Creator: Ian McKellen
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2004-10
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £10.55
Price: £4.46
Review The Tempest" / Naxos AudioBooks:
Publication date: 2004-10-04
Dewey code: 808
RRP: £12.99
Price: £7.55
Review Poetry Please!: Anniversary Edition (Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Publication date: 2006-09-04
RRP: £12.99
Price: £4.99
Review Alan Bennett, Single Spies (BBC Audio) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Publication date: 1997-09-01
Dewey code: 811
RRP: £12.99
Price: £7.48
Review The Pam Ayres Poetry Collection (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Toby Stephens
Edition: New edition
Publication date: 2004-12-31
Dewey code: 873.01
RRP: £16.99
Price: £8.40
Review The Aeneid / Naxos AudioBooks:
Creator: Anton Lesser
Edition: Abridged
Publication date: 2004-12-31
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £16.44
Price: £6.70
Review The Canterbury Tales: Audio CDs (Modern English format): v. 1 (The Great Tales) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Creator: Thora Hird
Publication date: 2001-08-06
Dewey code: 808
RRP: £15.99
Price: £10.82
Review Talking Heads 2 (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:Alan Bennett's award-winning series of six television monologues, Talking Heads, may have been first aired in 1988, but over a decade later it is still impossible to read these deeply moving and affectionate scripts without hearing the voices of the actors who played them. Maggie Smith as the alcoholic vicar's wife finding a semblance of happiness in an affair with an Indian shop owner, Patricia Routledge as the poisonous neighbour, Julie Walters as the over-the-hill dolly bird auditioning for a porn film and of course Thora Hird as Doris, the old lady alone in her home having fallen and broken her hip. All great performances and all made possible by Bennett's wonderfully observant and poignant scripts. Bennett rightly notes in his introduction to the pieces that, maybe apart from Doris, his narrators are artless in that they "don't quite know what they are saying and are telling a story to the meaning of which they are not entirely privy". But through their artlessnes they reveal more about Britain today and the stresses and strains placed upon ordinary people, than any number of docu-soaps that now claim to show us real life. -Nick Wroe.
Creator: Fiona Shaw
Edition: New title
Publication date: 2005-07-31
Dewey code: 822
RRP: £13.99
Price: £6.15
Review Macbeth (Classic Drama) / Naxos AudioBooks:One of Shakespeare's greatest, but also bloodiest tragedies, was written around 1605/06. Many have seen the story of Macbeth's murder and usurpation of the legitimate Scottish King Duncan as having obvious connection to contemporary issues regarding King James I (James VI of Scotland), and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. King James was particularly fascinated with witchcraft, so the appearance of the witches chanting "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" at the opening of the play seemed particularly topical, as was Macbeth's betrayal of Banquo, from whom James claimed direct descent. However, the play is clearly far more than a piece of royal entertainment. It is also a fast-moving and dramatically satisfying piece of theatre. Macbeth's existential struggle between loyalty to his King and his "Vaulting ambition" is fascinating to watch, as his is struggle with Lady Macbeth, and her own terrifying refusal of her maternal role. The play shows an intensification of Shakespeare's interest in mothers and their effect upon ruling masculinity, and also contains some of the most memorable speeches in the entire canon, including Macbeth's reflections that ultimately life "is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing". -Jerry Brotton.
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1997-06-02
Dewey code: 822
RRP: £16.99
Price: £9.02
Review Hamlet: Prince of Denmark (Classic Drama): Prince of Denmark (Classic Drama) / Naxos AudioBooks:Undoubtedly the most famous of all of Shakespeare's plays, Hamlet remains one of the most enduring but also enigmatic pieces of western literature. The story of Hamlet, the young Prince of Denmark, his tortured relationship with his mother, and his quest to avenge his father's murder at the hand of his brother Claudius has fascinated writers and audiences ever since it was written around 1600. For many years interest focused on both Hamlet's inability to avenge his father's death, claiming that "the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought", and, according to none other than Freud, his oedipal fixation with his mother. However, more recently critics have turned their attention to Hamlet's bold theatrical self-reflexivity (most famously reflected in the performance of "The Mousetrap"), its fascination with issues of theology and Renaissance humanism, and its dense, complex poetic language. What is so remarkable about the play is the way in which it tends to uncannily reflect the concerns of different epochs. As a result, Hamlet has been at different moments defined as a romantic rebel, an angst-ridden existentialist, a paralysed intellectual and an ambivalent New Man. Whatever subsequent generations make of Hamlet, they are unlikely to exhaust the possibilities of this most extraordinary play. -Jerry Brotton.
