These stories are designed to engender a chill in the listener which is not just due to the season. Stephen Critchlow, a characterful actor, is a collector of ghost stories and relishes putting across those slightly odd moments when things don’t just seem to follow the normal process. Charles Dickens was chilling enough in his novels one only has to remember the entry of Magwitch in Great Expectations! but as a writer set deeply in the Victorian era and unashamedly a lover of the melodrama...

From the author of the international bestseller Mr. China comes another rollicking ride through the slick mega-cities and industrial backwaters of twenty-first-century China—part adventure story, part erudite myth-buster, and part practical rule book to help Westerners win in China.China's role as struggling underdog is now firmly a thing of the past. The world has tilted eastward in its orbit even as the West seems mired in self-doubt. Through living and working in China ...

The powerful sense of evil darkness, creepy hairy presences, cloaks, hoods, talons and tentacles pervades these classic ghost stories by M.R. James. A Cambridge scholar himself, James explored what happens when academics dabble in things they don’t understand and unleash forces of which they know nothing. The titles in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary range from witchcraft to the occult, and tap into our primal fear of things that go bump in the night. They are recognised as the best of their...

A thrilling new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Jules Verne's classic novel.‘Descend, bold traveller into the crater of the Jokul of Snæfell, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the kalends of July and you will attain the centre of the earth. Which I have done.’Renowned professor Otto Lidenbrock discovers a mysterious runic cryptogram in a rare manuscript. His nephew, Axel, accidentally cracks the code, which is by a Sixteenth Century alchemist who claims to...

Naxos AudioBooks begins its new series of Great Poets represented by their most popular poems on one CD with William Blake, whose 250th anniversary of birth falls this year. This CD contains all of his most popular works Tyger, the Auguries of Innocence, Jerusalem, as well as some lesser-known poetry that demonstrates the range and power of his verse. They are strikingly read by Robert Glenister, Michael Maloney and Stephen Critchlow.

A BBC Radio 4 fictionalised account of the interrogation of P.G. Wodehouse (Tim McInnerny) by MI5 during World War II. 'How to be an Internee with No Previous Experience ' was originally broadcast as the 'Afternoon Play' on 15 December 2010. In 1944, P.G. Wodehouse, the creator of 'Jeeves and Wooster', was questioned by MI5 after broadcasting to America from a German internment camp. One of the interrogators was an up-and-coming journalist called Malcolm Muggeridge. The other was Major E.J...

When Lewis Luby (Jeremy Irons) comes to, late at night in an Italian hospital, he finds himself lying under the monstrous big toe of God. Surely there has been some mistake: Luby, who has never for one moment believed in the immortality of the soul, cannot possibly be in heaven! John Mortimer had the idea for 'Mr Luby's Fear of Heaven' when he first visited the Santa Maria della Scala hospital in Siena and saw patients lying in beds under ceilings decorated with 15th-Century frescoes depic...

The life of Franz Schubert has been a gift to romantically inclined biographers: the beautiful, brilliant, modest boy who sprang to fully fledged genius at the age of sixteen; the quintessential ‘artist in a garret’, entirely consumed by his art and living a hand-to-mouth existence in Vienna (home of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven); the gentle, cheerful, convivial young man who prized friendship almost as highly as music itself; the unworldly poet from whom great music poured like water from ...

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation by Andy Barratt of Daniel Defoe's less famous sequel to the classic adventure 'Robinson Crusoe'. After returning to England from his island home, Robinson Crusoe sets sail once more in search of adventure. Starring Tim McInnerny as Robinson Crusoe, with Jonathan Tafler, Adrian Grove, Stephen Critchlow, David Timson, Alison Pettitt and Ben Onwukwe. Directed by Peter Leslie Wild.

The first five volumes from the landmark BBC radio series This Sceptred Isle. Christopher Lee's epic history tells the story of Britain from the Romans to the death of Victoria. This collection includes the original first five volumes:55BC-1087: Julius Caesar to William the Conqueror From Britannia under the Romans to the Dark Ages and the invasions of Angles, Saxons, Danes, and Norwegians.1087-1327: The Making of the Nation The Crusades, Welsh and Scottish rebellions and t...

Full-cast contemporary dramatisations of Jules Verne’s best-known work, plus insight into his life and workOften referred to as the father of science fiction, Victorian author Jules Verne is renowned for his fantastical adventures imagining extraordinary voyages to strange new horizons. Prolific and prophetic, he wrote over 50 novels and numerous short stories, in which he foretold the skyscraper, the submarine, space missions and even the Internet. Featured here a...

The classic political drama that inspired the hit Netflix seriesFrancis Urquhart, Chief Whip of the Conservative Party, wants to get to Number 10 and will stop at nothing in his pursuit of power. This full-cast dramatisation packs a powerful punch in the fast-paced political thriller based on Michael Dobbs bestselling novel of the same name.The country is undecided after a close election and the party must stand united behind a new leader. Francis Urquhart ...