Showing results by narrator "Anna Massey" in All Categories

The Arthurian legends have long held a powerful grip on our collective imagination, inspiring numerous poets, novelists and playwrights to interpret them in countless different ways. In this epic play cycle, based on Malory's classic Le Morte D'Arthur, Graeme Fife gives us his dramatic, in-depth retelling of these perennially popular myths. Focusing on seven key characters: Merlin, Tristram, Gareth, Lancelot, Galahad, Guenever and Arthur himself, he builds a vivid, multi-layered picture of the fabled king and his heroic knights.

Fresh new look for this bestselling book & tape featuring the Smarties prizewinner of 1995. It's Christmas, but Irina's family don't have enough money to buy her the present she wants. Then Irina sees the wooden horse in the junk shop window and all she wants is to take it home with her. Irina is sad and lonely and knows that the little horse is lonely too. But what Irina doesn't know is that this dusty little horse with the tattered mane is really an enchanted horse who comes to life and takes Irina on magical journeys.

Laura Thornby is swept by an irresistible desire to interfere when she meets struggling writer Claude Bannister. What she doesn't foresee is that he may write well - and she might fall in love.

An unsettling collection of full-cast dramas from the long-running BBC Radio 4 horror series. Throughout five series of Fear on 4 from 1988-1997, Edward de Souza was The Man in Black, a sinister raconteur who introduced a weekly half hour of terror and suspense. Here, he welcomes us to his house of horrors as he presents 13 terrifying tales that will make your flesh crawl. With eerie sound effects that enhance the atmosphere of dread, these bloodcurdling adaptations run the gamut from the mysterious to the macabre. With superb casts including Imelda Staunton, Bernard Cribbins, Anna Massey, Thora Hird and Sean Barrett.

When Anna Durrant is reported missing her friends seem unconcerned at her disappearance. After all, her life has been one of concealment. For years Anna submitted to the protective dependence of her mother, and even after Amy Durrant’s death she simply conformed to the expectations of others. Increasingly, Anna feels herself trapped by these expectations.

Inspired by the novels of D.H. Lawrence, particularly The Rainbow and Women in Love, this ambitious quartet from Booker Prize-winning novelist A.S. Byatt charts the lives of the Potter family between 1953 and 1970. Set against the changing social and political landscape of England in the '50s and '60s, it follows the heroine, Frederica, from precocious teenager to TV talk-show host and from her Yorkshire home to the heart of swinging London.

In these four supernatural dramas, first broadcast on radio in 1984, a house hides more than meets the eye; a B & B landlady helps her guests forget their troubles; a Japanese man inadvertently awakens a vengeful spirit; and a mother and baby become unsettled in remote mill.

Into the rarefied atmosphere of the Hotel du Lac timidly walks Edith Hope, romantic novelist and holder of modest dreams. Edith has been exiled from home after embarrassing herself and her friends. She has refused to sacrifice her ideals and remains stubbornly single. But among the pampered women and minor nobility Edith finds Mr Neville and her chance to escape from a life of humiliating spinsterhood is renewed...

Rachel Joyce captured the hearts of millions with her best-selling debut novel, which told the moving tale of an ordinary man, Harold Fry, who embarks on an epic journey to deliver a message and save a life. But Harold’s story began its life on radio, in the award-winning play which opens this collection: To Be a Pilgrim, starring Anton Lesser, Anna Massey and Niamh Cusack.

The new edition of Salley Vicker's sensational debut novel. ‘Miss Garnet's Angel' is a voyage of discovery; a novel about Venice but also the rich story of the explosive possibilities of change in all of us at any time. Julia Garnet is a teacher. Just retired, she is left a legacy which she uses by leaving her orderly life and going to live - in winter - in an apartment in Venice. Its beauty, its secret corners and treasures, and its people overwhelm a lifetime of reserve and caution.

Full-cast adaptations of three of Winifred Holtby’s best-known novels, plus short stories and bonus programmes about the author: Winifred Holtby was an acclaimed novelist, journalist, feminist and social reformer. Her work encompasses six novels, two short story collections, a play and the first critical study of Virginia Woolf, but she is best known for her posthumously published masterpiece South Riding, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Award. She died in 1935, aged just 37.

The Pilgrim's Progress is regarded as one of the most significant works of theological fiction in English literature and is considered by some to be the first novel written in English. First published in 1678, it has been translated into more than 200 languages and had never been out of print. In this production dramatist Brian Sibley delivers a fresh perspective and wonderful re-telling of the adventures of Christian, a pilgrim who embarks on a perilous journey from his hometown, the allegorical City of Destruction, to the Celestial City, or Heaven.

Othello revolves around four central characters: Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army; his wife Desdemona; his lieutenant, Cassio; and his trusted ensign, Iago. Because of its varied and current themes of racism, love, jealousy, and betrayal, Othello is still often performed in professional and community theatres alike and has been the basis for numerous operatic, film, and literary adaptations.

Sinéad Cusack, Anna Massey, Patricia Routledge, Andrew Sachs and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies star in this 1974 BBC Radio full-cast production of Chekhov’s classic play.Madame Ranyevskaya and her daughter Anya have returned home from Paris to discover that their family estate - which includes their beloved cherry orchard - has to be sold to cover the family’s debts.

This illuminating serial charts the transformation of the young Victoria from spirited teenager to shy young bride to celebrated ruler of Britain and ‘Mother of Europe’. But while her roles changed, her essential nature remained the same: vibrant, passionate, principled and fiercely independent. Through extracts from Victoria’s own diaries and letters, and dramatised episodes featuring the characters closest to her, we are given thrilling insight into the thoughts and feelings of the woman behind the crown - and the secrets of her mind and heart.

In the cosmopolitan Paris of the 1880s, the new proprietors of the Opera House are amused to discover that their costly acquisition is said to be haunted. But their smiles quickly vanish as tragedy follows misfortune: a murdered stagehand, a fatal accident, a missing girl. Fearful tales of the Opera Ghost race through the corridors and dressing rooms of the theatre. And with good reason - for deep in the catacombs beneath the Opera House, something is stirring.

Orphaned in infancy, Catherine de Medici was the sole legitimate heiress to the Medici family fortune. Married at fourteen to the future Henri II of France, she was constantly humiliated by his influential mistress Diane de Poitiers. When her husband died as a result of a duelling accident in Paris, Catherine was made queen regent during the short reign of her eldest son (married to Mary Queen of Scots and like many of her children he died young). When her second son became king she was the power behind the throne.

At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen's last completed novel.

These fairy tales are nasty. This is the land of goblins and sorceresses, with serious lines in revenge, not the land of unicorns and once upon a Barbie. The tales that the Brothers Grimm collected during their time as linguistics professors, first at the University of Göttingen and then in Berlin, at the request of the King of Prussia, were an attempt to map the folklore of the German-speaking people.

Caroline is running Household Solutions on her own from the student rooms she is renting - just leaflets through doors, offering a family back-up service. Then she meets Sylvia, who is sure she could be helpful to the business. Caroline is sure she couldn't. But Sylvia persists and gradually, throughout this BBC Radio series, a mutual respect is formed and a strong business, MiraclesRus, is built up.