Elspeth McGillicuddy is down from Scotland for a holiday and boards the 4:50 train from Paddington station to visit her friend, Miss Marple. During the journey, another train pulls alongside, and through the window Mrs McGillicuddy witnesses a tall, dark man strangling a blonde woman. She reports what...

As Miss Marple sat basking in the Caribbean sunshine she felt mildly discontented with life.

"A Christmas Carol" is the best-known and best-loved of Dickens' 'Christmas Books', and the story of the miser Scrooge's redemption has become as much part of the Christmas tradition as plum pudding and carols themselves. Will Tiny Tim live to see another Christmas? Naxos

Accompanying a major BBC1 series presented by David Dimbleby, and an exhibition at Tate Britain, A Picture of Britain is a celebration of the British landscape and the art it has inspired, from Constable to Lowry, from Turner to Nash. From the slopes of Snowdonia to the industrial Black Country, from the grandeur of the Scottish Highlands to the...

Wealthy businessman Rex Fortescue is found dead with rye grain in his pocket. His death is followed in quick succession by a woman dying while eating bread and honey, and a maid in her garden. Inspector Neele, in charge of investigating the spate of murders, consults with Miss Marple, who has an interesting...

Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sat the corpse of Mrs Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist was the only sign of the fatal injection that had killed her. With only 24 hours available to solve the mystery, Hercule Poirot recalled a chance remark he'd overheard back...

Continuing where Thus Spoke Zarathustra left off, Nietzsche s controversial work Beyond Good and Evil is one of the most influential philosophical texts of the nineteenth century and one of the most controversial works of ideology ever written. Attacking the notion of morality as nothing more than institutionalised weakness, Nietzsche...

Dostoyevsky's finest masterpiece' John Bayley Dostoyevsky's great novel of damnation and redemption evokes a world where the lines between innocence and corruption, good and evil, blur. It tells the story of Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, who wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder...

With World War II at an end, Charles Hayward is finally free to marry the woman he loves, Sophia Leonides. However, she refuses - the unexplained death of her grandfather, wealthy businessman Aristide Leonides, draws her back to the suffocating environment of her family home.

These are 2 episodes first of which was broadcast on 11th March 1974 on the radio called - Sergeant Wilson's Little Secret.
The second episode was first broadcast on 15th April 1974 called Something Nasty in the Vault.

Ariadne Oliver, Queen of Crime Fiction, has been asked to devise a Murder Hunt for a fête at Nasse House, the home of Sir George Stubbs. But she begins to suspect that someone is manipulating the scenario of her game and fears that something very sinister is being planned. She sends for her old friend...

A full-cast radio drama from the 1940s starring Douglas Kelly as Dick Barton. Originally produced for Australian radio, Dick Barton and the Firefly Adventure tells of the arrival in Britain of the American master-criminal Ferraro. Operating a violent protection racket, Ferraro extorts money from property owners across the capital. Those who ignore...

Heralded by an instantly memorable signature tune, the adventures of special agent Dick Barton and his friends, Jock and Snowey, originally ran on the BBC Light Programme between 1946 and 1951. Set in an exciting world of criminal masterminds, espionage and adventure, the series was essential listening for an entire generation. Sadly very few...

Five full-cast BBC Radio dramatisations of short stories by GK Chesterton, starring Leslie French as Father Brown and Willie Rushton as Chesterton. Short, shabby and unassuming, Roman Catholic priest Father Brown is an unlikely investigator. But his keen mind and understanding of human nature enable him to solve cases featuring a...

John Cleese, Prunella Scales, Connie Booth and Andrew Sachs star in two BBC TV episodes, 'The Rat' and 'The Builders'. In 'The Rat', the hotel faces closure due to lack of cleanliness – and two dead ‘pig-ee-ons’ in the watertank. Basil, Sybil and the staff have until the health inspector returns tomorrow to sort out all the problems. First, Basil has...

This disk features the soundtrack from 2 TV programmes - Mrs Richards featuring Joan Sanderson - The second episode is The Hotel Inspectors featuring Bernard Cribbins.

Titter lots at Frankie Howerd's ditties, sketches, limericks and stand up, recorded in front of a specially-invited audience. The star of TV's 'Up Pompeii' and mainstay of innumerable 'Carry-On' films, Frankie Howerd causes a mayhem of mirth, where even his co-stars can't help laughing. As well as songs, stories, naughtiness and his usual...

A novel set in Cornwall at the time of Charles II, which tells the story of the relationship between a beautiful and capricious lady and a dangerous but attractive French pirate.

