Showing results by narrator "Jenny Agutter" in All Categories

Emma can be enjoyed as a charming love story, a detective story, and a comic and lively picture of English life 200 years ago. Austen's beautiful, clever, wilful but fallible heroine Emma Woodhouse believes she knows best. Perfectly content with her life she sees no need for either love or marriage, yet nothing pleases her more than meddling in the romantic lives of others.

A collection of BBC radio full-cast dramatisations of Jane Austen's six major novels. Jane Austen is one of the finest writers in the English language, and this volume includes all six of her classic novels. Mansfield Park: on a quest to find a position in society, Fanny Price goes to live with her rich aunt and uncle. Northanger Abbey: young, naïve Catherine Morland receives an invitation to stay at the isolated Gothic mansion Northanger Abbey.

The story of a woman's struggle for independence from an abusive husband. Helen 'Graham' has returned to Wildfell Hall in flight from a disastrous marriage and to protect her young son from the influence of his father. Exiled to the desolate moorland mansion, she adopts an assumed name and earns her living as a painter. Gilbert Markham, a local man intrigued by the beautiful young 'widow' offers his friendship but becomes distrustful when her reclusive behaviour sparks rumours and speculation.

The Mitford family is one of the century's most enigmatic, made notorious by Nancy's novels, Diana's marriage to Sir Oswald Mosley, Unity's infatuation with Hitler, Debo's marriage to a duke and Jessica's passionate commitment to communism. Hons and Rebels is an enchanting and deeply absorbing memoir of an isolated and eccentric upbringing which conceals beneath its witty, lighthearted surface much wisdom and depth of feeling.

The Thirteenth Tale is a compelling and emotional mystery, in the timeless vein of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, about family secrets and the magic of books and storytelling.

An anthology of over 50 classic poems, read by some of our finest actors. This collection contains a selection of the very best poems, from verses inspired by love to war poetry, nature poems and children's rhymes.

In the year 1629, a young English lutenist named Peter Claire arrives at the Danish Court to join King Christian IV's Royal Orchestra. From the moment when he realizes that the musicians perform in a freezing cellar underneath the royal apartments, Peter Clair understands that he's come to a place where the opposing states of light and dark, good and evil, are waging war to the death.

When Father is taken away unexpectedly, Roberta, Peter, Phyllis and their mother have to leave their comfortable life in London to go and live in a small cottage in the country. The children seek solace in the nearby railway station and make friends with Perks the Porter and the Station Master himself. Each day, Roberta, Peter and Phyllis run down the field to the railway track and wave at the passing London train, sending their love to Father. Little do they know that the kindly old gentleman passenger who waves back holds the key to their father's disappearance.

"I write this sitting at the kitchen sink" is the first line of a novel about love, sibling rivalry, and a bohemian existence in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Cassandra Mortmin's journal records her fadingly glamorous stepmother, her beautiful, wistful older sister, and the man to whom they owe both their isolation and poverty: Father. The author of one experimental novel, and a minor cause celebre, he has since suffered from writer's block and is determined to drag his family down with him.

Fleeing a disastrous marriage, Helen Huntingdon retreats to the desolate mansion, Wildfell Hall, with her son, Arthur. There, she makes her living as a painter. Finding it difficult to avoid her neighbors, she is soon an object of speculation and gossip. Brontë portrays Helen's eloquent struggle for independence at a time when society defined a married woman as her husband's property.

Irish writer Maeve Binchy was one the best-loved and most successful authors of her time. Her bestselling books sold over 40 million copies worldwide, and were translated into 37 languages. This comprehensive anthology of her finest fiction, as heard on BBC Radio, demonstrates all the warmth, wit and compassion that made her so popular.

A collection of four short stories from P. D. James, published together for the first time. As the acknowledged "Queen of Crime", P. D. James was frequently commissioned by newspapers and magazines to write special short stories for Christmas. Four of the very best of these have been rescued from the archives and are published together. P .D. James' prose illuminates each of these perfectly formed stories, making them ideal listening for the darkest days of the year.

It's 1943, and Lily Tregenze lives on a farm, in the idyllic seaside village of Slapton. Apart from her father being away, and the 'townie' evacuees at school, her life is scarcely touched by the war. Until one day, Lily and her family, along with 3000 other villagers, are told to move out of their homes lock, stock and barrel. Soon, the whole area is out of bounds, as the Allied forces practise their landings for D-day, preparing to invade France. But Tips, Lily's adored cat, has other ideas barbed wire and keep-out signs mean nothing to her, nor does the danger of guns and bombs.

In this BBC radio full-cast dramatisation of one of Jane Austen's most beloved works, Catherine Morland's overactive imagination makes her life more complicated than she would have wished.... Catherine is obsessed with Gothic novels, often getting swept up by her taste for the dramatic and tragic. Did Mrs Tilney really die nine years previously, or has she been murdered or imprisoned in her chambers this whole time? Meanwhile, she is torn between two suitors, the handsome and clever Henry Tilney and the arrogant John Thorpe....

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe, read by Jenny Agutter. Rosamund lies dying in her remote Shropshire home. But before she does so, she has one last task: to put on tape not just her own story but the story of the young blind girl, her cousin's granddaughter, who turned up mysteriously at her party all those years ago. This is a story of generations, of the relationships within a family - and of what goes to make a child.

From a childhood of gothic proportions in a vicarage on the Welsh borders, through adolescence, leaving herself teetering on the brink of the 1960s, Lorna Sage vividly and wittily brings to life a vanished time and place and illuminates the lives of three generations of women.

Elizabeth Roffe, only child of one of the world's richest men, has it all; beauty, intelligence, innocence and youth. But when her father dies, she discovers that she has inherited not only his vast pharmaceutical company, with offices and factories all over the world, but also an unspeakable terror that threatens to destroy the business. As she struggles to save the company that took her family four generations to build, she realizes that she herself is the target of an unknown assassin.

At 32, Harriet Swift thinks she has the perfect life: a satisfying career, her own flat, and a new boyfriend. But when her only sister is killed in a car crash, Harriet is forced to give up her well-ordered life and to help parents look after her orphaned niece and nephew. Moving back to her childhood home and sacrificing so much doesn't come easy, and Harriet discovers things about her family she never believed possible.

An anthology of over 60 classic love poems, read by some of our finest actors. Love has always been the supreme inspiration for poets, whether romantic or platonic, reciprocated or unrequited. This collection contains a range of the very best love poems, including Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress", Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" and Byron's "So We'll Go No More A-Roving" - as well as several sonnets from the master himself, William Shakespeare.

E Nesbit is widely regarded as the first modern children's writer. Her ground-breaking novels have influenced authors from Oscar Wilde to Jacqueline Wilson, and over 100 years after their first publication, they remain perennially popular. This wide-ranging collection comprises some of her very best children's fiction, commencing with her timeless tale The Railway Children.