Full-cast BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of the first five Falco novels by Lindsey Davis, starring Anton Lesser as Marcus Didius Falco.The Silver Pigs:One fine day, A.D. 70, Sosia Camillina quite literally runs into Marcus Didius Falco on the steps of the Forum. It seems Sosia is on the run from a couple of street toughs, and after a quick and dirty rescue, P.I. Falco wants to know why. Hoping for future favors from Sosia's powerful uncle, Falco embarks on an intricate ...

Full-cast productions of Seneca’s most famous tragedies, plus letters from the Roman philosopher read by Paul ScofieldStoic philosopher and playwright Lucius Annaeus Seneca lived through the reigns of Caligula and Claudius, and was tutor and adviser to Nero, before his untimely suicide in AD65. His gory, outrageous tragedy Thyestes inspired Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, and is widely considered his masterpiece. It opens this col...

Perhaps the greatest poem of the Western world, The Iliad tells the story of fifty critical days towards the end of the Trojan war. Achilles has quarrelled with Agamemnon and sulks in his tent, while Hector brings his Trojans to the brink of victory; but fate will have the last word. Anton Lesser, one of Britain’s finest audiobook stars, brings this great classic to life in the new and imaginative translation by Ian Johnston.

‘It was the best of times and the worst of times’ In one of the most famous openings of any novel, Dickens masterfully presents the turmoil of the French Revolution which is the backdrop for a novel of love, patience, hope and self-sacrifice. It is read by Anton Lesser whose award-winning Dickens recordings in their abridged form have now resulted in the opportunity to read the full unabridged text. His singular characterisations led to him being chosen by Peter Ackroyd to play Dickens him...

Narrated in the first person, Great Expectations tells the story of Philip Pirrip (known as Pip) from his disadvantaged start as an orphan in the Kent marshes to the improvement in his position following an anonymous allowance. Pip moves to London where, only after many trials, does he learn humility and the value of loyalty. Key Dickens characters abound the convict Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Havisham and the pompous Pumblechook. Great Expectations was first published as a complete nove...

Anton Lesser stars as a Berlin detective who stumbles upon the 20th century's most terrifying secret in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Robert Harris's bestselling novel. The year is 1964, and it's a week before Hitler's 75th birthday. Nazi Germany won the Second World War, Churchill is living in exile in Canada, Joseph Kennedy is President of the United States, and King Edward and Queen Wallis are puppet monarchs of the United Kingdom. In this dimension, history took a very di...

‘Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe.’ So begins the greatest epic poem in the English language. In words remarkable for their richness of rhythm and imagery, Milton tells the story of man’s creation, fall and redemption ‘to justify the ways of God to men.’ Here, unabridged, and told with exceptional sensitivity and power by Anton Lesser, is the plight of Adam and Eve, the ambition and vengefuln...

Three secrets. Two women. One Grail . . . The spellbinding No. 1 bestselling novel.July 1209: in Carcassonne a 17-year-old girl is given a mysterious book by her father which he claims contains the secret of the true Grail. Although Alais cannot understand the strange words and symbols hidden within, she knows that her destiny lies in keeping the secret of the labyrinth safe . . .July 2005: Alice Tanner discovers two skeletons in a forgotten cave in the Fre...

The Trojan War is over and Odysseus, the cunning King of Ithaca, sets out for home, his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus. It proves a long, 10-year journey, fraught with dangers, from Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclops, and the seductive Sirens, to the love of Calypso on her all-too-comfortable isle. When he arrives in Ithaca, he has to contend with a group of suitors who have been pressing his wife to forget about her husband, admit she is a widow, and marry one of them. Anton Lesser, o...

Angela Carter was one of the most important writers of the 20th Century. A pioneer of British magical realism, her work was described by Salman Rushdie as 'without rival and without equal'. Her radical, inventive novels influenced countless writers, while her dark, sensual short fiction turned traditional fables inside out, giving women the power over their desires and fates.Susannah Clapp, Angela Carter's literary executor and friend, introduces the productions and offers fascinat...

A Christmas Carol is the best-known and best-loved of Dickens’ ‘Christmas Books’, and the story of the miser Scrooge’s redemption has become as much part of the Christmas tradition as plum pudding and carols themselves. Will Tiny Tim live to see another Christmas? Can Scrooge recover his humanity and learn to love the fellow men he seems to despise? Dickens will make you laugh and make you cry as you follow Scrooge’s supernatural adventures on Christmas Eve…

Hard Times is Dickens’s most political novel. Set in the industrial north of England, in Coketown, he examines the lives of working people, who are taught by the capitalists Gradgrind and Bounderby to think only of the facts of life and not to indulge in imagination. Gradgrind’s own children have been so educated and as a result are dysfunctional and disconnected from their feelings. Only the travelling circus company of Sleary seems to offer any hope of humanity in Coketown. Hard Times is...