The Restoration Court knows Lady Dona St Columb to be ripe for any folly, any outrage that will alter the tedium of her days. But there is another, secret Dona who longs for freedom, honest love – and sweetness, even if it is spiced with danger. To escape the shallowness of court life, Dona retreats to Navron, her husband's remote Cornish estate.

Illness, disease and injury prompted the development of medicine from the earliest days of mankind: useful herbs, methods for treating wounds and even setting bones were passed down the generations by word of mouth. With the growth of civilization came more scientific methods, generally discovered by significant individuals. This informative...

Full of magic and trickery, Grimm's Fairy Stories have delighted generations with such timeless classics as Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, and Rapunzel. They are the stories we've known since we were children. But the works originally collected by the Brothers Grimm in the early 1800s are not necessarily the...

Famous crime novelist Ariadne Oliver, visiting her friend Judith Butler in the little town of Woodleigh Common, is invited to a Hallowe'en Party put on by society hostess Mrs Rowena Drake for the local teenagers. During her preparations for the party, the conversation turns to Ariadne's grisly novels. One of...

Two television soundtracks from the BBC’s memorable series Hancock’s Half Hour by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, starring Tony Hancock, Sid James and John Le Mesurier. In The Lift, Hancock gets stuck in a lift at the BBC with eight other people. It’s gone midnight, the building is empty and Hancock won’t stop talking. Hancock is the foreman of a...

The BBC broadcast 80 hours of Hancock on radio and television between 1954 and 1961. These CDs contains the 18 surviving shows from the fifth radio series. An accompanying booklet contains a history of the show with contemporary press extracts and photos, episode synopses and cast.

The first 10 episodes of this wonderful series.

Features 5 surviving half-hour shows from Series 2, April 1955 to July 1955

A Genius Performance by Stephen Fry!

The 6th book in the Series!

In a brief statement on Friday night, Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge confirmed that He Who Must Not Be Named has returned to this country and is once more active. 

An international cast of suspects, all passengers on the crowded train, are speeding through the snowy European landscape when a bizarre and terrible murder brings them to an abrupt halt. One of their glittering number lies dead in his cabin, stabbed a mysterious twelve times.

In this delightful tale, an Eastern Prince arrives in England with some family jewels which he's having reset as a gift for his fianceé. However, the Prince also has a mistress. She asks to wear one particularly enchanting piece that features a huge ruby, and then promptly disappears with it. Poirot discovers a...

Tyrannical millionaire Simeon Lee has been estranged from most of his family for years. But now, on Christmas Eve, the old man calls them all together once more. Unable to disobey, the children gather uneasily and wonder what their father's intentions are. Does he want to clear up past misunderstandings or...

Each one of us is responsible for all of humankind, and for the environment in which we live. We must seek to lessen the suffering of others. Rather than working solely to acquire wealth, we need to do something meaningful, something seriously directed toward the welfare of humanity as a whole. To do this, you need to recognize that the...

A facsmile edition of the original 1978 LP of comedy sketches and songs, starring Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graeme Garden, David Hatch, Jo Kendall and Bill Oddie. Taken from the fondly-remembered BBC radio series of the early 1970s.

A Genius Performance by Simon Callow!

Bertie's ingenuity is put to the test when Jeeves goes on holiday. Taking a trip to Brinkley Court should be a joy for Bertie. 

Monsieur Poirot, somehow or other I've just got to get rid of my husband!' No sooner had she uttered these words than Lady Edgware's husband was dead, brutally stabbed in the neck. The evidence against her is overwhelming, the case cut and dried. But what is the truth behind it all? What enemies lurked in...

MACBETH, Shakespeare's last great tragedy, has remained one of the most popular plays since its first performance in 1606 - probably in front of King James.

This exciting audiobook production is directed with fresh imagination by Fiona Shaw who breaks the conventional strait jacket that has hampered the development of Shakespeare on audio.

A Genius Performance by Hugh Fraser! Mrs McGinty died from a brutal blow to the back of her head. Suspicion fell immediately on her shifty lodger, James Bentley, whose clothes revealed traces of the victim’s blood and hair. Yet something was amiss: Bentley just didn’t look like a murderer. Poirot believed...

Miss Marple, Agatha Christie's immortal spinster sleuth with a razor sharp mind and a intuitive understanding of criminal behavior gets to grips with a compelling murder mystery in the sleepy village of St. Mary Mead, where under a seemingly peaceful exterior of an English country village lurks intrigue, guilt, deception and death.

Just as Amy Leatheran is about to return to England, she is hired by celebrated archaeologist Dr Leidner to work as a nurse/companion for his wife, who is subject to fits of nervous terrors. As they travel to an ancient site in the Iraqi desert, Amy finds herself in a situation stranger than she could ever have imagined, whilst Mrs Leidner proves to...

