Edition: Abridged
Publication date: 1998-03
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.59
Review Purgatory from "The Divine Comedy" (Great Epics) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Authors
- W.N. Herbert
- Liz Lockhead
- Don Paterson
- John Burnside
- Bloodaxe Books
- British Council
Dewey code: 808
RRP: £11.75
Price: £11.00
Review The Poetry Quartets 7: Scottish Poets v. 7 (Poetry Quartets) / Bloodaxe Books Ltd:
Creator: Richard Burton
Publication date: 1990-04-26
Dewey code: 811
Price: £8.99
Review The Poetry of Thomas Hardy: Unabridged / HarperCollins Audio:
Publication date: 1999-03
RRP: £4.99
Price: £25.42
Review Jazz Poetry (Spoken Word) / ABM:
Publication date: 2004-10-11
Dewey code: 809
RRP: £9.99
Price: £5.96
Review They Should Have Asked My Husband / Hodder & Stoughton:
Creator: Sir Ralph Richardson
Publication date: 1995-08-21
Dewey code: 822
RRP: £10.99
Price: £6.59
Review Measure for Measure: Complete & Unabridged / HarperCollins Audio:
Publication date: 2000-11-06
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £11.00
Price: £4.39
Review Telling Tales (Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Publication date: 1990-11-05
Dewey code: 808
RRP: £10.99
Price: £3.40
Review Talking Heads (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: Sheridan Morley
Publication date: 1999-08-02
Price: £10.99
Review Noel Coward: An Audio Biography (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2001-04-05
RRP: £7.99
Price: £3.61
Review It Takes One to Know One (Puffin Audiobooks) / Puffin:
Creator: Thora Hird
Publication date: 1998-10-05
Dewey code: 808
RRP: £11.00
Price: £12.95
Review Talking Heads: No.2 (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:A decade after Alan Bennett's acclaimed first series of Talking Heads comes the eagerly anticipated follow up. Six more compassionate and acutely observed monologues performed by a terrific cast. Patricia Routledge, Julie Walters and Thora Hird all feature for a second time as, again using five women narrators alongside a solitary male, Bennett nags away at his pet obsessions in his own inimitable style. On the surface there is the usual mixture of chiropody, northern suburban life and an unnatural interest in soft furnishings. But underneath the semi- genteel facade lies the quiet agony of lives blighted and hopes dashed. An air of utter sadness pervades all these pieces from Miss Fozzard, who is quite straightforwardly transformed from a middle-aged and respectable spinster into a sort of foot fetish prostitute, to Celia, sitting alone in her shabby antique shop. Even after he had finished writing them Bennett says he: "left them in a drawer for a year as I felt they were too gloomy to visit upon the public". He needn't have worried. Gloomy or joyful doesn't matter so much as telling the truth and these wonderful monologues tell the truth. -Nick Wroe.
Creator: et al
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1999-05-27
Dewey code: 822
RRP: £8.99
Price: £5.89
Review The Comedy of Errors (Arkangel audiobooks) / Penguin Audiobooks:
Run time: 175 min.
Creator: Ian Carmichael, Julia Foster, Robert Hardy Richard Briers
Publication date: 1992
Review With Great Pleasure (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Enterprises Ltd:Radio 4's 'With Great Pleasure' is a much-loved broadcasting icon, an irrepressible opportunity for celebrities to share snippets of their favourite poetry and prose with us all. This is a superb collection of some of the most popular items. Gems from Shakespeare and Jane Austen, Browning and Burns, Dickens, Kipling, Betjeman and many more. Among those choosing these excerpts are Alan Bennett, John Betjeman and Michael Hordern while their readers include Richard Briers, Ian Carmichael, Julia Foster and Robert Hardy.
Publication date: 1994-10-03
Dewey code: 920
Price: £10.99
Review The Lady in the Van/My Uncle Clarence (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:Life imitates art in The Lady in the Van, the story of the itinerant Miss Shepherd, who lived in a van in Alan Bennett's driveway from the early1970s until her death in 1989. It is doubtful that Bennett could have made up the eccentric Miss Shepherd if he tried, but his poignant, funny but unsentimental account of their strange relationship is akin to his best fictional screen writing. Bennett concedes that "One seldom was able to do her a good turn without some thoughts of strangulation", but as the plastic bags build up, the years pass by and Miss Shepherd moves into Bennett's driveway, a relationship is established which defines a certain moment in late 20th-century London life which has probably gone forever. The dissenting, liberal, middle-class world of Bennett and his peers comes into hilarious but also telling collision with the world of Miss Shepherd: "there was a gap between our social position and our social obligations. It was in this gap that Miss Shepherd (in her van) was able to live". Bennett recounts Miss Shepherd's bizarre escapades in his inimitable style, from her letter to the Argentinean Embassy at the height of the Falklands War, to her attempts to stand for Parliament and wangle an electric wheelchair out of the Social Services. Beautifully observed, The Lady in the Van is as notable for Bennett's attempts to uncover the enigmatic history of Miss Shepherd, as it is for its amusing account of her eccentric escapades. -Jerry Brotton.
Creator: Alan INT>Bennett
Publication date: 2000-10-02
Dewey code: 808
Price: £11.00
Review Poetry in Motion (BBC Audio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Publication date: 1993-06-28
Dewey code: 811
RRP: £8.99
Price: £14.00
Review W.H.Auden Reading His Poetry / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Renu Setna
Publication date: 1994-09-29
RRP: £8.99
Price: £8.00
Review The Prophet: Complete & Unabridged (Penguin audiobooks) / Penguin Audiobooks:
Creator: Sir Anthony Quayle
Publication date: 1992-02-20
Dewey code: 822
RRP: £10.99
Price: £0.90
Review The Merry Wives of Windsor: Complete & Unabridged / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Paul Scofield
Publication date: 1991-11-21
Dewey code: 822
RRP: £15.99
Price: £10.55
Review Hamlet: Complete & Unabridged / HarperCollins Audio:
Publication date: 2003-01-01
RRP: £3.99
Price: £1.00
Review Tumble Tots Sing-a-long Action Songs (The tumble tots range) / CYP Ltd:
| Models & Brands:
Purgatory from "The Divine Comedy" (Great Epics), The Poetry Quartets 7: Scottish Poets v. 7 (Poetry Quartets), The Poetry of Thomas Hardy: Unabridged, Jazz Poetry (Spoken Word), They Should Have Asked My Husband, Measure for Measure: Complete & Unabridged, Telling Tales (Radio Collection), Talking Heads (BBC Radio Collection), Noel Coward: An Audio Biography (BBC Radio Collection), It Takes One to Know One (Puffin Audiobooks), Talking Heads: No.2 (BBC Radio Collection), The Comedy of Errors (Arkangel audiobooks), With Great Pleasure (BBC Radio Collection), The Lady in the Van/My Uncle Clarence (BBC Radio Collection), Poetry in Motion (BBC Audio Collection), W.H.Auden Reading His Poetry, The Prophet: Complete & Unabridged (Penguin audiobooks), The Merry Wives of Windsor: Complete & Unabridged, Hamlet: Complete & Unabridged, Tumble Tots Sing-a-long Action Songs (The tumble tots range) |
