Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme ...

This wonderful creation by GK Chesterton is a familiar favourite to many as a TV series in the 70s with Kenneth More. Chesterton’s other works include ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much. These four stories test Father Brown in many ways creating headaches a plenty. However Father Brown is nothing if not redoubtable and whilst Chesterton’s stories are, in his own words, “very slight and improbable” his method is all his own. Bill Wallis captures perfectly the mood and tone of Father Brown in this c...

'It's a cliche to compare novelists to Jane Austen, but in the case of Jane Gardam it happens to be true. Her diamond-like prose, her understanding of the human heart, her formal inventiveness and her sense of what it is to be alive - young, old, lonely, in love - never fades' Amanda Craig'I love Jane Gardam, especially Old Filth' Nina Stibbe'Her work, like Sylvia Townsend Warner's, has that appealing combination of eleganc...

Six full-cast BBC Radio productions of Shakespeare's classic tragediesTreachery, betrayal and fatal power struggles are among the themes of these six iconic productions of Shakespeare's timeless tragedies. Featuring all-star casts, they are introduced by Sir Richard Eyre.HamletShakespeare's powerfully poetic tragedy of murder, madness and revenge stars Michael Sheen as the Prince of Denmark, with Ken...

'It's a cliche to compare novelists to Jane Austen, but in the case of Jane Gardam it happens to be true. Her diamond-like prose, her understanding of the human heart, her formal inventiveness and her sense of what it is to be alive - young, old, lonely, in love - never fades' Amanda Craig'Her work, like Sylvia Townsend Warner's, has that appealing combination of elegance, erudition and flinty wit' Patrick Gale...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in Campden Hill, Kensington on May 29th 1874.Originally after attending St Pauls School he went to Slade to learn the art of illustration. In 1896 he joined a small London publisher and began his journalistic career as a freelance art and literary critic and going on to writing weekly columns in the Daily News and the Illustrated London News.In 1901 he married Frances Blogg, to whom he remained married for the rest of his life.For m...

'It's a cliche to compare novelists to Jane Austen, but in the case of Jane Gardam it happens to be true. Her diamond-like prose, her understanding of the human heart, her formal inventiveness and her sense of what it is to be alive - young, old, lonely, in love - never fades' Amanda Craig'Her work, like Sylvia Townsend Warner's, has that appealing combination of elegance, erudition and flinty wit' Patrick Gale'Sharp, humane, genero...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in Campden Hill, Kensington on May 29th 1874.Originally after attending St Pauls School he went to Slade to learn the art of illustration. In 1896 he joined a small London publisher and began his journalistic career as a freelance art and literary critic and going on to writing weekly columns in the Daily News and the Illustrated London News.In 1901 he married Frances Blogg, to whom he remained married for the rest of his life.For m...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme ...

A glance at the roll-call of authors in this volume brings a chill to the blood. Their plentiful talents conjure up the most diabolical of plots, the most evil of characters and the dread knowing that it will unfold its horrors into our fearful souls.1 - The Top Ten - American Horror2 - The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe3 - The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce4 - The Color Out of Space by H P Lovecraft5 - The Repairer of Reputations by Robert...

Stories are one of mankind’s greatest artistic achievements. Whether written down or spoken they have an ability to capture our imagination and thoughts, and take us on incredible journeys in the space of a phrase and the turn of a page.Within a few words of text or speech, new worlds and characters form, propelling a narrative to a conclusion with intricate ease. Finely crafted, perfectly formed these Miniature Masterpieces, at first thought, seem remarkably easy to conjure up. Bu...

Rome, 63 BC. In a city on the brink of acquiring a vast empire, seven men are struggling for power. Cicero is consul, Caesar his ruthless young rival, Pompey the republic's greatest general, Crassus its richest man, Cato a political fanatic, Catilina a psychopath, Clodius an ambitious playboy.The stories of these real historical figures - their alliances and betrayals, their cruelties and seductions, their brilliance and their crimes - are all interleaved to form this epic novel. I...