Showing results by narrator "Ronald Pickup" in All Categories

Before marrying, Emma Bovary believed she would enter a life of luxury and passion like the sentimental stories she'd read in her novels and magazines. Now married to an ordinary country doctor her life is not the romantic ideal she imagined and seeks an escape through having extra-marital affairs. This devastating spiral into deceit and despair leads to catastrophic consequences. Emma Bovary continues to be enjoyed to this day because of its profound humanity, still as fresh today as when it was first written.

Wilkie Collins was one of Victorian England's best-loved and best-selling authors, and a crime-fiction pioneer. His enthralling 'sensation novels' such as The Woman in White paved the way for today's thrillers and his tour de force The Moonstone is one of the first, and greatest, modern-detective stories. This collection features dramatisations of these two masterpieces, with star casts including Toby Stephens (The Woman in White) and John Sharp (The Moonstone). Also included are adaptations of three of Collins' other major novels.

Writer and director David Hare is one of England's leading political dramatists, celebrated for his many award-winning plays analysing the morality of contemporary Britain. This collection comprises some of his most acclaimed pieces, as well as a fascinating radio interview with Hare himself.

What was daily life in Nelson's navy really like, for everyone from the captain down to the rawest recruit? What did they eat? What songs did they sing? What was the schedule of watches? How were the officers and crew paid, and what was the division of prize-money? These questions and many more are answered in Patrick O'Brian's elegant narrative, which includes wonderful anecdotal material on the battles and commanders that established Britain's naval supremacy.

On 25th October 1799—his 18th wedding anniversary—cantankerous Somerset parson William Holland begins his diary, chronicling events at the vicarage and in the small farming community of Over Stowey. He would keep it for the next 19 years, candidly recording the small trials of day-to-day life—from chaotic church services and unruly locals to lazy servants and irksome in-laws.

Ronald Pickup, Paul Ritter and Kate Duchêne star in Nick Warburton’s comedy about one community’s attempts to resist change. When Richard and Clare Wells inherit a clifftop house in Yorkshire, they also inherit a sitting tenant, John Hector, who treats their home as his own and the local town as his own personal fiefdom.

In March 1950, Timothy Evans, aged 25, was hanged for the murder of his wife and child. Sixteen years, later the queen was to grant him a full pardon. So why did Timothy Evans confess to murder? Why was John Reginald Christie, his neighbour, not arrested until April Fool’s Day three years later? And what was the gruesome discovery behind the kitchen wall? The shocking truth of the sordid and tragic events that took place behind the doors of number 10 Rillington Place was to horrify the nation.

Upon inheriting the Moonstone, a huge and priceless diamond, Rachel Verinder's delight turns to dismay when the gem suddenly disappears. But this is no ordinary theft. Sergeant Cuff of Scotland Yard is called in and immediately suspects an intricate plot. However, not even his powers of detection can penetrate fully the mysteries surrounding the diamond.

A fascinating glimpse into some of the most notorious crimes and trials of the last 100 years. Using the original trial transcripts, eyewitness accounts and contemporary newspaper reports, we witness the actual events that made each trial a cause célèbre of its day.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe was a colossus of German literature and a true Renaissance man. A novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher, he wrote the first international bestseller, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and his epic masterpiece Faust is one of the most famous and celebrated dramas of all time.

One of postwar France’s most influential writers, Albert Camus was fêted for his masterful exploration of the absurdity of the human condition. Included here are adaptations of his three iconic existential novels – The Plague, The Outsider and The Fall – alongside four bonus pieces shining a light on the man and his work.

This intrepid autobiography was written by Douglas Baker after having agreed, at the invitation of the Imperial War Museum, to give a series of personal interviews to tell his story, as at that time he was one of the remaining survivors of World War II. Not another run-of-the-mill rendering of war stories, this is the story of a 16-year-old youth who began his journey to manhood when he volunteered to fight on the war front in the desert of northern Africa, as well as in Italy, against the inhumanity of Hitler's fascism.

John Masefield (1878–1967) was one of the most prolific, popular and successful poets of the twentieth century. Masefield broke upon Edwardian literature with the startling work entitled "The Everlasting Mercy," which described the spiritual enlightenment of a drunken poacher. Over the span of his lifetime, he was appointed Poet Laureate and amassed a large number of admirers, which included such high-profile names as John Betjeman, Robert Graves and W.B. Yeats.

Penguin Classics presents Charles Dickens' epic Bleak House, adapted for downloadable audiobook and read by Ronald Pickup and Beatnie Edney.As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people.

Ronald Pickup, Angela Pleasance, and Maxine Audley star in this BBC Radio 4 1971 production of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy of the Prince of Denmark. Written over 400 years ago, Hamlet still remains one of the most powerful, influential, and thrilling tragedies in the English language.

When impoverished watchmaker Caron invents a pioneering device that could revolutionise timekeeping, his fortunes begin to change. Marrying a young, upper-class widow, he takes on a new noble name - de Beaumarchais - and sets out to conquer Louis XV's court. But his attempts to rise through the ranks of Versailles society are blocked by royal clockmaker Lepaute - as well as courtly crushes, rumours of war and illicit printing.