The funniest and most magical Nativity you will ever see.A travelling troupe of two actors and an opera singer arrive by donkey to masterfully, movingly and miraculously enact the greatest story ever told.The absurdly talented Maurice Rose, the alarmingly unpredictable Ronald Bream RAC, and the distinguished diva Mrs Leonora Fflyte play a cast of thousands in a Christmas comedy that conjures up the sublime, the ridiculous and the truly angelic.Patrick Barlow's T...

Four satirical spoof shows from the multi-award-winning Patrick BarlowThe National Theatre of Brent is a two-man company founded in 1980 and led by Patrick Barlow as his comic alter ego, Artistic Director and Chief Executive Desmond Olivier Dingle. Helping him to realise his enormously ambitious artistic visions is his helpful but hapless assistant, a role that has been performed by a succession of actors including Jim Broadbent (a...

The National Theatre of Brent present the full and unexpurgated romance, courtship and matrimonial proceedings of His Royal Highness Prince Charles and Diana Princess of Wales. Tastefully crammed into a single profound and unforgettable playtext.Patrick Barlow's play Love Upon the Throne is a gleefully comic retelling of the Charles and Diana story, designed to be performed by two (male) actors.It was first staged at the Edinburgh Festival in 1998, then at the Bush...

Can a young country girl lead an army?Joan has no plans on saving France from the English but when the brutes turn up and put her beloved crows to death by fire she knows she has to do something. And if she saves France at the same time, well that is just a wonderful side-effect. Guided by her guardian angels, St Catherine and St Margaret, Joan decides to take a stand and fight for what she knows is right.Dawn French plays Joan in this funny and poignant take on the story o...

Maureen Lipman and Patrick Barlow star in a full-cast dramatisation of the classic children's tale. When Dorothy and her dog, Toto, are whisked away from Kansas by a cyclone, they arrive in the strange land of the Munchkins. Setting off on a magical journey, they are befriended by the Tinman, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion, all of whom join Dorothy's quest to find the wonderful Wizard of Oz. Barbara Barnes, Philip Franks, Patrick Barlow, Bradley Lavelle and Kerry Shale also star in th...

All four series of the award-winning house-share comedy starring Barbara Flynn and Patrick BarlowMaria and Richard Reynolds are happily married, but broke. With debts piling up and their house falling down, there’s only one thing for it: they have to start taking in lodgers. Their new housemates are two equally cash-strapped students – Ruby, who’s conscientious and dedicated, and Paul, who finds academic pursuits more of a challenge.Over the course of 24 ep...

Global Backlash is the first book to move beyond the monolithic portrayal of the globalization protests that have escalated since Seattle and are not likely to abate soon. With trenchant analysis and dozens of primary documents from a variety of popular and uncommon sources, Robin Broad explores proposals and initiatives coming from the backlash to answer the question, 'But what do they want?' A range of sophisticated propositions and a vibrant debate among segments of the backlash emerge....

A definitive collection of Gogol’s best-known works, adapted for BBC Radio with star casts including Toby Jones, Michael Palin, Mark Heap, Frances Barber and Russell ToveyUkrainian-born humorist, dramatist and novelist Nikolai Gogol is widely believed to have led the realist revolution in Russian literature. His surreal, absurdist satires liberated comedy from its sentimental traditions and influenced writers both within Russia and worldwide, among them Fyodor Dost...

Hector Hugh Munro, more familiarly known by his pen-name ‘Saki’ was born in what was then Akyab in British Burma on 18th December 1870. His father was an Inspector General for the Indian Imperial Police, and his mother the daughter of a Rear Admiral.When he was 2 his mother died and he and his siblings were sent back to England to be raised by their grandmother and paternal maiden aunts in a strict, puritanical household near Barnstaple, Devon. Educated by governesses Saki used man...

Hector Hugh Munro, more familiarly known by his pen-name ‘Saki’ was born in what was then Akyab in British Burma on 18th December 1870. His father was an Inspector General for the Indian Imperial Police, and his mother the daughter of a Rear Admiral.When he was 2 his mother died and he and his siblings were sent back to England to be raised by their grandmother and paternal maiden aunts in a strict, puritanical household near Barnstaple, Devon. Educated by governesses Saki used man...

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 ...

That moment in time will come. It will be the end of this life and one of three things will happen. Nothing, Heaven or Hell. Somehow, for most people, the odds don’t look so good on laying back in Paradise for eternity. And we may be there alone or with people we never really liked or―or most probably, we don’t really have any coherent idea at all. Just the fear that the end is nigh.Our literary friends including Edgar Allan Poe, Leo Tolstoy, Mary Shelley and others probably mean w...