This is one of the great recordings of a great play. John Gielgud stars as Ernest and Edith Evans gives her indomitable performance as Lady Bracknell in this classic radio recording from 1951. Performance styles may have changed, but this is an unmatched production bearing all the hallmarks of outstanding audio drama featuring some of the finest actors of the twentieth century. Also included are two collections of poetry readings by John Gielgud and Edith Evans.

Historical recordings of actors from the beginning of the recording era. CD 1: Historical Shakespeare performances by Ainley, John Barrymore, Bourchier, Casson, Forbes-Robertson, John Geilgud (1920s and 1940s). CD 2: A miscellany. Some startling historical performances in a wide range of works from Edith Evans, Charles Laughton, Noel Coward, Sarah Bernhardt, Fred Terry, Laurel and Hardy, Edwin Booth, Bransby Williams, Jean Cocteau, Feodor Chaliapin and others.

A comedy of manners in five acts, The Rivals was Sheridan's second commercially produced play. The play is set in Bath in the 18th century, a town legendary for conspicuous consumption and fashion at the time. Wealthy, fashionable people went there to "take the waters", which were believed to have healing properties. Bath was much less exclusive than London, and provides an ideal setting for the characters. The plot centres around the two young lovers, Lydia and Jack. Lydia, who reads a lo...

The Passionate Pilgrim was an anthology of twenty poems attributed to William Shakespeare but which present-day scholars think just five of these poems were written by the Bard. Here, the most popular four poems, The Passionate Pilgrim, Sonnets To Sundry Notes of Music, A Lover's Complaint, and The Pheonix and The Turtle are read by Edith Evans, Donald Wolfit, Joan Hart and William Squire.

Sheridan’s most famous play, The School for Scandal, has been called ‘the best existing English comedy of intrigue’. A favourite with audiences and critics alike since its premiere in 1777, this play is a classic English comedy of manners. Full of satirical wit, it subverts the Georgian social mores of its day with subtlety and charm. This historic recording features Edith Evans, Cecil Parker, and Harry Andrews: some of the finest actors of their generation.

On a seaside vacation, Ellery Queen is ensnared in a trio of strange crimes.Spanish Cape is a dramatic promontory, its rocky cliffs topped with a picturesque hacienda. This isolated spot belongs to millionaire Walter Godfrey and it should be a peaceful family getaway—but one summer evening, Rosa Godfrey argues with her uncle David as he tries to convince her not to run away with one of their guests, the roguish John Marco. Suddenly, a one-eyed gunman appears out of the twilight. He...

This Special Edition of The Hunger Games includes the most extensive interview Suzanne Collins has given since the publication of The Hunger Games; an absorbing behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the series; and an engaging archival conversation between Suzanne Collins and YA legend Walter Dean Myers on writing about war. The Special Edition answers many questions fans have had over the years, and gives great insight into the creation of this era-defining work....

Winner of the 2016 EDGAR, AGATHA, MACAVITY and H.R.F.KEATING crime writing awards, this real-life detective story investigates how Agatha Christie and colleagues in a mysterious literary club transformed crime fiction.Detective stories of the Twenties and Thirties have long been stereotyped as cosily conventional. Nothing could be further from the truth.The Golden Age of Murder tells for the first time the extraordinary story of British detective fiction between the two Wor...

Dazzling in its originality, Rites of Spring probes the origins, impact, and aftermath of World War I, from the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945. "The Great War," as Modris Eksteins writes, "was the psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole. The urge to create and the urge to destroy had changed places."Eksteins goes on to chart the seismic shifts in human consciousness brought about by this...

Trapped on a burning mountain, the Queens take refuge with a killer.Dashing detective Ellery Queen and his father are driving over the pothole-scarred Arrow Mountain Road when they come face to face with a wall of flame. They tear back in the other direction, fire at their fenders, and finally find safety in a clearing, at the home of Dr. Xavier, a renowned surgeon. He is a genial man, but his distracted, mysterious smile conceals dark secrets. Passing through one of the drafty hal...

The Dupayne, a small private museum in London devoted to the interwar years 1919-1939, is in turmoil. As its trustees argue over whether it should be closed, one of them is brutally and mysteriously murdered. Yet even as Commander Dalgliesh and his team proceed with their investigation, a second corpse is discovered. Someone in the Dupayne is prepared to kill and kill again. Still more sinister, the murders appear to echo the notorious crimes of the past featured in one of the museum’s gal...

Born in New York City’s black ghetto Harlem at the start of World War II, Samuel R. Delany married white poet Marilyn Hacker right out of high school. The interracial couple moved into the city’s new bohemian quarter, the Lower East Side, in summer 1961.Through the decade’s opening years, new art, new sexual practices, new music, and new political awareness burgeoned among the crowded streets and cheap railroad apartments. Beautifully, vividly, insightfully, Delany calls up this er...