Pamela, Samuel Richardson’s tale of a beautiful teenage servant-girl protecting her virtue from the amorous advances of her master, created a furore on its publication in 1740. The reading public was split into two factions: those who accepted the story as an encouragement to virtuous behaviour, and those who saw it as disguised pornography. Written in the form of a series of letters from Pamela to her parents, Pamela is a landmark in the development of the English novel.

Upon inheriting the Moonstone, a huge and priceless diamond, Rachel Verinder’s delight turns to dismay when the gem suddenly disappears. But this is no ordinary theft. Sergeant Cuff of Scotland Yard is called in and immediately suspects an intricate plot. However, not even his powers of detection can penetrate fully the mysteries surrounding the diamond. And as we listen to each character’s version of the events, layer upon layer of drama and suspense build to the final and astonishing den...

Julius Caesar is Shakespeare’s most political play. He examines whether political assassination can ever be justified, and the effect of this act of violence on its perpetrators. The high ideals of Brutus are tested to the full by the consequences of Julius Caesar’s murder; as is the self-interest of Cassius, whilst in the chaos that ensues, the opportunism of Mark Antony and Octavius is served rather than the cause of freedom. A classic study of power, Shakespeare shows the devastating ef...

Between the eighth and eleventh centuries Vikings stormed out of their Scandinavian homelands to raid and loot along the coasts of Europe. In old Norse to ‘go a’viking’ meant to take to sea in a long ship for an adventure. Sometimes this was a trading trip, sometimes a piratical raid. Often it was both. Explorers and traders, warriors and poets, they ranged between Byzantium in the south and Iceland, and even North America, in the North. Their fame lives on.

Cousin Phillis a miniature masterpiece is set in the 1840s, when the coming of the railway was changing the face of England, and quiet rural communities, coming into contact with the outside world, were changed for ever. The story focuses on the effect these changes have on a naïve country girl, Phillis, as she encounters love, with all its pains and pleasures, for the first time.

Shamela is a bawdy, spirited and hilarious response to Samuel Richardson’s hugely popular 1740 novel, Pamela. In this pointed satire, Shamela (which transpires to be the real name of Richardson’s Pamela) reveals the ulterior motives behind the events that took place in Pamela. Shamela is unlike the virtuous young lady portrayed in Richardson’s novel and she takes command of her master, Squire Booby. Our heroine has planned it all out from the start and she is determined to entrap her maste...