Read by Juliet Stevenson
Anne Elliot has grieved for seven years over the loss of her first and only love, Captain Frederick Wentworth. When their paths finally cross again, Anne finds herself slighted and all traces of their former intimacy gone. As the pair continue to share the same social circle, dramatic events in Lyme Regis, and later in Bath, conspire to unravel the knots of deceit and misunderstanding in this begu... More >
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Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey
Read by Juliet Stevenson
When Catherine Morland, a country clergyman’s daughter, is invited to spend a season in Bath with the fashionable high society, little does she imagine the delights and perils that await her. Captivated and disconcerted by what she finds, and introduced to the joys of ‘Gothic novels’ by her new friend, Isabella, Catherine longs for mystery and romance. When she is invited to stay with the beguilin... More >
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Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
Read by Emilia Fox
Jane Austen’s most popular novel, originally published in 1813, some seventeen years after it was first written, presents the Bennet family of Longbourn. Against the background of gossipy Mrs Bennet and the detached Mr Bennet, the quest is on for husbands for the five daughters. The spotlight falls on Elizabeth, second eldest, who is courted by Mr Darcy though initially she is more concerned with ... More >
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Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility
Read by Juliet Stevenson
When Mrs Dashwood is forced by an avaricious daughter-in-law to leave the family home in Sussex, she takes her three daughters to live in a modest cottage in Devon. For Elinor, the eldest daughter, the move means a painful separation from the man she loves, but her sister Marianne finds in Devon the romance and excitement which she longs for. The contrasting fortunes and temperaments of the two gi... More >
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Simon Barnes
A Bad Birdwatcher's Companion
Read by Simon Barnes
Simon Barnes is one of Britain’s leading bird writers and humorists. His weekly column in The Times, his essays for the RSPB magazine and his two books on bad bird-watching have made him one of the characters of the bird world. Here he reads his own illuminating introductions to the fifty main birds of Britain, supported by the distinguishing bird song of each species. He not only gives helpful id... More >
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Julian Barnes
A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
Read by Alex Jennings
A History of the World in 10½ Chapters tells a series of apparently unconnected stories ranging from a woodworm’s-eye-view of the journey on Noah’s Ark to an astronaut’s quest for its final resting place. There is pastiche and learned disquisition; there is heart-stopping documentary and heart-lifting revelation. But these stories are not separate. They are all linked by a complex weave of inquiry... More >
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Samuel Beckett
The Unnamable
Read by Sean Barrett
The Unnamable is the third novel in Becket’s trilogy, three remarkable prose works in which men of increasingly debilitating physical circumstances act, ponder, consider and rage against impermanence and the human condition. The Unnamable is without doubt the most uncompromising text and it is read here in startling fashion by Sean Barrett.... More >
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Samuel Beckett
Krapp’s Last Tape
Read by Jim Norton, Juliet Stevenson, John Moffatt, and Peter Marinker
Samuel Beckett, one of the great avant-garde Irish dramatists and writers of the second half of the twentieth century, was born on 13 April 1906. His centenary will be celebrated throughout 2006 with performances of his major plays, including Waiting for Godot. Here are the two most famous plays for solo voice. Krapp’s Last Tape finds an old man, with his tape recorder, musing over the past and fu... More >
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Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot
Read by Sean Barrett, David Burke, Terence Rigby, and Nigel Anthony
Samuel Beckett, one of the great avant-garde Irish dramatists and writers of the second half of the twentieth century, was born on 13 April 1906. He died in 1989. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. His centenary will be celebrated throughout 2006 with performances of his major plays, but the most popular of them all will be, without doubt, the play with which he first made his name, Wa... More >
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Samuel Beckett
Malone Dies
Read by Sean Barrett
This is the second in the famous trilogy of novels written by Samuel Beckett in the late 1940s. An old man is dying in a room. His bowl of soup comes, his pots are emptied. He waits to die. And while he waits, he constructs stories, mainly to pass the time. Saposcat, the Lambert family, Macmann and his nurse Moll. Other figures weave in and out of his vision and his imagination. This remarkable so... More >
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