Showing results by narrator "Elaine Claxton" in All Categories

One name links Betrand Russell and Axel Munthe, Augustus John and Henry Lamb, H.H. Asquith and Duncan Grant, Aldous Huxley and Lytton Strachey. To some she was a lover, to others a confidant and adviser. To many she was a mother substitute. But wherever the phrase ‘Bloomsbury group’ is spoken, Lady Ottoline Morrell’s name is not far behind.

For many people, Beethoven is the greatest composer who ever lived. In this portrait-in-sound, actors’ readings combine with his music to reveal a titanic personality, both vulnerable and belligerent, comic and tragic, and above all heroic, as he comes to grips with perhaps the greatest disability a musician can suffer. No man’s music is more universal; few men’s lives are more inspiring. In every sense but one - his modest height - he was a giant. The great bonus of this audio-biography is that the development of Beethoven’s music can be heard in the context of his life.

Arden Beacon has nothing left to lose. Having fought monsters, the deep waters and the establishment to fulfil a promise the man she loved—she is no closer to peace. But against the odds, she has found Jonah once more and they are together now. She means to keep it that way. Jonah, Arden and Chalice are bound for Clay city. Warnings come that the scorned yet powerful Miah and Bellis have joined forces and turned their eyes to the capital, now following the direction of the slippery Mr Lindsay.

Sophie is only a quarter Italian. But that quarter is her charismatic grandfather Cesare, and he has instilled in her a great love of her Italian heritage. So when a journalist starts to investigate Cesare's war record, Sophie is reluctant to question just how proud she should really be. She embarks upon a journey into the past which takes her from 19th-century Naples to London's Italian quarter and one of the Second World War's forgotten tragedies. And along the way she also learns something very important about herself....

With nothing but time on her hands, retired nurse Rose Lanyon finds herself drawn to the garden that had once been her husband’s pride and joy.

It may have started as a means of honouring her husband’s memory, but her little Cornish garden soon becomes so much more – a place where the lost and lonely can find solace, the forgotten can be remembered, and second chances take bloom. Because, as long as new life is growing, there will always be hope and new memories to make.

It is September 1068. Thea, also known as Gytha, the elder daughter of King Harold II, travels with her brothers and grandmother into exile carrying revenge in her heart. She is soon betrothed to a prince of Kiev. Will her betrothal and marriage bring her happiness, as she confronts enemies from inside and outside Russian territories? Will she prove herself the courageous princess she surely is, win her princely husband's respect and establish her independence in a society protective towards its women?

Lydia is killed in a car accident, but she returns to her bereft sister as a benign ghost who nonetheless comes to haunt the lives of those around her in unexpected ways: Jonathan Goldman, whose flat Lydia is running from when she is knocked down; his daughter, Stella, who has discovered her father has been having an affair with the gladiatorial Sonia; Stella's genius painter-boy lover, Izzy, whom she leaves behind as she flees to the arms of kindly Peregrine. Along with good stepmothers, bad mothers, strange professors and wicked monks, their lives collide in a breathtaking finale.

Faith Lavender's funeral and the arrival of a stranger upsets the balance of Haverstock. Undercurrents of fierce emotion reach the surface while the tensions rise and the ladies of Haverstock find their actions motivated by mutual suspicion and fear.

2002, Australia. When Melissa discovers a postcard addressed to 'Desmond' among her recently deceased father's effects, she is determined to discover this person's identity and his relationship to her father. She soon embarks on a journey that will take her across oceans and into the past...

Rachel Saunders knows gossip is the price you pay for a rural lifestyle and outstanding schools. The latest town scandal is her divorce - and the fact that her new girlfriend has moved into the family home. Laura Spence lives in a poky bedsit on the wrong side of town. She and her son, Max, don’t really belong, and his violent tantrums are threatening to expose the very thing she’s trying to hide. When the local school introduces a new inclusive curriculum, Rachel and Laura find themselves on opposite sides of a fearsome debate.

Adeline Evans has recently moved into a home for the elderly. A safe space, where she can be cared for. When she begins to receive cryptic and threatening notes, she is certain that someone is out to get her. But the residents are warned against listening to a woman who is losing her memory. It would seem Adeline is tormented by the secrets in her past, and that the menace is all in her mind. Until danger comes down the corridor and starts knocking in the night.

It's 1890, and Josie Gray is an innocent and beautiful fifteen-year old when Adam McGuigan, the youngest son of a dangerous and influential crime family, spots her singing in a Sunderland public house. Adam is handsome and charismatic, sweeping Josie off her feet with his beguiling lies and promises. He charms her into marrying him on her sixteenth birthday, but on her wedding night the fairy tale ends.

With the possible exception of Mozart, Verdi is the most popular opera composer who ever lived. Quite early in his career his tunes were being cranked out by barrel organs throughout Europe and were well known to many who may never even have heard his name. But the complex man behind them remains elusive and puzzling. In this portrait-in-sound, Jeremy Siepmann and a group of distinguished actors take an in-depth look behind the popular image of a man who was, and perhaps remains, the most enduring national hero in Italian history and a colossus in the history of music itself.

Looking out from Moon Cottage, Susan Hill records the sights and smells, the people, gardens, animals, births, festivals and deaths that mark the changing seasons in the small Oxfordshire community.

It's 1890, and Josie Gray is an innocent and beautiful fifteen-year old when Adam McGuigan, the youngest son of a dangerous and influential crime family, spots her singing in a Sunderland public house. Adam is handsome and charismatic, sweeping Josie off her feet with his beguiling lies and promises. He charms her into marrying him on her sixteenth birthday, but on her wedding night the fairy tale ends.

London, 1888. Abandoned by her mother at the age of seven, Jerusha Carey is no stranger to being left behind. Eleven years later she is married to Dan Applebee, an older, reliable farmer from Kent. Jerusha believes she has finally found the security she has always craved. But then disaster strikes. Kent, 1904. Two years after the sudden death of her husband, Jerusha is alone once again. But the arrival of the enigmatic Joe Finch, a traveller seeking work on the farm and a home for his daughter, sets Jerusha's life on a new path, giving her hope for her future.

DSI Billie Wilde’s romantic relationship is intense—but it’s nothing compared to the pressure of her latest case, especially since the new chief of police is gunning for her squad. If they don’t get a handle on a series of deaths—which seem to have a connection to Alice in Wonderland—they could wind up being demoted. And the identity of one of the victims has made things devastatingly personal for Billie.

In the 1920s, three young girls enter a strict, cheerless convent school in a quiet London suburb. Six years later they leave, to change the world … Maureen was the movie star, whose role as Tarzan’s Jane helped rewrite the rules of cinema censorship. Sonia was the aspiring writer who became George Orwell’s wife and the guardian of his literary legacy. And Vivien was the actress as iconic as the roles she played, from Cleopatra to Scarlett O’Hara. Together their careers encompassed glamour and tragedy, triumph and scandal.

Two new dramas which get inside the emotional realities of dealing with ethical dilemmas. When a confused young man with no I.D. and a Doctor Who fixation is brought into hospital, the staff have clear rules about how decisions can be made on his behalf. But when he starts to make his own wishes clear, are they right to listen? Starring Gunnar Cauthery, Clare Perkins, Simon Bubb, and Carl Prekopp.

Three women’s lives tangled together in a web of secrets, scandal and deceit, as the legacy of Castle du Rêve is finally discovered.