Penelope Wilton discusses playing Isabella, in this ebook taken from Shakespeare On Stage: Thirteen Leading Actors on Thirteen Key Roles.In each volume of the Shakespeare On Stage series, a leading actor takes us behind the scenes, recreating in detail a memorable performance in one of Shakespeare's major roles. They discuss their character, working through the play scene by scene, with refreshing candour and in forensic detail. The result is a masterclass on play...

Penelope Wilton narrates BBC Radio 4’s epic dramatisation of the treasured family sagaElizabeth Jane Howard’s five book chronicle of the upper-middle class Cazalet family begins in 1938, as siblings Hugh, Edward, Rupert and Rachel join together for another family holiday at Home Place, their house in the Sussex countryside.During the course of The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, Casting Off and All Change, the progress of their lives, and those of their children, will...

Penguin presents A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin, read by Dame Penelope Wilton.As one of the best biographers of her generation, Claire Tomalin has written about great novelists and poets to huge success: now, she turns to look at her own life.This enthralling memoir follows her through triumph and tragedy in about equal measure, from the disastrous marriage of her parents and the often difficult wartime childhood that followed, to her own marriage to the brilli...

Charlotte Bronte's classic novel, read by Penelope Wilton and featuring an immersive musical soundtrack to enhance your audiobook listening experience!Jane begins life penniless and plain: an unlikely romantic heroine. But she is as indomitable in spirit as she is frail in appearance. Taking a position as a governess at Thornfield Hall, her relationship with her employer, the enigmatic Mr Rochester intensifies, until she is forced to choose between the desires of her heart and the ...

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...

A landmark collection of BBC Radio productions of the works of Katherine Mansfield - plus bonus dramas and documentaryOne of the great Modernist authors, Katherine Mansfield was a short story virtuoso, redefining the genre with her subtle, powerfully perceptive tales. A prolific writer, she penned over 60 stories and several poetry collections before her death from TB in 1923, aged only 34.This outstanding collection opens with Radio 4's 20...

**“A touching tale about heartbreak and healing . . . If you loved The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fryand The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, make time to read this finale to the trilogy.”—Good HousekeepingTen years ago, Harold Fry set off on a six-hundred-mile walk to save a friend. But the story doesn’t end there. Now his wife, Maureen, has her own pilgrimage to make.**Only she can finish the journey her husband started.Ma...

BBC radio productions of the works of Sylvia Townsend Warner - plus bonus programmes about the author herselfSylvia Townsend Warner was a prolific author of novels, short stories and poetry, who also wrote a biography of T. H. White, translated Proust and was an authority on Tudor church music. A sharp, insightful storyteller, she was one of the 20th Century's most acute observers of English mores, and her work is infused with subversive themes reflecting her femin...

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of A.S. Byatt's 'Frederica Quartet', plus selected short stories and a fascinating talk by the authorInspired by the novels of D.H. Lawrence, particularly The Rainbow and Women in Love, this ambitious quartet from Booker Prize-winning novelist A.S. Byatt charts the lives of the Potter family between 1953 and 1970. Set against the changing social and political landscape of England in the '50s and '60s, it follo...

Six classic farces from the renowned comedy writer, with casts including Judi Dench, Michael Williams, Joan Hickson, Alex Jennings and Penelope WiltonIn the 1920s and ’30s, Ben Travers proved himself a master of comic confusion with his hugely successful Aldwych farces. Featuring battle-axe mothers-in-law, beleaguered wives, henpecked husbands and a host of humorous misunderstandings, they wowed West End audiences and were frequent...

Five new plays from the gospel of Luke, by award-winning writer Nick Warburton.This work presents the Gospel story as you've never heard it before.Everyone knows the story of Jesus' life, as told in the Gospels – and, perhaps because it is so familiar, we have forgotten what an extraordinary life it was. Through these five plays, the story is pieced together as if from the memories of those who were there and saw events for themselves: Jesus' mother Mary, his closest friend...

All three series of the BBC radio bittersweet comedy, narrated by Sheila Hancock, following the adventures of the residents of a small town in Northamptonshire - plus special episode 'Full Stop'.Relationships have come and gone but life continues in Wadenbrook, where Sheila Hancock takes us behind closed doors to reveal the inhabitants' heartbreak and happiness.We meet Rod the local supermarket manager (Mackenzie Crook), who shares rather more than is usual about his privat...