Showing results by narrator "Anton Lesser" in All Categories

Provoking an unprecedented outpouring of public grief when it was first published, it follows the story of Little Nell and her feckless grandfather. Forced to leave their magical shop of curiosities in London, they are pursued across the English countryside by the grotesquely evil dwarf Quilp. They escape - but at what cost?

"It was the best of times and the worst of times." In one of the most famous openings of any novel, Dickens masterfully presents the turmoil of the French Revolution, which is the backdrop for a novel of love, patience, hope, and self-sacrifice. This version is read by Anton Lesser, whose award-winning Dickens recordings in their abridged form has now resulted in the opportunity to read the full unabridged text.

A master of the psychological crime genre, Patricia Highsmith is most famous for her quintet of best-selling Ripley novels, and her groundbreaking thriller Strangers on a Train (notably adapted as a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock). This extensive collection encompasses her best-known works, as well as selected short stories and three programmes about the author herself and her greatest creation, charismatic anti-hero Tom Ripley.

Deviant. Depraved. Dangerous. Denounced for their transgressive themes and inflammatory ideas, these 20th-century classics have all been considered so seditious that they had to be suppressed. Find out what made these iconic works so threatening to governments worldwide in these superlative dramatisations, featuring stellar casts and specially composed music.

This is a story from the The Happy Prince and Other Stories collection.

Like her previous books, this book will be the result of the author's passionate interest in the realities of everyday life, and the conditions in which most people lived, so often left out of history books. This period of mid-Victorian London encompasses a huge range of subjects.

Hard Times is Dickens's most political novel. Set in the industrial north of England, in Coketown, he examines the lives of working people, who are taught by the capitalists Gradgrind and Bounderby to think only of the facts of life and not to indulge in imagination. Gradgrind’s own children have been so educated and as a result are dysfunctional and disconnected from their feelings. Only the travelling circus company of Sleary seems to offer any hope of humanity in Coketown.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in collaboration with his friend, William Wordsworth, revolutionized English poetry. In 1798 they produced their Lyrical Ballads, poems of imagination and reflection using "the language of men" - pointing the way forward for a generation of Romantic poets.

In Paradise Regained, Satan again is on the prowl, having successfully tempted Adam and Eve, and forced their departure from the Garden of Eden. Here he sets out to tempt again, this time Jesus himself, as he comes to the end of his 40 days in the desert. The magisterial poetry of Milton enriches the encounter and, while not matching the greatness achieved in Paradise Lost, provides drama and depth.

"A ghostly little book", said Charles Dickens of his famous Christmas novella, which first appeared in 1843. It has become the most famous classic Christmas story of all, with the miserly figure of Scrooge, the epitome of the callous employer; sadly crippled Tiny Tim; and the three spectres: the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Future. This audiobook continues the award-winning series of Dickens' works read by leading English classical actor Anton Lesser.

A BBC Radio collection bringing together much-loved works by Alexandre Dumas and Alexandre Dumas fils, starring Timothy Spall, Anton Lesser, Iain Glen, Ruth Wilson and Dan Stevens. Alexandre Dumas père and fils are among the most popular and widely read authors in French literature, whose works have been adapted numerous times for stage, screen and radio. This BBC radio collection brings together three of their most famous tales of chivalry, heroism and romance.

The year is 1964, and it's a week before Hitler's 75th birthday. Nazi Germany won the Second World War, Churchill is living in exile in Canada, Joseph Kennedy is President of the United States, and King Edward and Queen Wallis are puppet monarchs of the United Kingdom. In this dimension, history took a very different turn in 1942 to the one we are familiar with.

Frédéric Chopin is the pianist-composer par excellence. Regarded as one of the most mesmerizing performers of his day, he lives on in his music – his waltzes, mazurkas, études, preludes, nocturnes, three piano sonatas, two piano concertos, and much more. Here, his life, from his birth in Poland, his famous affair with the French writer George Sand, to his death at the age of 39 in Paris, is told with his music featuring prominently. We think of Chopin as a "frail, sheltered genius" but this forthright portrait demonstrates he was far more boisterous than that.

International number one best-selling author Jeffrey Archer is a master of the short-story form, creating classic tales beloved by his fans and hitting the top of the best seller lists with his previous collections. The Short, the Long and the Tall collects together 20 of Archer's most treasured previously published short stories.

Shortlisted for the British Book Awards, Author of the Year, 2007.
Winner of the British Book Awards, Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year, 2006.
In Carcassonne a young girl is given a mysterious book by her father which he claims contains the secret of the true Grail. Although Alais cannot understand the strange words and symbols hidden within, she knows that her destiny lies in protecting it.

Full-cast dramatisations of six masterpieces from the founding fathers of dystopian fiction. Dark and disturbing, provocative and prescient, dystopian literature has long captured our imagination with its nightmarish visions of forbidding future worlds. Included here are six classic novels of time-travel, totalitarianism and terror, written by some of the masters of speculative fiction and adapted for radio with all-star casts.

Nine BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramas by Mike Walker, chronicling Rome’s greatest rulers. Drawing on historical sources including Suetonius’ ‘Lives of the Caesars’, Mike Walker’s compelling drama cycle follows the story of the leaders of Rome, from Julius Caesar’s ascension to power to the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West in AD 475.

A winter weekend ends in snowbound disaster in a novel which remains a favourite among Marsh readers. It began as an entertainment: eight people, many of them enemies, gathered for a winter weekend by a host with a love for theatre. They would be the characters in a drama that he would devise. It ended in snowbound disaster. Everyone had an alibi -- and most a motive as well. But Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn, when he finally arrived, knew it all hung on Thomas, the dancing footman…

Philosopher, pacifist, psychonaut and prophet Aldous Huxley was one of the 20th century’s pre-eminent intellectuals and writers. The author of over 50 books, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize nine times, and elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962, a year before his death. Known for his mordant satire and visionary ideas, Huxley spanned the period from post-First World War disillusionment to mid-century mysticism, and the works in this collection reflect his literary evolution.

It's 2116, and Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson are token rebels in an irretrievably corrupted society where promiscuity is the norm, eugenics a respectable science, and morality turned upside down. There is no poverty, crime or sickness - but no creativity, art or culture either. Human beings are merely docile citizens: divided into castes, brainwashed and controlled by the state and dependent on the drug soma for superficial gratification.