It's very easy to kill - so long as no one suspects you.' So says Miss Pinkerton when ex-policeman Luke Fitzwilliam meets her on a train. Luke doesn't take much notice of this little old lady's story about a serial killer on the loose in her village - until her predictions start to come true, when he feels compelled to check it out. Very soon the race is on...

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation starring John Moffatt as Hercule Poirot. When Poirot arrives in France, following an urgent appeal for help, he finds he is too late. His client, a South American millionaire, has been stabbed to death and his body flung into a freshly dug open grave on the golf course adjoining...

Poirot has always hated visiting the dentist, but this time his check-up is painless and soon over. As he leaves Mr Morley's surgery, he observes a woman wearing patent leather shoes with large buckles. She catches one of the buckles on the taxi door and wrenches it off, and as Poirot hands it back, he is reminded of the children's rhyme 'One, two...

Shakespeare's Othello is one of his finest and most famous tragedies. This highly acclaimed performance, which ran between November 2007 and February 2008 at the Donmar Warehouse in London, features Chiwetel Ejiofor as the Moor Othello, Ewan McGregor as the scheming Iago ...

This is a BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatization starring John Moffatt as the great Belgian detective. Hercule Poirot and his good friend Captain Hastings are enjoying a well-deserved break on the Cornish Riviera, in the idyllic village of St Loo.

Of all Jane Austen's books PRIDE AND PREJUDICE has earned a special place in the hearts of the reading public as her best-loved and most intimately known novel. From its famous opening sentence the story of Elizabeth and Darcy, told with a wit that its author feared might prove "rather too light and bright, and...

A Genius Performance by Lorelei King! Scarpetta has arranged to meet an inmate at the high-security Georgia Prison for Women. The prisoner is a convicted sex offender and the mother of a vicious and diabolically brilliant killer. Against advice, Scarpetta is determined to hear this woman out - she believes she...

Features excerpts from 2 shows first broadcast in 1966 and 67. First one is from 16th April 1967 and the second segment is from the show broadcast on 5th June 1966.

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...

A collection of Sherlock Holmes mystery adventures includes "A Scandal in Bohemia," "The Red-Headed League," "The Speckled Band," and "The Beryl Coronet."

Young Gwenda Reed arrives in England from New Zealand, travelling ahead of her husband Giles and charged with the task of finding the perfect place to make their base. In the quiet village of Dilmouth, she finds a house with immediate appeal. A few renovations will convert it into her ideal home.

‘There’s Rosemary, that’s for remembrance.’ Published in 1945, Sparkling Cyanide is all about remembrance. It begins with six characters recalling the horrific death of Rosemary Barton, a beautiful but shallow young heiress poisoned by a cyanide-spiked glass of champagne whilst celebrating...

Ian McEwan’s mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty audiobook of betrayal and intrigue, love, and the invented self. Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during her final year at Cambridge, and finds herself being groomed for the intelligence...

New translation by Tom Griffith In Symposium, a group of Athenian aristocrats attend a party held by Agathon to celebrate his victory in the drama festival of the Dionysia. They talk about love until the drunken Alcibiades bursts in, and decides to talk about Socrates instead. "Symposium" gives a picture of the sparkling society that was Athens at the...

In 1940s London, Hercule Poirot is cornered by the club bore and learns of a mysterious death - one which sets him off on one of his most intriguing cases. When Gordon Cloade is killed in a London air raid his vast fortune passes to his young wife Rosaleen. Cloade's relatives are desperate to get their hands on his money, and Rosaleen begins...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a great talent for creating memorable characters. The hero of The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard is one of his most ingenious inventions, brought to life, here, with wicked humour by Rupert Degas. Preposterously vain and yet endearing, Brigadier Gerard makes for a tremendously fun companion as he relives the...

A Scandal in Bohemia/The Red-Headed League/A Case of Identity/The Boscombe Valley Mystery Clive Merrison stars as Holmes with Michael Williams as Watson in these adventures, part of the unique fully dramatised BBC canon of Conan Doyle's short stories and novels featuring the world-famous sleuth.

The Best of Round the Horne stars Kenneth Horne, ‘the uncrowned head of the show’; Kenneth Williams, who played Rambling Syd Rumpo, Gruntfuttock, Sandy and Dr. Chou en Ginsberg M.A. (Failed); Hugh Paddick (Charles, Brown-Horrocks, Julian and Lotus Blossom); Betty Marsden (Daphne Whitethigh and terribly, terribly affected Fiona); and Bill...

