Stephen Fry presents this intriguing programme charting the history of knowledge, how technology changes our relationship with it, and how we know what we know Knowledge. The Google generation thinks it doesn't need to carry much of it around in its head any more. Much has already been written about the internet changing the way we think and learn....

A tender and sad BBC Radio 4 comedy drama about losing your past, starring Richard Briers. The Moment You Feel It was originally broadcast as the 'Afternoon Play' on 18 May 2009. Alf's memories come in flashes with great blank holes, along with a running commentary from the voices of his past. So how does finding a strange coat in his kitchen remin...

Father Gorman is called to a dingy rooming house to see a woman who, before she dies, confesses a bizarre tale to him. Leaving the house he is followed and, in the fog, a fatal blow is struck. A piece of paper with nine names written on it is found in the dead priest's shoe. The clue leads to The Pale Horse Inn, home of three women: a psychic, a me...

The power of English-and the "English of Power", as the language extends its influence from Court to Edinburgh. Melvyn Bragg goes to Edinburgh and the house of John Knox, the great Scottish apostle of the Reformation, who preached in English. Latin was replaced by English as the language of the Church when Henry VIII broke with Rome. And the 1611 K...

Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sat the corpse of Mrs. Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist was the only sign of the fatal injection that had killed her. With only 24 hours available to solve the mystery, Hercule Poirot recalled a chance remark he'd overheard back in Jerusalem: "You see, don't you,...

In this BBC full-cast production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena run to the woods and stumble into a life separate from time itself.Fairy magic wreaks havoc and midsummer madness takes over as lovers tread the delicate line between fantasy and reality.Sylvestra le Touzel stars as Titania in this deligh...

1984. The miners' strike is dividing the country. In a struggling coal-mining town, the miners and their families are living at the edge of their resources. On the 14th of December, five miners break ranks to travel to Nottingham and work. For those who stay behind, this is an unforgivable betrayal. Twenty-three years later, a young woman is asking...

Darkus is miserable. His dad has disappeared and now he is living next door to the most disgusting neighbours ever. A giant beetle called Baxter comes to his rescue. But can the two solve the mystery of his dad's disappearance, especially when links emerge to cruel Lucretia Cutter and her penchant for beetle jewellery? A coffee-mug mountain, home t...

Dealing with the everday realities facing teens with Aperger Syndrome, this book presents a toolkit of tried-and-trusted ideas to help them work through difficulties and find the solutions that work best for them. This book covers everything they need to know to thrive in their adolescent years, including how to hack your own internal alarm system...

Santa Montefiore's involving and dramatic novel The Butterfly Box opens in Vina del Mar, Chile, in the sweltering Summer of 1982. Frederica Campione adores her father. When he gives her a magical box from Peru she believes he will always be there for her. Yet, when her parents' marriage falls apart, she is forced to move to Cornwall with her mother...

A magisterial life of Ted Hughes - identified recently as the only English poet since the First World War with a claim to true greatness and one of Britain's most important writers. Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. He is one of Britain's most important poets, a poet of claws and cages: Jaguar, Hawk and...

Los Angeles, September 1941. With the Nazis occupying Europe, and their armies now halfway across Russia, America hovers on the brink of war. Tensions are also rising in the Far East, and in California fears grow of a Pacific Coast invasion. There is mounting anxiety about the loyalty of the state's own Japanese population. But back in Washington D...

People today have more romantic options than at any point in human history, and thanks to social media, smartphones and online dating, our abilities to connect with these options are staggering. Yet we also have to face new and absurd dilemmas, such as what to think when someone doesn't reply to your text but has time to post a photo of a pizza on...

One of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is a masterpiece that is at once an enthralling adventure, a stirring love story, and a luminous evocation of a vanished American in all its savagery, solitude, and splendor. Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, Inman, a Confederate...

Geraldine Glover. A machinist at Rubins clothing factory in the East End, she dreams of a more glamorous life. When she meets Tony Hanford, the young and handsome proprietor of a small jeweller's shop in Bond Street, Geraldine is propelled into a new world - but it comes at a heavy price ...

In First Class Ticket to Nowhere, lost in the fog, Sexton Blake and his friends stumble across a deserted railway station. Then there's a gunshot.

A BBC Radio 4 drama by Katharine Way, 'Star Struck' was first broadcast on 2 May 2011 and stars Julia Haworth as Sarah, Philip Bretherton as Cal and was produced by Gary Brown. Sarah has got the job of her dreams. Working with Cal, an Astronomy Professor at a remote observatory in New Zealand. Sarah loves her work, but she would rather look at star...

Both episodes of the BBC Radio 4 two-part dramatisation of Anthony Trollope's classic Miss Mackenzie, a tale of a woman, past the bloom of youth, who inherits a fortune and is then beset by suitors from which to choose. Originally broadcast on 9 and 16 January 2011 in the 'Classic Serial' slot. Miss Mackenzie by Trollope was the runner-up in Radio...

Peter Fleming, brother of the author Ian, tells the story of his journey from England via the Trans-Siberian Express to China, and his subsequent attempts to become the first Westerner to reach the anti-communist front.

In this delightful tale, an Eastern Prince arrives in England with some family jewels which he's having reset as a gift for his fianc‚e. However, the Prince also has a mistress; she asks to wear one particularly enchanting piece that features a huge ruby, and then promptly disappears with it. Poirot discovers a connection with a house party a...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Never Look Back by Lesley Pearse, read by Holli Dempsey. One good deed takes her into another world . . . Sixteen-year-old Matilda is a poor Covent Garden flower girl until the day she saves the life of Tabitha, a minister's daughter. Welcomed into Tabitha's family, Matilda is offered the chance of a lifeti...