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...

Theirs was the love of a lifetime.Now they have one night to save it.'A wonderfully romantic book' KEIRA KNIGHTLEY'Not just a beautifully tender love story but also a wonderful journey of exaltation, desperation and heartbreak - life-affirming' TOM ALLEN'Hilarious and heartbreaking, a rollercoaster you won't want to get off' SARA PASCOE'Captivating. I loved it' R...

This shattering drama of isolation and loss is one of the greatest tragedies in world literature.King Lear of Britain has three daughters: the hard-hearted Goneril and Regan, and the good and gentle Cordelia. He determines to divide his kingdom between them, giving the largest share to she who can say she loves him the best. Lear’s tragic lack of judgement and self-knowledge is paralleled by the blindness of the loyal Gloucester who is persuaded to reject his virtuous son Edgar in ...

Dramatisations of two novels by the Nobel Prize-winning author Patrick WhiteAustralian author Patrick White is is widely regarded as one of the most important English-language novelists of the 20th century. His debut novel, 1939’s Happy Valley, was awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society, and he won the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature – the only Australian to have received the honour. Two of his critically acclaimed works are featured h...

A riotous sitcom about a mother battling to get her adult children to leave homeIn this wonderful, fraught, witty, real comedy about a middle-aged mother desperate to begin her post-children life, Stella is wondering why those grown-up children are all still in her house. Dreaming of retiring to a life in the countryside with her husband, instead she's dealing with four extra people in the house, rooms that urgently need de-junking, surprise pregnancy tests, diffic...

It is said that Queen Elizabeth gave Shakespeare two weeks to write this play that showcases her favorite comedic character, Sir John Falstaff.The dissolute Falstaff plans to seduce Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, two "Merry Wives of Windsor," thereby gaining access to their husbands' wealth. The two women have the old rogue's measure, however, and Falstaff's plots lead only to his own humiliation. But the merry wives themselves fall prey to plotting as their plans to prevent Mist...

A deliciously black satirical comedy about the dinner party from hell.The fastidious host, Paige, decides to throw a dinner party in honour of her husband Lars, who is celebrating the success of his pop psychology book, Beyond Belief. She carefully plans a surprise menu that will mark the occasion, and anxiously checks with the waiter she has employed to make sure that everything is perfectly prepared. Her lucky guests include a post-feminist vegetarian artist, a distingui...