Showing results by narrator "Juliet Aubrey" in All Categories

Set in the 1830s, this ‘study of provincial life’ introduces us to young, idealistic Dorothea Brooke, who accepts a proposal from scholarly Edward Casaubon, hoping to forge a loving partnership of intellectual equals. But on honeymoon in Rome, she swiftly becomes disillusioned. Trapped in an unhappy marriage, she finds solace in her friendship with Casaubon’s cousin, Will Ladislaw - only for her controlling husband to suspect her of betrayal and set out to test her loyalty.

Harper McKenzie wakes to the worse possible day: her 18-year-old son has vanished from her Manhattan apartment without trace. Worse, no-one knows what she’s talking about. No-one thinks she had a son. Ever. Has she lost her grip on reality? Or has the world shifted in a terrifying and unpredictable way? The Effect is a taut psychological thriller that challenges everything we thought was real, as Harper’s quest to find her son pushes her to the very edge of reason.

George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfilment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past.

Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here – like the glass the island’s maestros spend their lives learning to control. Women are not meant to work with glass, but Orsola Rosso flouts convention to save her family from ruin. She works in secret, knowing her creations must be perfect to be accepted by men. But perfection may take a lifetime. Skipping like a stone through the centuries, we follow Orsola as she hones her craft through war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss.

Jessica Raine stars in all four BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations of John Galsworthy's Forsyte novels. An irresistible family saga of love, money and betrayal, The Forsytes: The Complete Series encompasses four acclaimed BBC Radio 4 productions of Galsworthy's perennially popular epic, spanning 50 years from 1886 to 1936.

The world is on the brink of crisis. The Cold War is playing out once more on the global stage. And governments will do whatever it takes to stay at the top. To those who don't really know her, Kate Henderson's life must seem perfectly ordinary. But she is in fact a senior MI6 officer, who right now is nursing the political equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Kate's most recent mission has yielded the startling intelligence that the British Prime Minister has cancer - and that one of the leading candidates to replace him may be a Russian agent of influence.

A stunning collection of the Bronte sisters' novels, adapted by the best-selling author Rachel Joyce. The collection includes Agnes Grey, Jane Eyre, Shirley, The Professor, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Villette and Wuthering Heights.

Venice, 1486. Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here – like the glass the island’s maestros spend their lives learning to control. Women are not meant to work with glass, but Orsola Rosso flouts convention to save her family from ruin. She works in secret, knowing her creations must be perfect to be accepted by men. But perfection may take a lifetime. Skipping like a stone through the centuries, we follow Orsola as she hones her craft through war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss.

In 1955, Vivien Lowry is facing the greatest challenge of her life. Her latest play, the only female-authored play on the London stage that season, has opened in the West End to rapturous applause from the audience. The reviewers, however, are not as impressed as the playgoers and their savage notices not only shut down the play but ruin Lowry's last chance for a dramatic career. With her future in London not looking bright, at the suggestion of her friend, Peggy Guggenheim, Vivien takes a job in as a script doctor on a major film shooting in Rome’s Cinecitta Studios.

Kidnapped in Venice by a Russian defector, Kate knows she's in trouble. But when he offers her conclusive evidence that the British prime minister is a live agent working for Moscow, Kates holiday quickly becomes the start of her next mission.

Toby Stephens and Juliet Aubrey star in a BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Wilkie Collins’ chilling Gothic drama. A lonely stretch of road on Hampstead Heath is the venue for Walter Hartright’s midnight first encounter with a mysteriously distressed figure in white. As he helps the woman to escape from unnamed pursuers, he has little understanding of the way she will affect his future. At Limmeridge House in Cumberland, Walter meets and falls in love with Laura, who strangely resembles the woman in white.

In 1920s Leicester, Lewis Eliot must escape the drudgery of a council clerk's office and his provincial lower class background to begin his decades-long rise to power. As the years pass, and Lewis progresses to successful London lawyer, to Cambridge don, to wartime service in Whitehall, to senior civil servant and finally retirement, he faces in his own life and the lives of those around him collapsing marriages, terrible illness, the politics of academia, Nazism, nuclear weapons, the price of power and the ever-present realities of war.

When Bill Mor falls in love with Rain Carter, he discovers a new way of being and a new joy in the world and his surroundings. To be with Rain he must abandon his prosaic life as a schoolmaster, his domineering wife, Nan, and his troubled teenaged children. He must draw on the powers of selfishness, hatred and anger in order to make the final break. But what love could survive all that violence?

When the world was supposed to end everyone did things they never normally would…none more so than Siobhan, who wakes up on her floor, hungover, dumped by her no-good boyfriend and with a strange man in her bed…who turns out to be more than a little bit dead.

Before Jane Austen, there was Fanny Burney. In the 1780s, she was England’s most celebrated female author, having achieved extraordinary success with two hit novels. She went on to become a royal servant, marry an exile from the French Revolution and undergo a gruelling mastectomy without the aid of anaesthetic – all events chronicled in her diaries, which were published posthumously to great acclaim. Contained here are dramatisations of her first and most famous novel, and her remarkable journals and letters.

H. E. Bates is probably best known for his comic novel The Darling Buds of May, which introduced the lovable Larkins to the world and sparked three hugely popular TV adaptations. In his 68 years, Bates wrote over 20 further novels, more than 300 short stories, children’s books, poems, plays and non-fiction. This collection brings together three full-cast BBC Radio dramatisations and fourteen excellent readings, rounding off with extracts from H. E. Bates autobiographies.

To those who don’t really know her, Kate Henderson’s life must seem perfectly ordinary. But she is in fact a senior MI6 officer, who right now is nursing the political equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Kate’s most recent mission has yielded the startling intelligence that the British Prime Minister has cancer - and that one of the leading candidates to replace him may be a Russian agent of influence. Up against the clock to uncover the Russian mole, Kate risks everything to get to the truth.

Pretty Edith Ottley is married to pompous Bruce and has a son, Archie. She seems content with her life in Knightsbridge until she meets the charming and handsome Aylmer Ross. The physical attraction between the two is electric, and they could make the perfect couple. However, there is more to husband Bruce than meets the eye, and when Edith discovers this fact, will that help to change her mind?

As senior MI6 Officer Kate Henderson arrives for a weekend away in Venice, a Russian spy enters the city with plans to kidnap her. But it’s not all it seems. The defector offers her conclusive evidence that the British prime minister is a live agent working for Moscow. Kate’s holiday quickly becomes the start of her next mission. With proof of the PM involved in a sordid scandal and a financial paper trail that undeniably links him to the Russians, the evidence seems bulletproof. But is anything in the dark world of espionage ever that simple?

Attempting to rebuild her shattered life in the South of France, former MI6 operative Kate Henderson receives an unexpected and most unwelcome visit from an old adversary: the UK prime minister. He has an extraordinary story to tell - and he needs her help. A Russian agent has come forward with news that the PM has been the victim of the greatest misinformation play in the history of MI6. It's run out of a special KGB unit that exists for one purpose alone: to process the intelligence from 'Agent Dante', a mole right at the heart of MI6 in London.