An immersive collection of radio plays from the ‘Godmother of black British playwrights’Multiple award-winning playwright Winsome Pinnock was the first Black woman to have a play performed at the National Theatre in 1994 (Leave Taking), where she later became a writer in residence. This stunning collection, featuring performances from Adjoa Andoh (Bridgerton), Lennie James (The Walking Dead, Line of Duty) and Ayesha Antoine (...

Perry Keenlyside tells the remarkable story of the world’s richest literary resource. The story-telling, the poetry, the growth of the novel and the great histories and essays which have informed the language and the imagination wherever English is spoken. This is the fourth in the Naxos AudioBooks Histories series.

Dante’s vision The Divine Comedy has profoundly affected every generation since it first appeared in the early fourteenth century. Here is a brief account of his life, compiled from various sources (including his first biographer, Boccaccio) by Benedict Flynn, whose new translation of the Comedy on Naxos AudioBooks, read by Heathcote Williams, has been widely acclaimed. It sets the known facts of Dante’s life against the turmoil of the times, and puts the very personal nature of his poetry...

Three BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations starring John Shrapnel as Morse and Robert Glenister as Lewis, plus a bonus reading by Colin Dexter of one of his short stories.In Last Seen Wearing, Inspector Morse is reluctant to take over an old missing person case from a dead colleague. But two years, three months and two days after teenager Valerie Taylor’s disappearance, somebody decides to supply some surprising new evidence. . .In The Silent W...

A full-cast three-part adaptation of the Medieval Mystery Plays, introduced by David BuckDuring medieval religious holidays in certain English towns and cities, members of the various guilds would gather in the streets to re-enact Bible stories, from the Creation to the Last Judgment. Often staged from dawn to dusk on a single day, they were performed on a procession of pageant wagons, and the actors created all the music and effects themselves. In The Image of...

Enter the haunting, beautiful and provocative world of Yukio Mishima, one of Japan's greatest writers, whose extraordinary life ended as dramatically as his fictionConsidered one of the greatest Japanese writers of the twentieth century, Mishima fused traditional Japanese aesthetics with modern ideas in works that explored sexuality, death, and political change and broke cultural boundaries. His extraordinary life was as provocative as his fiction, culminating in h...

A study of Albert Camus' life and works which draws together both dramatisations of his novels and documentaries about his life.One of postwar France’s most influential writers, Albert Camus was fêted for his masterful exploration of the absurdity of the human condition. Included here are adaptations of his three iconic existential novels – The Plague, The Outsider and The Fall – alongside four bonus pieces shining a light on the man and his work.La Peste –...

Wally K. Daly's acclaimed trilogy about alien invasion, plus three more gripping sci-fi thrillersWally K. Daly was a prolific, award-winning dramatist, whose writing credits included Casualty, Juliet Bravo and Doctor Who. He wrote 38 radio plays during his 30-year career, across a range of genres including comedy, horror and science fiction. This collection includes his best-known SF serial, The Scream Trilogy, and three other thrilling sci-fi dra...

Although now beloved and revered by millions as the greatest composer who ever lived, Johann Sebastian Bach (16851750) was best known in his lifetime as an organist, and was eclipsed in fame as a composer by two of his twenty children. For the last twenty-seven years of his life he was a schoolteacher and choir director whose duties extended to meal supervision and dormitory inspection. Yet throughout his career he composed a vast body of music which is amongst the most joyful, dancing and...

Kenneth Branagh heads an outstanding cast in playing one of Shakespeare’s strongest characters. The eighth production in the widely admired series of Shakespeare plays presented by Naxos AudioBooks in association with Cambridge University Press.

A play replete with puns and double-entendres, this is one of Shakespeare’s earliest and most lighthearted.The young king of Navarre and three of his courtiers have vowed to lock themselves away for three years of study and fasting, and to forswear the company of women for this period. No sooner is their vow made than it is tested, however, as the princess of France and three of her ladies arrive in Navarre on a diplomatic mission. The young men fall instantly and hopelessly in lov...

The bard's sonnets read by a leading actor of stage and screen Simon Callow.Savor the most celebrated love poems in the English language. Written almost 400 years ago, the sonnets of William Shakespeare are passionate and exalted, rich in imagery and alliteration, and full of mystery and intrigue.This selection presents all 154 sonnets composed from 1593-1601. In words and rhyme, he reveals his infatuation with the "Dark Lady," his relationship with a rival poet, and his pr...