AuthorEvelyn Waugh
NarratorJeremy Northam
Duration5h 16m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Classics, LGBTQ+ Literature
Key StageA Level
PublisherCSA Word
VersionAbridged
The inspiration for a major film releasing 2008 starring Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon. A study of faith and disillusionment in a glamorous upper-class world, Waugh's most famous novel is partly autobiographical and is a gripping multi-character-study of aristocratic life behind closed doors. Charles Ryder meets Sebastian, a member of the aristocratic Flyte family, at Oxford. He then begins to spend time at the family home, Brideshead, where he is welcomed into the fold and enjoys a decadent high-society lifestyle. Things start to unravel, however, when Charles notices the cracks in the veneer: his perception of the naivety of the family's devotion to the Catholic faith, and his friend's increasing drink habit. Tangled webs of love and obsession also threaten to break up the at first happy idyll. Examining the complexity of relationships and the strength of belief, `Brideshead Revisited' is an intense listen and a riveting one.
Author: Evelyn Waugh
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Nathaniel Parker
Duration 4h 42m
Evelyn Waugh's acidly funny and daring satire, Vile Bodies reveals the darkness and vulnerability that lurks beneath the glittering surface of the high life. In the years following the First World War a new generation emerges, wistful and vulnerable beneath the glitter. The Bright Young Things of twenties' Mayfair, with their paradoxical mix of inn...
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Karen Pirie Book 4: Out of Bounds
Author: Val Mcdermid
Author Val Mcdermid
Narrator Kathleen Mccarron
SeriesKaren Pirie, Book 4
Duration 12h 59m
A stunning new cold case novel from internationally bestselling crime writer Val McDermid about a car crash that opens up an unsolved murder from decades before Internationally bestselling author Val McDermid is one of our finest crime writers, whose gripping, impeccably plotted novels have garnered millions of readers worldwide. In her latest, Out...
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Simon Vance
Duration 31h 21m
The most gorgeously theatrical of all Dickens's novels, Nicholas Nickleby follows the delightful adventures of a hearty young hero in nineteenth-century England. Nicholas, a gentleman's son fallen upon hard times, must set out to make his way in the world. His journey is accompanied by some of the most swaggering scoundrels and unforgettable eccent...
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Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Author Jeffrey Eugenides
Narrator Nathan Osgood
Duration 24h 17m
'I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.' So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and her truly unique family secret, born on the slopes of Mount Olympus and passed on through thr...
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Author: Albert Camus
Author Albert Camus
Narrator James Jenner
Duration 11h 2m
In the small coastal city of Oran, Algeria, rats begin rising up from the filth only to die as bloody heaps in the streets. Shortly after, an outbreak of the bubonic plague erupts and envelops the human population. Albert Camus' The Plague is a brilliant and haunting rendering of human perseverance and futility in the face of a relentless terror bo...
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Author: Evelyn Waugh
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Rik Mayall
Duration 2h
The gloriously farcical story of Paul Pennyfeather, sent down from Oxford in outrageous circumstances, who finds himself a position as a schoolteacher at Llanabba Castle alongside a cast of oddballs, rascals and criminals. Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, a parent of staggering glamour and truly suspect mo...
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Author: Emile Zola
Author Emile Zola
Narrator Traci Svensgaard
Duration 6h 41m
In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Th‚rŠse Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband's earthy friend, Laurent. But their passion for each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime t...
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Author: Evelyn Waugh
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Michael Cochrane
Duration 5h
A sharply comic novel with shades of Waugh's own experiences, 'The Ordeal of Gilbert Penfold - A Conversation Piece', recounts a period of mental confusion and breakdown in the life of Gilbert Penfold, an established novelist of mature years. Prone to moments of paranoia and memory-loss, he attempts to cure himself with a tropical cruise. But his a...
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Author: Evelyn Waugh
Author Evelyn Waugh
Narrator Various
Duration 3h 47m
A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Evelyn Waugh's tragi-comic novel of the lives and loves of the English aristocracy. The action moves between 1944 and 1923, to tell the story of Charles Ryder and his infatuation with the decadent Sebastian Flyte.
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Author: Kenneth Grahame
Author Kenneth Grahame
Narrator Alan Bennett
Duration 1h 17m
When the Water Rat invites the unassuming Mole to spend his first day ever in a boat on the river, and wise Badger comes along for the ride as well, so begins a marvellous season of adventure for the three friends. Mr Toad (he of Toad Hall) completes a happy foursome, but his tendency to get into hot water leads him into some rather hair-raising sc...
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