As an actress, Diana Quick was forever trying on the mask of other people's lives - raiding her own memory to service the character she was playing. Coming from a large, noisy family in Kent that seemed to be plain-speaking and straightforward, she was astonished to find on her beloved father's death that his childhood in India was far from idyllic. She was then thunderstruck to hear that he was to have a requiem mass. She had no idea he was Catholic. She discovered that his stepmother had...

Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn't married. Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster, with sensible and sardonic Patrica aged five, greedy cross-patch Gillian who refused to be ignored, and Ruby...Ruby tells the story of The Family, from the day ...

Winner of the 1997 Booker Prize. The richly exotic story of the childhood the twins Esthappen and Rahel craft for themselves amongst India’s vats of banana jam and mountains of peppercorns.Here, perhaps, is the greatest Indian novel by a woman. Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’ is an astonishingly rich, fertile novel, teeming with life, colour, heart-stopping language, wry comedy and a hint of magical realism.Set against a background of political turbulence in Keral...

‘An absolute belter of a biography’ MARINA HYDE A Times Literary Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2022 An LA Times Best Book of the Year 2022An intimate, revealing and profoundly moving biography of Jean Rhys, acclaimed author of Wide Sargasso Sea.An obsessive and troubled genius, Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling and unnerving writers of the twentieth century. Memories of a con...

Penguin Classics presents Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, adapted for audio and now available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by the actress Diana Quick.'How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?'Elizabeth Gaskell's compassionate, richly dramatic novel features one of the most original and fully-rounded female characters in Vic...

A captivating story of family and friends, innocence and corruption.Four friends swore eternal friendship when all they had was each other. Now their dazzling careers, their seemingly successful lives, are to be disrupted by a devastating singer – and by the shadow of their past.Rosie Madigan is the angel… an award-winning costume-designer, she is blessed with worldly goods yet troubled by personal commitments.Gavin Ambrose is the Hollywood megastar: talented and id...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s classic poem, read by Diana Quick.Written in blank verse, Aurora Leigh is Browning’s self-styled ‘novel in verse’, a first-person narration of the lives of Marian Erle and the eponymous Aurora. Travelling across Florence, London, and Paris, and playing off the works of Anne Louise Germaine de Staël and George Sand, Aurora Leigh is one of the greatest poems of the nineteenth century.

A gripping story of triumph over tragedy from the author of A Woman of SubstanceMallory Keswick is a woman with the world at her feet. Then out of the blue, that world is shattered by violent tragedy and she loses all that she holds dear.Torn by grief, Mal knows that she must rebuild her life. She flees to a village on the Yorkshire moors where she learns to draw on the deepest reserves of her spirit.Returning to Connecticut, Mal opens a ca...

From the internationally bestselling author of A Woman of Substance comes the continuing story of indomitable heroine, Emma HarteEmma Harte is now eighty years old and ready to hand over the reins of the vast business empire she has created.To her favourite grandchild, Paula McGill Fairley, Emma bequeaths her mighty retailing empire with these heartfelt words: ‘I charge you to hold my dream.’A towering international success, this is the pow...

A BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Virgil's sweeping epic, starring Ralph Fiennes as Aeneas and Derek Jacobi as the Narrator. One of the classics of all time, The Aeneid was Virgil's last and greatest work. In it, he recounts in vivid imagery the legendary origin of the Roman Empire. The story begins after the Greeks have destroyed the city of Troy. The Trojan Prince Aeneas, defeated and depressed, leads his remaining citizens to a new land and a new destiny foretold by the Gods. The journey t...

An epic BBC radio adaptation of John Galsworthy's complete Forsyte Chronicles, narrated by Dirk Bogarde and with an all-star cast'Hallmarked with elegance and craftsmanship' The Evening StandardFirst broadcast in 1990, this monumental adaptation of John Galsworthy's Nobel Prize-winning novel series was a radio event. It was the most expensive drama serial ever produced, featured one of the biggest, most star-studded casts ...

A collection of full-cast dramatisations of Sophocles’ finest Greek tragediesOne of the three great tragic playwrights of ancient Greece, Sophocles wrote over 120 plays during his 60-year career, though only seven survive today. The most famous of these are the Theban Plays, all three of which are included in this collection alongside adaptations of Electra and Philoctetes, brought to life by celebrated writers, poets, and playwrights....