Sara Kestelman discusses playing Hippolyta and Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, in this ebook taken from Shakespeare On Stage: Volume 2 - Twelve Leading Actors on Twelve Key Roles.In each volume of the Shakespeare On Stage series, a leading actor takes us behind the scenes of a landmark Shakespearean production, recreating in detail their memorable performance in a major role. They lead us through the choices they made in rehearsal, and how the chara...

The tragedy of King Lear receives an outstanding performance in an all-star cast led by Britain’s senior classical actor, Paul Scofield. He is joined by Alec McCowen as Gloucester, Kenneth Branagh as The Fool, Harriet Walter as Gonerill, Sara Kestelman as Regan and Emilia Fox as Cordelia. This is the ninth recording of Shakespeare plays undertaken by Naxos AudioBooks in conjunction with Cambridge University Press, and is directed by John Tydeman. It was released to mark the eightieth birth...

Dive into Tove Jansson's spellbinding memoir and be transported to early 20th-century Helsinki where you'll experience the magic and fears of a childhood infused with the freedom and natural beauty of Finland. Hailed by Ali Smith for its evocative prose, Jansson's memoir unveils the enchantments of a world where winter ice is a playground of mysteries, balalaika parties radiate warmth, and Christmas takes on epic proportions when viewed from a child's eyes. A universal tale that speaks to ...

Fifteen highly original and darkly unsettling supernatural stories, performed by some of Britain's finest actresses'This is what we know about The Hotel. It is bigger on the inside than on the outside. Do not go into Room 63. Doors and windows do not stay in the same places. The Hotel listens when you speak. The Hotel watches... We'll be at The Hotel soon.'A place of myths, rumours and secrets, The Hotel looms over the dark Fens, tall and grey in i...

Two novels by the award-winning Canadian writer Carol Shields, dramatised for BBC RadioCarol Shields was one of Canada’s most renowned contemporary authors. Often compared to Jane Austen, her deft, witty and compassionate works depicting the everyday lives of ordinary people won her numerous literary honours. Included here are adaptations of her Pulitzer Prize-winning tour de force, The Stone Diaries, and her final novel Unless, which was nominate...

Classic radio comedy from the BBC starring Caroline Quentin and Jim SweeneyLife for supply teacher, Phil (Jim Sweeney), is turned upside down when his wife, Sarah (Caroline Quentin) is offered a new job. Phil agrees to give up work and become a stay-at-home dad to daughter Sophie - after all, how hard can it be?Phil quickly realises parenthood isn’t all coffee mornings and cake. He has to grapple with playgroups (when he ca...

It is 6th October 1973. Golda Meir has become Prime Minister of Israel in her seventies. Syrian and Egyptian troops are massing on Israel's borders, but despite eleven warnings of impending war in the past month, the Israeli cabinet has not called up the reserve. In Florida, Richard Nixon awaits the final verdict of the Washington Appeal court on his objections to surrendering the Watergate Tapes. In New York, Henry Kissinger is about to be woken at his room in the Waldorf Astoria, with ne...

A collection of full-cast dramas from one of Ireland's foremost writers - plus Elizabeth Bowen's thoughts on the novelist's craftElizabeth Bowen was one of the 20th century's most distinctive writers. An associate of the Bloomsbury Set, she was a keen observer of upper-middle-class life and relationships. Best known for her novels of the Anglo-Irish gentry and wartime London, her fiction displays recurring themes of loss, rootlessness and displacement. This collect...

Maggie Tulliver has two lovers Philip Wakem, son of her father’s enemy, and Stephen Guest, already promised to her cousin. But the love she wants most in the world is that of her brother Tom. Maggie’s struggle against her passionate and sensual nature leads her to a deeper understanding and to eventual tragedy.