Set at the height of the "tulipomania" that gripped Holland in 17th century, this is the story of Cornelius van Baerle, a humble grower whose sole desire is to grow the perfect specimen of the tulip negra.

Dolly Bantry, mistress of Gossington Hall, is enjoying a pleasant doze when suddenly her dreams take a strange turn. The housemaid Mary is telling her that there is a body in the library... When she wakes up, she finds that it is true. But who is the strange young blonde dressed in an evening gown who is lying...

A brilliantly arresting historical work, John Lewis Gaddis's The Cold War takes us as never before to the time when the world stood on the brink of destruction. In 1945 war came to an end. But a whole new terror was only just beginning... Here is the truth behind every spy thriller you've read: why America and the Soviet Union became locked in a...

Drawing on the experience of his own struggle to find enlightenment and a deeper spiritual understanding of life, Leo Tolstoy takes us on the final journey towards death with Ivan Ilyich, who, falling victim to an incurable illness, ponders his life in its shallowness and lack of compassion, ultimately wondering about the meaning of it all.

Bereft of his beloved wife Glencora and his role as Prime Minister, Plantagenet Palliser enters the realm of family politics as he struggles to guide and connect with his three wayward children. Lord Silverbridge, the Duke's first born and natural inheritor, expelled from Oxford, a gambler at the racetrack and an elected Conservative, further troubles...

Philomena meets The Orphan Train in this suspenseful, provocative novel filled with love, secrets, and deceit—the story of a young unwed mother who is forcibly separated from her daughter at birth and the lengths to which they go to find each other. In 1950s Quebec, French and English tolerate each other with precarious civility—much like...

Malcolm Fox and his team are back. They've been sent to Fife to investigate whether fellow cops covered up for a corrupt colleague, Detective Paul Carter. Carter has been found guilty of misconduct with his own uncle, also in the force, having proved to be his nemesis. But what should be a simple job is soon...

Malcolm Fox and his team are back. They've been sent to Fife to investigate whether fellow cops covered up for a corrupt colleague, Detective Paul Carter. Carter has been found guilty of misconduct with his own uncle, also in the force, having proved to be his nemesis. But what should be a simple job is soon...

On a lonely island in the Pacific, the victims of a shipwreck wash ashore. They find a land like no other, a private empire, populated by grotesque human-like creatures, and ruled by a sinister scientist.

The new bestseller from the country’s number one storyteller is a deeply moving and powerful tale of love and courage and a sacrifice no man should be asked to make. Three strangers are thrown together by chance. It’s an encounter which is destined to change all of their lives for ever. When Ben Morris comes to the aid of Lucy Baker and her...

1916: the Western Front. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong, and the wind in the leaves in the trees. Where has the mud, blood and blasted landscape of No Man's Land gone? 2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Cop Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out ....

2040-2045: In the years after the cataclysmic Yellowstone eruption there is massive economic dislocation as populations flee Datum Earth to myriad Long Earth worlds. Sally, Joshua, and Lobsang are all involved in this perilous work when, out of the blue, Sally is contacted by her long-vanished father and...

2045-2059. After the cataclysmic upheavals of Step Day and the Yellowstone eruption humanity is spreading further into the Long Earth, and society, on a battered Datum Earth and beyond, continues to evolve. Now an elderly and cantankerous AI, Lobsang lives in disguise with Agnes in an exotic, far-distant world. He’s convinced they’re leading a...

The Lost World is a novel by Arthur Conan Doyle. Released in 1912, it tells the story of an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin where prehistoric animals still survive. The character of Professor Challenger was introduced in this book. The novel also describes a war between Native Americans and a vicious tribe of ape-like creatures.

The Lost World is a novel by Arthur Conan Doyle. Released in 1912, it tells the story of an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin where prehistoric animals still survive. The character of Professor Challenger was introduced in this book. The novel also describes a war between Native Americans and a vicious tribe of ape-like creatures.

After the death of her husband, Dolly Bantry sold Gossington Hall to the former film star Marina Gregg and her husband. When the glamorous couple decide to throw a benefit party for the local hospital, the grounds are thronged with curious visitors, and for one of them, the day ends in tragedy. As Marina is...

Recuperating from a flying accident, Jerry Burton needs to take a break somewhere peaceful. He and his sister Joanna rent a house in the little village of Lymstock, where they know no-one and hope to be able to relax. Their quiet life is shattered, however, by the arrival of an obscene anonymous letter...

It is 1916. Captain Hastings has been invalided out of the Great War and goes to convalesce at Styles Court, the family home of his great friend, John Cavendish. By an extraordinary coincidence, billeted in the village is a brilliant little retired detective with an egg-shaped head, who made a considerable...

