Showing results for "amanda root"

Shakespeare’s most imaginative and merry play is set in an enchanted wood amidst fairies and sprites.When Oberon, King of the Fairies, uses his magic upon four runaway lovers in a midsummer wood outside Athens, chaos ensues. Who really loves whom? Meanwhile, a band of well-meaning but bungling local actors have their rehearsal sabotaged by the mischievous Puck, who bewitches their leader, Bottom, and Titania, the Fairy Queen. The result is a lively and anarchic com...

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...

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...

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...

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...

In this lovely 31-day devotional, you will get an in-depth look at Jane Austen's vibrant, steadfast prayer and faith life. Her close relationship with the Father comes to life through her exquisite prayers, touching biographical anecdotes, intimate excerpts from family letters and memoirs, illuminating scenes from her novels, and spiritual insights.

BBC Audio presents Mansfield Park, Jane Austen's perceptive study of middle class morals in the 19th century. Jane Austen's unlikely heroine Fanny Price is plucked from her impoverished family and brought up by wealthy relatives at Mansfield Park.When two outrageous and flirtatious guests arrive at Mansfield Park, Fanny's moral compass is shattered. How will Fanny continue to appear meek and cheerful, whilst being forced to re-examine her entire life?Starring H...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Young Claudio has fallen for the lovely heiress Hero, who also loves him. Their path to the altar looks smooth, until the evil Don John intervenes.All ends happily, thanks to his incompetent assassins and the lucky discoveries of the bungling constable Dogberry. Central to the play, one of Shakespeare's best-loved comedies, are Beatrice and Benedick, masters of wit and sworn foes to marriage—until a plot is hatched to bring them together.Beatrice is played by Saskia Reeves,...