Twelve jurors. One verdict. Can the jury decide?When high-profile company director Virginia Hart fights a libel case against journalist Pat Carver, twelve ordinary people find themselves navigating the complex and unfamiliar world of the civil court. A woman’s reputation is on the line, and they alone must decide whether the allegations made against her in the satirical magazine Shady Tales count as freedom of speech, or scurrilous defamation.But i...

A BBC World Play written by Matthew Solon and directed by John Dryden. On 15 September 2008, Lehman Brothers, one of the oldest and largest investment banks in the world, with its headquarters in New York, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was the largest bankruptcy filed in US history and sent the already unstable global financial markets into an uncontrollable tailspin. Based on insider interviews, this 60-minute BBC Radio drama is a fictionalised reconstruction of what happ...

Written by Matthew Solon. This BBC Radio 4 'Saturday Play' tells the story of the tense negotiation that followed the 2010 general election, which led to the country's first post-war coalition. Based on interviews with those who were at the meetings, political journalists and on published material - and using actors to play all the key characters - this is a compelling account of those five momentous days in May. Under extreme pressure and suffering from lack of sleep, the politicians argu...

After five years of planning and an 18-month campaign costing more than £15m, England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup ended in humiliation in front of millions of TV viewers around the world. This thrilling drama tells the behind-the-scenes story of what happened in Zurich in the days leading up to the momentous announcement on 2nd December 2010. The England bid team - which included David Beckham and Prince William - arrived with high hopes. They had a strong bid and their presentation t...

A fast-paced, globe-trotting family saga of wealth, power, revenge and karma - with helicopters, private jets and a tiger reserveMeet the Majumdars, a family at war - with itself...Self-made tech mogul Ravi Majumdar fought his way up from nothing to make a billion-dollar fortune. Now he risks losing everything in his single-minded quest to defeat his enemy, Jai Singh: the man he once considered his best friend. Concerned for their inheritance, his children ...

Communicative competence is an essential language skill, the ability to adjust language use according to specific contexts and to employ knowledge and strategies for successful communication.This unique text offers a multidisciplinary, critical, state-of-the-art research overview for this skill in second language learners. Expert contributors from around the world lay out the history of the field, then explore a variety of theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and empirical find...