Creator: Rosalind Shanks
Publication date: 2002-09-23
Dewey code: 808
RRP: £12.99
Price: £7.53
Review The Nation's Favourite Children's Poems (Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Phyllis Logan
Publication date: 2000-09-04
Dewey code: 822
RRP: £14.99
Price: £10.16
Review Macbeth: BBC Radio 3 Full-cast Dramatisation (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Sarah Woodward
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1997-02-28
Dewey code: 808
RRP: £10.99
Price: £4.45
Review Poets of the Great War: Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, etc.: Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Etc. (Poetry) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2007-07-01
Dewey code: 821
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.43
Review The Great Poets: William Blake (Naxos Great Poets): William Blake (Naxos Great Poets) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2001-04-02
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £13.99
Price: £7.83
Review King Richard III: Performed by Kenneth Branagh & Cast (Classic Drama): Performed by Kenneth Branagh & Cast (Classic Drama) / Naxos AudioBooks:"Now is the winter of our discontent," intones Richard, Duke of Gloucester at the beginning of Shakespeare's Richard III, one of his most abidingly popular plays, and one of the most chilling portrayals of political tyranny ever seen on stage. Richard emerges from the chaos which surrounds the reign of Henry VI, already dramatised by Shakespeare earlier in his career, determined to become king by removing his elder brother Edward IV by convincing him that their brother Clarence is plotting against the crown. The deaths of both Clarence and Edward take Richard inexorably towards the crown, and the series of murders and conspiracies that Richard masterminds confirms his claim that "I am determined to prove a villain". Richard's political and sexual charisma are truly chilling, and his seduction of Lady Anne, over her husband's corpse is one of the most disturbing scenes in Shakespeare. At another level, the play is also a strongly anti-Yorkist play, which has a vested interest in portraying Richard as such as vicious tyrant before seeing him toppled, ushering in a period of rule which prefigured the Tudor dynasty of which Elizabeth I was herself a part. The play has had a deep and lasting influence on audiences and writers; Brecht rewrote the play as The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, while both Laurance Olivier and Ian Mckellen have produced memorable film versions of Richard III, the latter updating the play into a 1930s fascist state ruled over by a Richard akin to Oswald Mosley. -Jerry Brotton.
Publication date: 2006-08-07
RRP: £12.99
Price: £6.56
Review John Betjeman, A First Class Collection / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Edition: New Ed
Publication date: 2000-09-28
Dewey code: 811
RRP: £13.00
Price: £4.99
Review Beowulf: A New Translation / Penguin Audiobooks:
Creator: Michael Sheen
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1994-12-31
Dewey code: 808
RRP: £10.99
Price: £4.46
Review Great Poets of the Romantic Age (Poetry) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Creator: T. Griffith
Edition: New title
Publication date: 2006-02
Dewey code: 180
RRP: £12.91
Price: £6.44
Review Symposium (Naxos Audio) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Creator: Emma Fielding
Edition: New title
Publication date: 2004-08-31
Dewey code: 822
RRP: £13.99
Price: £6.70
Review Othello (Classic Drama) / Naxos AudioBooks:If anything, Othello has increased its stature as one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies ever since it was first written, between 1603 and 1604, due to the victimisation suffered by its tragic hero, Othello, as a result of his skin colour. Othello is a "noble Moor", a North African Muslim who has converted to Christianity and is deemed one of the Venetian state's most reliable soldiers. However, his ensign Iago harbours an obscure hatred against his general, and when Othello secretly marries the beautiful daughter of the Venetian senator Brabanzio, Iago begins his subtle campaign of vilification, which will inevitably lead to the deaths of more than just Othello and Desdemona. An extraordinary play, both for its dramatic economy and power as well as its remarkable language, from Othello's bombastic "traveller's history" to Desdemona's elegiac "willow song", the play raises uncomfortable questions about ongoing questions of not only racial identity but also sexuality, as Othello and Desdemona's sexual relationship becomes the voyeuristic site of Iago's attempt to destroy them. Particularly fascinated with the question of what it means to "see", Othello also contains one of the greatest tragic death scenes in all of Shakespeare, with Othello's final identification with "a malignant and a turbaned Turk". -Jerry Brotton.
Creator: Marcella Riordan
Edition: New title
Publication date: 2004-09-30
Dewey code: 808
RRP: £10.99
Price: £4.46
Review The Life and Poetry of W.B.Yeats (Naxos Audio) / Naxos AudioBooks:
| Models & Brands:
The Tempest", Poetry Please!: Anniversary Edition (Radio Collection), Alan Bennett, Single Spies (BBC Audio), The Pam Ayres Poetry Collection (BBC Radio Collection), The Aeneid, The Canterbury Tales: Audio CDs (Modern English format): v. 1 (The Great Tales), Talking Heads 2 (BBC Radio Collection), Macbeth (Classic Drama), Hamlet: Prince of Denmark (Classic Drama): Prince of Denmark (Classic Drama), The Nation's Favourite Children's Poems (Radio Collection), Macbeth: BBC Radio 3 Full-cast Dramatisation (BBC Radio Collection), Poets of the Great War: Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, etc.: Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Etc. (Poetry), The Great Poets: William Blake (Naxos Great Poets): William Blake (Naxos Great Poets), King Richard III: Performed by Kenneth Branagh & Cast (Classic Drama): Performed by Kenneth Branagh & Cast (Classic Drama), John Betjeman, A First Class Collection, Beowulf: A New Translation, Great Poets of the Romantic Age (Poetry), Symposium (Naxos Audio), Othello (Classic Drama), The Life and Poetry of W.B.Yeats (Naxos Audio) |
