Showing results by narrator "Alex Jennings" in All Categories

The young king of Navarre and three of his courtiers have vowed to lock themselves away for three years of study and fasting, and to forswear the company of women for this period. No sooner is their vow made than it is tested, however, as the princess of France and three of her ladies arrive in Navarre on a diplomatic mission. The young men fall instantly and hopelessly in love, and the tension between their vow and their passion forms the subject of this charming and sparkling early comedy.

First published in monthly parts between October 1846 and April 1848. Mike Walker's adaptation of Charles Dickens's classic tale of family relationships tells the story of Paul Dombey, head of the House of Dombey, who lacks a son and cannot reconcile himself to his only daughter.

Following the defeat of the Spartacus rebellion, Julius Caesar and Marcus Brutus, who have been sent to run the Roman colonies in Spain, return to challenge powerful senators to become one of the Consuls of Rome. Political opposition, family quarrels, armed rebellions and corruption make this a highly contemporary scene, fuelled by the intrigue of the major characters, who are now developing as full adults.

Prentis, employed in the police archives, is becoming confused. His obsession with the plight of his father, a wartime hero, now the mute inmate of a mental hospital, is alienating him from his wife and children, while at work, he feels under scrutiny from his intimidating boss, Quinn. Gradually, Prentis suspects that his father’s breakdown and Quinn’s menacing behaviour are related and that the connection is to be found in his father’s memoir: 'Shuttlecock'.

Nicolas Creel is a man on a mission. As the head of a major arms vendor, he is plotting a ruthless plan to supercharge his company’s profits by triggering a new cold war – and he won’t let anyone stand in his way. Meet Shaw, a man with no first name: a shadow operative working for a multinational organization that seeks to keep the world safe from men like Creel. Desperate to rebuild her disgraced reputation and rise to the top of her profession, Katie James gets the break of a lifetime when she finds herself on the same path as the mysterious Shaw.

A Radio 4 Book Club Selection.
Newspaper columnist Hilary gets thousands for telling it like it is; Henry's turning hospitals into carparks; Roddy's selling art in return for sex; down on the farm Dorothy's squeezing every last pound from her livestock; Thomas is making a killing on the stock exchange; and Mark is selling arms to dictators.

When the Pott family save Chitty Chitty Bang Bang from the terrible fate of being crushed to the size of a matchbox at the scrapyard, she repays Caractacus, Jeremy and Jemima with the best road trip ever. For Chitty is no ordinary car: she can talk - and float - and fly! The amazing automobile takes the Potts on a trip to the seaside followed by a fantastic journey across the Channel to France, where two cunning criminals are planning to rob Paris’ most famous chocolatier, Monsieur Bon Bon.

Charles Dickens' classic novel of mystery, read by Alex Jennings. A body is found in the River Thames and is identified as John Harmon. He was due to inherit a great fortune on the condition that he marry a young woman called Bella Wilfer. And so the story begins and unravels and we are introduced to the mysterious John Rokesmith, Our Mutual Friend.

Shakespeare's Sonnets, one of the most remarkable collections of poetry, was first published in 1609, 400 years ago by Mr Thomas Thorpe. Naxos AudioBooks marks the occasion with a selection of 80 of the finest, read by leading actors. The selection includes famous ones such as 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day' as well as lesser well-known sonnets though of equally fine stature.

One of Britain's leading contemporary playwrights, Howard Brenton is well known for his controversial state-of-the-nation plays, dark comedies and powerful political satires. He has written over 50 works for the theatre and numerous screenplays, including 13 episodes of the hit TV series Spooks. Included here are some of his most acclaimed dramas, including the award-winning Pravda, co-written with David Hare.

Enjoy the best of Lakeland poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey in this specially selected anthology, including "The Two-Part Prelude", Wordsworth's own shortened version of his great autobiographical work The Prelude, and Coleridge's celebrated Kubla Khan. John Rowe, Alex Jennings, and Stephen Critchlow read these perfect evocations of majestic Cumbrian scenery.

When a Hag, an orphan boy, and a troll called Ulf get sent to rescue a princess from an ogre, they expect it to be a fairly standard magical mission. But the ogre is depressed, the princess doesn’t want to be rescued – and the ogre’s dead wife is turning in her grave. The Norns who rule their fates decide to take things in hand – will the Ogre meet a bloody end, or will he get a happy ending?

Bill Unwin, an academic of dubious status, has never recovered from the death of his famous actress wife and is now convalescing from a recent brush with his own mortality. He has two tales to tell. One, spanning postwar Paris, 1950s Soho and contemporary sexual and scholarly entanglements, surveys the muddle of his own life. The other, drawn from the notebooks of a Victorian ancestor, is the very different story of Matthew Pearce, a serious-minded man whose happiness is destroyed by his compulsive search for truth.

By Peter Souter. Hugh and Bella, are running to the same timetable, the timetable you're on if someone you love has just died, and they keep running into each other. They visit the same undertakers at the same time; Hugh's Mum is cremated immediately after Bella's husband; and they even end up in the same bereavement-counselling group. But Hugh and Bella are dealing with very different types of grief.

Theo is determined to seek happiness with her husband's business rival, Vincent. Having fled London for Paris, however, she soon learns of Richard's financial collapse - and discovers that rather more than just his job is at stake.

As friends, relatives, and foes trickle in to pay their final respects to his mother, Eleanor, Patrick Melrose finds himself questioning whether a life without parents will be the liberation he has so long imagined. Yet as the memorial service ends and the family gathers one last time, amidst the social niceties and the social horrors, the calms and the rapids, Patrick begins to sense a new current: the chance of some form of safety - at last.

What if you couldn't remember a single minute of the ten years you'd spent with the love of your life? Joe can remember everything about Ally; Ally remembers nothing about Joe.

The ultimate Rome story. The young Caesar must overcome enemies on land and at sea to become a battle-hardened leader – in the spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of The Gates of Rome. Forced to flee Rome, Julius Caesar is serving on board a war galley in the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean and rapidly gaining a fearsome reputation. But no sooner has he had a memorable victory than his ship is captured by pirates and he is held to ransom.

For 40 years, Willy Chapman has struck a strange but steadfast bargain between the two poles of his life: his beautiful but emotionally damaged wife and the sweet shop he runs on a South London high street. Devoted to each, he has maintained a delicate, precarious balance. Now, on a hot summer’s day, he attempts to settle his final accounts and reach an understanding with a third, disruptive element in his reckoning: his angry, unforgiving daughter.

A BBC Radio 4 play about the marriage of George, Prince of Wales, originally broadcast as the 'Afternoon Play' on 11 December 2008 (and repeated on 9 December 2010).Facing financial ruin, George was obliged by his father, George III, to marry his first cousin, Princess Caroline of Brunswick. But if he had been expecting a docile partner with whom he could maintain appearances, George had seriously underestimated his wife-to-be...