One of the greatest love stories ever written, Jane Eyre is the tale of a young woman entangled with the powerful Mr Rochester. What lurks in the attic at Thornfield, the ancestral home of the surly Mr Rochester? Will the governess Jane Eyre discover his secret and having discovered it, live to regret that knowledge? Battling inside Jane are passion and prudence; she struggles to survive the turmoil they cause.

A trio of dramas based on Henry Green’s most notable novelsBorn Henry Yorke, aristocrat and industrialist Henry Green led a double life as a managing director of an engineering firm and one of the finest English modernists of the 20th century. A contemporary and friend of Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell, he penned nine novels before giving up writing in 1952 at the age of 47. Three of them are dramatised here, with casts incuding Pauline Quirke, Amanda Root...

In this BBC radio full-cast dramatisation of one of Jane Austen's most beloved works, Mrs Bennet is determined to see her five daughters married off and secure a future for them all.When the wealthy Mr Bingley arrives in the neighbourhood, Mrs Bennet wastes no time in making his acquaintance. His friend Mr Darcy, however, discourages Mr Bingley from marrying Jane Bennet, and also appears to snub her sister Elizabeth.When Elizabeth hears that Mr Darcy himself is of poor char...

Dramatisations and a reading of selected novels by Barbara Pym - plus bonus materialBarbara Pym is one of the 20th Century's wittiest, and most underrated, novelists. Her perceptive comedies of manners, centred around the domestic lives and loves of unassuming middle-class Englishwomen, won her many devoted readers and saw her hailed as a modern-day Jane Austen. Yet she spent 15 years out of print in the 1960s and '70s, until Philip Larkin championed her work in th...

10 dramas focusing on women's untold stories from history.This diverse, eclectic collection of plays explores an array of social, political and historical events from a female point of view. In these captivating dramas, we see the world through their eyes, giving us a fresh perspective on a female history that is too often unrecorded, misrepresented or misunderstood.Featuring a multiplicity of styles and genres, and written by a wide variet...

BBC Radio adaptations of Nancy Mitford's most famous novels and acclaimed biography of Madame de Pompadour plus bonus programmesThe eldest of the notorious Mitford sisters, Nancy Mitford was renowned for her comic novels of upper-class life. An aristocrat and socialite, she mingled with the 'Bright Young Things' in interwar London, and went on to satirise their foibles in razor-sharp, wickedly funny prose. Collected here are adaptations of her two bestsellers, the ...

In this BBC radio full-cast dramatisation of one of Jane Austen's most beloved works, Catherine Morland's overactive imagination makes her life more complicated than she would have wished...Catherine is obsessed with Gothic novels, often getting swept up by her taste for the dramatic and tragic. Did Mrs Tilney really die nine years previously, or has she been murdered or imprisoned in her chambers this whole time?Meanwhile she is torn between two suitors, the handsome and c...

Shakespeare’s most sophisticated comedy is a riotous tale of hopelessly unrequited passions and mistaken identity.Duke Orsino is in love with the noblewoman Olivia. She, however, has fallen for his servant Cesario, who is actually Viola, a woman disguised as a man, who loves Orsino: confusion is rife. Meanwhile, Olivia’s arrogant steward Malvolio is cruelly tricked by her uncle Sir Toby Belch, his friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and the maidservant Maria into believin...

A selection of the powerful and poignant wartime letters of Vera Brittain and her friends.‘If war spares me,’ wrote Vera Brittain to her brother Edward in 1916, ‘it will be my one aim to immortalise in a book the story of us four.’ Seventeen years later, Vera was to achieve her aim with the acclaimed Testament of Youth.This series of letters was the inspiration behind Testament. Written between Vera, her brother, her fiancé Roland Leighton and their two best frien...

The acclaimed BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Anthony Trollope's gently satirical tales of provincial lifeOne of the most respected, successful chroniclers of nineteenth-century life, Anthony Trollope is still widely read and much-loved today. The Barchester Chronicles - witty moral comedies with a wonderful range of characters - are among his most popular tales.The first in the series, The Warden, finds Rev. Harding forced to question the mo...

Eleven compelling BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramas telling the stories of the Russian tsarsBroadcast to mark the centenary of the Russian revolution, this extraordinary drama cycle by Mike Walker comprises eleven ambitious plays spanning over 400 years, exploring the lives of Russia’s key rulers from Ivan the Terrible to Vladimir Putin.Ivan the Terrible: Absolute Power - The rise and fearsome reign of the first Tsar of...

Dramatisations of Louisa May Alcott’s evergreen classic and its sequel, plus her Gothic tour de force about an orphan girl and her controlling guardianBorn in 1832 in Pennsylvania, Louisa May Alcott was best known for Little Women, her phenomenal bestseller loosely based on her childhood experiences with her own sisters. Adapted numerous times for stage and screen, it is dramatised here alongside her follow-up novel Good Wives and the thrilling se...