Spring 1905, England.When Helen Schlegel goes to stay at Howards End - the country home of the Wilcox family, her own life, along with that of her sister Margaret, is changed forever. This is the tale of three families at the beginning of the twentieth century: the rich Wilcoxes, the gentle, idealistic Schlegels and the lower-middle class Basts.Frequently cited as E. M. Forster's finest work, Howards End brilliantly explores class warfare, conflict...

Blake Ritson, David Warner, Hattie Morahan and John Hurt star in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Dante's epic poem.Inferno: Thirty-five year old Dante finds himself in the middle of a dark wood, in extreme personal and spiritual crisis. Hope of rescue appears in the form of the venerable poet Virgil, now a shade himself, who offers to lead Dante on an odyssey through the afterlife, beginning in the terrifying depths of Hell.Purgatorio: Dante is led up Mo...

Twelve dramatisations of the best love stories ever written, performed by star castsTreat yourself to this stunning collection of classic stories of love, loss, obstacles overcome and desperate attraction. This is a beautiful, moving and at times thrilling listen which takes you on a journey through the greatest tales of romance ever told. These unmissable, dramatised novels feature stellar performances from fantastic casts including Vanessa Kirby, Hiftu Qu...

Full-cast dramatisations of John Fowles' three best-known novels, with star castsJohn Fowles won international acclaim for his innovative, allusive novels The Collector, The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman. All were critical and commercial successes, translated into several languages and adapted as feature films. This collection brings together the BBC Radio adaptations of these three modern classics, with stellar casts including J...

Gripping crime dramas featuring Scotland Yard’s Detective Inspector John ApplebyA double bill of Scottish crime writer Michael Innes’ DI John Appleby novels adapted with a full cast. Written during the golden age of detective fiction, these two gems from the archive are a thrilling listen for any fan of quality detective crime drama.In Appleby**’**s End Appleby of the Yard is played by veteran star of stage and screen,

Paterson Joseph, John Hurt, Lesley Manville and Harriet Walter are among the stellar cast of this landmark BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Leo Tolstoy’s epic saga.‘Tolstoy’s imagined world is recreated on air brilliantly by the extraordinary cast’ The SpectatorOne of the greatest novels of all time, War and Peace explores historical, social, ethical and religious issues on a scale never before attempted in fiction, and reflects the panorama of life at every level of Russian so...

John Hurt stars in this BBC radio dramatisation of Gustave Flaubert’s infamous tale of adultery and tragedyBeautiful Emma meets and marries Doctor Charles Bovary. He's happy for the first time in his life – but Emma is distraught that her marriage lacks the passion and romance of her fantasies.Dazzled by the splendour of a Marquis’ ball, she longs for excitement and soon becomes infatuated with a young solicitor, Léon Dupuis. But when Dupuis moves away, her...

To the Lighthouse is at once a vivid impressionist depiction of a family holiday and a meditation on a marriage, on parenthood and childhood, on grief, tyranny, and bitterness.Its use of stream of consciousness, reminiscence, and shifting perspectives gives the novel an intimate, poetic essence, and at the time of publication in 1927 it represented an utter rejection of Victorian and Edwardian literary values.

Published in 1922, the same year as Ulysses and The Waste Land, Jacob’s Room is Virginia Woolf’s own modernist manifesto. Ostensibly a study of a young man’s life on the eve of the Great War, it is really a bomb thrown into the world of the conventional novel, as she attempts to capture the richness and randomness of life’s encounters. Jacob Flanders is a mere point of contact between a crowd of people, appearing and disappearing in a tableau in which all is flux, without certainty and wit...

As relevant now as when it was first published, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South skillfully weaves a compelling love story into a clash between the pursuit of profit and humanitarian ideals. When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the North of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the po...

What Galsworthy did for Edwardian England, Wharton did for turn-of-the-century New York, and she did it to perfection in The House of Mirth. Hackles bristle discreetly, lips curl ever-so politely, and every breach of good taste is carefully recorded, as social aspirant Lily Bart launches a desperate bid for a place on the city's elite social register.

In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë created a strong, modern heroine who challenged the prevailing morals and politics of the Victorian era. When Helen Graham shut her bedroom door on her abusive, drunken husband, it was a door-slam heard around the world. Escaping to Wildfell Hall after a loveless marriage, Helen, the mysterious tenant, lives in quiet seclusion, but her reclusive nature quickly becomes the subject of local gossip. Gilbert Markham, a young farmer, becomes intrigued...