Showing results by narrator "Harriet Walter" in All Categories

Bucharest has fallen, and Harriet and Guy Pringle have escaped to Athens in the nick of time to find several of their old acquaintances there already. But even Guy's eternal optimism fails him when he realises that his former employees feel no gratitude or loyalty to him. Guy and Harriet both come to realise that with Greece threatened by the Axis Powers, Athens is not the safe harbour they thought.

Ex-army officer Bradley Shoreham is a war game expert. As a soldier, he created a host of mock conflict exercises simulating various disasters - and now, as a civilian, he does it for a living. His scenarios may be fictional, but they're authentic: and that's exactly what the governments and corporations who employ him pay big money for. But as the participants are about to find out, his games can have real, deadly consequences....

When Maxim de Winter brings his shy new bride to his beautiful stately home on the Cornwall coast, it seems like all her dreams have come true. The terrace slopes to the lawns, the lawns stretch to the sea and the gardens are full of scented flowers. But she soon finds that Manderley is haunted by the shadow of Maxim's first wife, Rebecca, who died the year before. It was Rebecca who made the house and gardens the showpiece of the county and her memory is revered by all, especially the housekeeper Mrs Danvers.

It is 1940, and Guy and Harriet Pringle and their friends in the English colony in Bucharest find their position growing ever more precarious. The phony war is over and invasion by the Germans is an ever-present threat... This is the second part of The Balkan Trilogy, which began with The Great Fortune and concludes with Friends and Heroes.

Often described as ‘the father of realism’, Henrik Ibsen was a pioneer of modernist drama. He influenced playwrights as diverse as George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, and is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare. Included in this collection are adaptations of his tragicomic masterpiece The Wild Duck, his complex and compelling play Rosmersholm, the epic drama Brand and the tragedy John Gabriel Borkman.

23 stories, all unabridged, from a diverse group of star writers and readers. A truly memorable collection with a wide appeal. Includes "The Years Midnight" by Helen Simpson, read by Harriet Walter; "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful Morning" by Haruki Marukami, read by Walter Lewis; "Bablady" by A. S. Byatt, read by Roslaind Eyres; "Hotel des Vaoyaguerus" by William Boyd, read by Martin Jarvis; and "Who?" by Fay Weldon, read by Julie Christie.

It is 1905. Asta and her husband, Rasmus, have come to East London from Denmark with their two little boys. With Rasmus constantly away on business, Asta keeps loneliness and isolation at bay by writing a diary. These diaries, published over 70 years later, reveal themselves to be more than a mere journal. For they seem to hold the key to an unsolved murder and to the mystery of a missing child. It falls to Asta's granddaughter, Ann, to unearth the buried secrets of nearly a century before.

Join us for an exhilarating and immersive adventure through 500 years of history, told entirely in the words of those who were there. With their artless prose and their polished & witty gossip, these are the men and women who have shaped our past. Brought to life by an award-winning all-star cast of 30 celebrated actors, including Charles Dance, Harriet Walter, David Suchet, Maureen Lipman, Timothy West, Jenny Agutter and many more.

Mustique is in a state of breathless calm as tropical storm Cristobal edges towards it across the Atlantic. Most villa owners have escaped the island but a few young socialites remain, unwilling to let summer's partying end. American heiress Amanda Fortini is one such thrill-seeker - until she heads out for a morning swim and doesn't return.

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of the bestselling novel by John le Carré, starring James Fox, Harriet Walter and Julian Rhind-Tutt. Magnus Pym, Counsellor at the British Embassy, is hosting a dinner party at his home in Vienna when he receives an unexpected telephone call that will profoundly affect his life. Once the guests have gone, Pym breaks the news to his wife, Mary: his father, Rick, is dead. In a state of shock, he says something Mary cannot understand - 'After all these years, I'm free.'

Elizabeth Bowen was one of the 20th century's most distinctive writers. An associate of the Bloomsbury Set, she was a keen observer of upper-middle-class life and relationships. Best known for her novels of the Anglo-Irish gentry and wartime London, her fiction displays recurring themes of loss, rootlessness and displacement. This collection contains five of Bowen's best-loved works, and hears from the author herself in three radio talks on the art of novel-writing.

On the stormy planet of Windhaven, flyers are idolised as the vital link between its disparate islands. The common people rely on this elite class to support their way of life. These 'land-bound' can only dream of what it must be like to take to the skies. For Maris, dreams are not enough, and through an unlikely twist of fate, she has a taste of what life as a flyer is like. However, just as it seems that she has found her true calling, the hereditary dogma which rules the skies sets out to strip Maris of her wings.

Ragnarok is the story of the end of the world. It is a tale of destruction of life on this planet and the end of the gods themselves. What more relevant myth could any modern writer find? As the bombs rain down in the Second World War, one young girl is evacuated to the English countryside. She is struggling to make sense of her new wartime life.

Harriet Walter and Beryl Reid star in this full-cast adaptation of the much-loved children's classic. When spoilt young orphan Mary Lennox is brought back from India to live in her uncle's house on the Yorkshire Moors, she finds the blunt ways of the staff at Misselthwaite Manor an unpleasant shock. Bored and miserable, it seems as though life in England will be awful. But Misselthwaite has hidden delights, and when Mary begins to discover them, nothing is the same again.

Dame Harriet Walter, renowned for her wonderful portrayals in Succession and Killing Eve, among others, is one of Britain's most esteemed Shakespearean actors. Now, having played most of Shakespeare's female characters, audaciously, she lets them speak their minds. With new parts for thirty Shakespearean women, written in 'Shakespearean' verse and prose, Harriet Walter goes between the lines of the plays to let us hear what she imagines - sometimes playfully and sometimes searchingly - these women were really thinking.

This BBC Radio collection includes the Booker nominated A Month in the Country. Be transported to the Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where, in the aftermath of the First World War, survivor Tom Birkin spends a summer uncovering a medieval mural in the local church.

The noble Titus returns victorious to Rome bringing Tamora, Queen of the Goths as his captive. When one of Tamora's sons is condemned to die, she vows revenge, and, aided by the villainous Aaron, she exacts a terrible retribution, inaugurating a grim cycle of rape, murder, and cannibalism. This macabre, often brilliant tragedy comes from the earliest stage of Shakespeare's dramatic career.

The Best of Women's Short Stories, Volume 2 is a celebration of iconic female writers from the 19th and 20th centuries; featuring eight full-length stories relating the many experiences and complexities of womanhood. This collection brings together stories by Katherine Mansfield, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Gaskell, Kate Chopin and Jane Austen.

Maggie Smith and Jonathan Pryce star in William Wycherley’s raunchy Restoration comedy. Considered too obscene to be staged in its original form for nearly 200 years, William Wycherley’s bawdy comedy tells the tale of Mr Horner, a notorious rake who spreads the false rumour that he is impotent in order to gain free access to other men’s wives. When he meets the young, innocent Margery Pinchwife, the ‘country wife’ of the title, the scene is set for scandal.

Catherine McCormack, Joseph Fiennes, and Harriet Walter star in this BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's last and most remarkable novel. Passion and perception run through this fascinating study of loneliness, love, and ultimate triumph over adversity.