A millionaire strikes a deal on the seedier side of Paris and a priceless cache of rubies becomes destined for his beloved daughter, Rachel. Two days later Rachel is dead - murdered on a train on her way to the Riviera to meet her scoundrel lover: a mysterious, dark man. The suspects line up only master slueth...

A collection of fascinating life-lessons from Australia's favorite storyteller, including insights from his final months. Each of us has a place to return to in our minds, a place of clarity and peace, a place to think, to create, to dream. For Bryce Courtenay this place was a waterhole in Africa where he used to escape to as a boy, in search of solitude.

A blizzard has hit England. In the tiny village of Sittaford, on the fringes of Dartmoor, a party of six is gathered in Sittaford House, home of Captain Trevelyan. He has rented the house out for the winter and is staying in a nearby village. As evening draws in, a seance is proposed. The lights are lowered and the table...

The Trial is one of the great works of the twentieth century—an extraordinary vision of a man put on trial by an anonymous authority on an unspecified charge. Josef K., thirty, lives in a large town in an unspecified country when he is summoned to answer a charge and appear in the courtroom for his trial. Franz Kafka evokes all the realities of trial...

Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett star in highlights from their BBC TV series. Includes the sketches: 'The Strange Case of Mrs. Mace', 'Plain Speaking', 'Grublian', 'Dr. Spooner Re-Visited', 'A Doctor’s Life', and 'About a Bout'. There’s also 'Doctors Anonymous', 'Jolly Rhymes', 'The Complete Rook', 'Ronnie Corbett’s Chat-Spot', and 'A Doctor’s Life'.

The Unexpected Guest begins on a foggy night at a lonely country house, where a woman with a gun in her hand is quietly surveying the dead body of her husband. It looks like a straightforward case of murder. Or is it? As the ghosts of an old wrong begin to emerge from the past, the case begins to look...

Victor Maskell has been betrayed. After the announcement in the Commons, the hasty revelation of his double life of wartime espionage, his photograph is all over the papers. His disgrace is public, his position as curator of the Queen's pictures terminated...

A Genius Performance by Sean Barrett!

The foundation for all modern economic thought and political economy, The Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of Scottish economist Adam Smith, who introduces the world to the very idea of economics and capitalism in the modern sense of the words.

Amy has recently given birth to her first child, Evie, but, while utterly besotted with her daughter, she can't quite manage to get her own life back on track. She feels overweight, unattractive and incapable of holding a conversation beyond the lines of breast pumps and feeding times. She wants her figure, her sassiness, her LIFE back. And on top of...

Miss Marple is told that her old friend, Carrie, is in danger and she goes to stay with her at Stoneygates, a home for maladjusted adolescents. While she is there, tragedy strikes as Carrie's step-son, Christian Gulbrandsen, is shot dead. There are at least seven suspects and two more murders follow. But the man...

One marine's passion for ancient civilizations and the journey to recover the world's greatest stolen treasures. A blend of treasure hunt, police procedural, war-time thriller, and exposé of the international black-market in stolen art, told in the voice of a truly remarkable man: a soldier, a father, and a scholar. The New York tabloids call him...

Hercule Poirot is a guest at a weekend house party, given at the Cornish cliff top home of the celebrated actor Sir Charles Cartwright. The other visitors include keen amateur detective Mr Satterthwaite and distinguished Harley Street nerve specialist Sir Bartholomew Strange. Death visits the house soon after Poirot's arrival, the victim an elderly...

Traces how Mortenson, having been rescued and resuscitated by Himalayan villagers after a failed attempt to climb K2, worked to build schools that would benefit the young girls who were forbidden an education by Taliban restrictions.

It is 1919, the War is over and the Conway family are celebrating their daughter Kay's 21st birthday. But her sudden premonition of their lives in 1937 casts a shadow over their dreams and expectations. "Time and the Conways" follows the fortunes of one family over a period of years, and offers...

War and Peace is one of the greatest monuments in world literature. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, it examines the relationship between the individual and the relentless march of history. Here are the universal themes of love and hate, ambition and despair, youth and age, expressed...

Sixty-five million years ago, a disastrous cataclysm eliminated three quarters of all life on Earth. Overnight, the age of dinosaurs ended. The age of mammals had begun. But what if history had happened differently? What if the reptiles had survived to evolve into intelligent life? In West of Eden, bestselling author Harry Harrison has created a rich...

Remembrance of Things Past is one of the monuments of 20th century literature. Neville Jasons widely praised 36 CD abridged version has rightly become an audiobook landmark and now, upon numerous requests, he is recording the whole work unabridged which, when complete, will run for some 140 hours.