Samuel Beckett, one of the great avant-garde Irish dramatists and writers of the second half of the twentieth century, was born on 13 April 1906. He died in 1989. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. His centenary will be celebrated throughout 2006 with performances of his major plays, but the most popular of them all will be, without doubt, the play with which he first made his name, Waiting for Godot. It opened the gates to the theatre of the absurd as four men appear on the st...

Kieran Hodgson stars as Pliny the Younger in Hattie Naylor’s engaging drama charting the fortunes of a household in Ancient Rome.The Emperor Domitian has informers everywhere; no-one is safe. He rules Rome with a rod of iron, and is dangerously unstable and paranoid. In the snake-pit of Imperial Rome, all Pliny the Younger wants to do is get his letters ready for publication.Except if he, his mother Marcella, their Greek cook Doris (who narrowly missed out ...

Here is a lively new translation of Cornelius Tacitus's timeless history of three of Rome's most memorable emperors. Tacitus, who condemns the depravity of these rulers, which he saw as proof of the corrupting force of absolute power, writes caustically of the brutal and lecherous Tiberius, the weak and cuckolded Claudius, and "the artist" Nero. In particular, his gripping account of the bloody reigns of Tiberius and Nero brims with plots, murder, poisoning, suicide, uprisings, death, and ...

Alice’s adventures, funny, inventive and disturbing, have fascinated children and adults alike since their publication. This is a new unabridged recording using many voices to take the parts of The White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts and the Cheshire Cat and, of course, Alice herself. It makes for a roller-coaster ride of delightful fantasy.

The language of Poetry is an art that most of us attempt at some point in our lives. Although its commonplace exposure has been somewhat marginalised in today’s often fast-paced lives we all recognise good verse that can empathise with our thoughts or open us up to experience new things in new ways, to better understand and to enjoy the many strands of our lives.But finding a starting point can be overwhelming, even off-putting, so in this series we offer up our Top 10 classic poet...

Three semi-autobiographical plays by Victor Pemberton telling the story of one family across the 20th centuryNovelist and playwright Victor Pemberton was best known for scripting Doctor Who and working on Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock. His many plays for BBC Radio included The Slide, Kill the Pharaoh. and this three-part family saga, a love story inspired by the lives of his own parents and starring Nerys Hughes, Nigel Anthony, Sheila...

Otto Laird is outraged . . .The peaceful, if slightly bemused, existence of this elderly, retired architect is rudely interrupted when he learns that his most significant and revolutionary building, Marlowe House, a 1960s tower block council estate in south London is to be demolished. Determined to do everything in his power to save the building, Otto returns to London for the first time in twenty-five years.As he explores his past, ponders his pre...

With a star cast including Richard Wilson as Humpty Dumpty, David Shaw Parker as Tweedledum, David Timson as the Dodo, Teresa Gallagher as the Rose and the Fawn, Sean Barrett as The Lion and many more. Alice is back in her room, stroking her cats but not for long. Slipping through the Looking Glass she meets another wild collection of fantasy characters including the Red and White Kings and Queens, Tweedledum and Tweedledee and is entertained by the poems Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the...

Man’s best friend. An always faithful ally.Whether the dog is domesticated as a pet and there to enjoy life with a family or as a work-dog herding sheep, helping to hunt, police or guard, the dog has proved time and time again to have many invaluable uses.They come in all shapes and sizes from sought after breeds to lowly mongrels each with an array of qualities that give them distinct personalities.From earliest times dogs have been able to find a unique place fulf...

Our senses revel in the incomparable majesty of the work of Mother Nature. The structure of the landscape, the multi-coloured mantle of trees and fauna, the myriad animals that wander and inhabit this glorious Earth. Nature conducts symphonies of sound as her world goes from day into the inky embrace of night.Our ears and eyes are constantly bathed in the wonder of her ways; the soft drizzle of rain from soft grey clouds, a wave caressing the shore and the ravenous colours of a dep...

7 Stunden intensives Hör- und Sprechtraining in allen wichtigen Bereichen der englischen GeschäftssprachePraxisnahe Dialoge vermitteln die wichtigsten Redewendungen und Sätze für Vorstellungsgespräche, Telefonate, Small Talk und Meetings sowie Verhandlungen und Präsentationen.Sowohl britisches als auch amerikanisches Englisch wird berücksichtigt. ...