Showing results by narrator "Eleanor Bron" in All Categories

It began in a women's club in London on a February afternoon. A discreet advertisement in The Times, addressed to "Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine..." lures four very different women away from the dismal British weather to San Salvatore, a castle high above a bay on the sunny Italian Riviera. There, the Mediterranean spirit stirs the souls of Mrs Arbuthnot, Mrs Wilkins, Lady Caroline Dester, and Mrs Fisher, and remarkable changes occur.

Beautiful, sophisticated and endlessly ambitious Lily Bart endeavours to climb the social ladder of New York's elite by securing a good match and living beyond her means. Now nearing 30 years of age and having rejected several proposals, forever in the hope of finding someone better, her future prospects are threatened. A damning commentary of 20th-century social order, Edith Wharton's tale established her as one of the greatest British novelists of the 1900s.

Joseph and Harriet Blackstone emigrate from Norfolk to New Zealand in search of new beginnings and prosperity. But the harsh land near Christchurch where they settle threatens to destroy them almost before they begin. When Joseph finds gold in the creek he is seized by a rapturous obsession with the voluptuous riches awaiting him deep in the earth.

Lud-in-the-Mist - a prosperous country town situated where two rivers meet: the Dawl and the Dapple. The latter, which has its source in the land of Faerie, is a great trial to Lud, which had long rejected anything 'other', preferring to believe only in what is known, what is solid. Nathaniel Chanticleer is a somewhat dreamy, slightly melancholy man, not one for making waves, who is deliberately ignoring a vital part of his own past: a secret he refuses even to acknowledge.

Marie Antoinette's dramatic life-story continues to arouse mixed emotions. To many people, she is still 'la reine mechante', whose extravagance and frivolity helped to bring down the French monarchy; her indifference to popular suffering epitomised by the (apocryphal) words: 'let them eat cake'. Others are equally passionate in her defence: to them, she is a victim of misogyny.

gentle romance begins innocently enough in the stalls of a London theatre where Catherine is enjoying her ninth and Christopher his thirty-sixth visit to the same play. He is a magnificent young man with flame-coloured hair. She is the sweetest little thing in a hat. There is just one complication: Christopher is 25, while Catherine is just a little bit older. Flattered by the passionate attentions of youth, Catherine, with marriage and motherhood behind her, is at first circumspect, but finally succumbs to her lover's charms.

Eugenia, an American expatriate brought up in Europe, arrives in rural New England with her charming brother Felix, hoping to find a wealthy second husband after the collapse of her marriage to a German prince. Their exotic, sophisticated airs cause quite a stir with their affluent, God-fearing American cousins, the Wentworth's - and provoke the disapproval of their uncle, suspicious of foreign influences.

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923-2014) wrote brilliant novels about what love can do to people, but in her own life the lasting relationship she sought so ardently always eluded her. She grew up yearning to be an actress, but when that ambition was thwarted by marriage and the war, she turned to fiction. Her first novel, The Beautiful Visit, won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize - she went on to write 14 more, of which the best-loved were the five volumes of The Cazalet Chronicle.

Dairy farmer Robin Meredith has just buried his Californian wife Caro who, though a central figure at the farm for more than twenty years, had remained a mystery to the family. With Caro gone, her adopted daughter Judy feels cut adrift. To Robin’s brother, Joe, Caro had been the emblem of a freedom he’d glimpsed in America and his grief is far deeper than the family suspects. Even Robin and Joe’s parents, entrenched in the adjoining farm, feel suddenly vulnerable to time and change as well.

Moving between Nice and London, The Bay of Angels makes the point that not everyone needs conventional relationships to be happy. It relates the story of Zoe, whose life changes when her widowed mother marries a wealthy older man and moves to Nice.

Lifelong friends, now in their sixties, James, a teacher, and Hugh, a TV personality, both live with attractive women 25 years their junior. But the age difference is a time bomb, ticking away at the heart of both relationships. Kate's hunger for a life more in keeping with her own age threatens to bring her eight years with James to an end. And how is Julia to cope when her own career begins to blossom while Hugh's is withering before their eyes? The arrival of Miss Beatrice Bachelor, a razor-sharp Oxford spinster, fuels the discontent in both girls.

For millions of people, both in Britain and across the world, Elizabeth II is the embodiment of monarchy. Her long life spans nearly a century of national and global history, from a time before the Great Depression to the era of COVID-19. Her reign embraces all but seven years of Britain's postwar history; she has been served by 15 UK prime ministers from Churchill to Johnson, and witnessed the administrations of 13 US presidents from Truman to Trump. The vast majority of Britons cannot remember a world without Elizabeth II as head of state and the Commonwealth.

Beatrice considers herself to be delicate and sensitive, idle and confused. Forced into early retirement, she has an unashamed and romantic desire to be rescued by the ideal man. But Beatrice's only family is her orderly sister, Miriam.

The story follows the life of Tina, a young woman caught between the mother who adopted her - the beautiful, upstanding Delia - and her true mother, her plain, unmarried ‘aunt’ Charlotte, who gave Tina up to provide her with a socially acceptable life. The three women live quietly together until Tina’s wedding day, when Delia’s and Charlotte’s hidden jealousies rush to the surface.