AuthorThomas Hardy
NarratorRobert Powell
Duration2h 21m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Classics
Key StageKS4
PublisherCSA Word
VersionAbridged
A gritty and absorbing glimpse into the lives of women and men living in a small community, and the often unpleasant truths that relationships can sometimes hold. Bathsheba Everdene flees her abusive husband and spends the night by a stagnant and spooky swamp. When light begins to break over her hiding-place, she sees strong parallels between her surroundings and the nature of her own experiences of relationships.
The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion
Author: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Martin Jarvis
Duration 42m
A tale by Hardy, master of human tragedy, about a girl's sacrifice for her long-engagement and her doomed love for a visiting soldier.
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Author: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Anton Lesser
Duration 12h 20m
In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurks the shameful secret of his past and a personality pr...
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Far from the Madding Crowd (Movie Tie-in Edition)
Author: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Nicholas Guy Smith
Duration 15h 18m
This story of a proud rural beauty and the three men who court her is the novel that first made Thomas Hardy famous.Despite the violent ends of several of its major characters, Far from the Madding Crowd is the sunniest and least brooding of Hardy’s great novels. The strong-minded Bathsheba Everdene—and the devoted shepherd, obsessed fa...
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Author: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Martin Shaw, Lindsay Duncan
Duration 2h 22m
Tess goes through her life at the mercy of unscrupulous men, who take advantage of their positions in society and of her. But how far can a woman be pushed before she is forced to take revenge? Tess of the D'Urbervilles is an early exercise in girl power, Tess spends her life being bullied by men and is pushed to the brink. A dramatic and tragic st...
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Author: Thomas Hardy
Author Thomas Hardy
Narrator Full Cast
Duration 3h 45m
A new dramatisation of the Thomas Hardy classic, `Tess Of The d'Urbervilles', to be transmitted as the Radio 4 Classic Serial in four hour-long episodes. John Durbeyfield learns that he is descended from the Norman family of d'Urbervilles. He and his wife Joan encourage their daughter Tess to befriend the family of Stoke d'Urbervilles. In doing...
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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: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Author Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Narrator Various
Duration 1h 32m
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Jessica Brown Findlay, Jamael Westman and Sheila Atim. 'The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing' Written with barely controlled fury after she was confined to her room for 'nerves' and forbidden to write, Gilman's pioneer...
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Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Author Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Narrator Richard E. Grant
Duration 2h 12m
He is the Little Prince, the mysterious, innocent and beautiful boy who appears to a pilot stranded in the desert and makes an extraordinary request. He has captured the hearts of millions of readers around the world since his story first appeared in 1943, written down by an aristocratic French aviator who soon after disappeared during a flight acr...
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Author: Charlotte Bronte
Author Charlotte Bronte
Narrator Charlotte Ritchie
Duration 21h 29m
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Charlotte Ritchie, best known for her roles as Oregon in Channel 4's Fresh Meat, Hannah in the BBC Three comedy Siblings, and as Barbara Gilbert in BBC drama Call the Midwife. With neither friends nor family, Lucy Snowe sets sail from England to find employment in a girls' boarding sch...
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Author: Jerome K Jerome
Author Jerome K Jerome
Narrator Blake Morrison
Duration 7h 33m
Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Blake Harrison, star of The Inbetweeners, also known for his role on screen in A Very English Scandal and Todd Margaret, as well as on London's West End in Waitress. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by David Carroll. Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. a...
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