Creator: David Alan Stern
Edition: Pap/Cas
Publication date: 1990-01-01
RRP: £13.50
Price: £8.90
Review Dialect Monologues: Vol 1 (Dialect Monologues) / Dramaline Publications,U.S.:
Creator: Candida Lycett Green
Publication date: 1995-10-09
RRP: £9.99
Price: £4.99
Review Letters: 1926-51 v. 1 (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Authors
- Bloodaxe Books
- British Council
Dewey code: 808
RRP: £11.75
Price: £7.75
Review The Poetry Quartets 6: Exiles v. 6 (Poetry Quartets) / Bloodaxe Books Ltd:
Creator: Timothy West
Edition: Reprinted edition
Publication date: 1992-12
RRP: £4.89
Price: £3.99
Review Revolting Rhymes: Unabridged / Collins Audio:
Creator: Bonnie Langford
Publication date: 1997-05
Price: £9.99
Review Thriller Playhouse: The Thrilling Adventures of Norman Conquest Vol 3 (BBC Radio Drama) / Mr Punch Audio Books:
Publication date: 1995-12-07
Dewey code: 821.914
RRP: £8.99
Price: £55.00
Review Stepping Stones (Penguin/Faber audiobooks) / Penguin Audiobooks:
Creator: et al
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1998-08-27
Dewey code: 822
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.75
Review All's Well That Ends Well: Unabridged (Arkangel complete Shakespeare) / Penguin Audiobooks:All's Well That Ends Well has generally been considered one of Shakespeare's most difficult and unpopular plays. Labelled a "Problem Comedy", editors believe that the play was written between 1604 and 1605, and exhibits a darkening of Shakespeare's interest in comedy. The play deals with the complicated relationship between Helena, the daughter of a famous physician, and Bertram, the arrogant son of the Countess of Roussillon. Helena is secretly in love with Bertram, and when she miraculously cures the ailing King, she asks for Bertram's hand in marriage, to which the grateful sovereign happily agrees. Bertram bitterly opposes marriage to Helena, who he regards as a social inferior. After reluctantly agreeing to the marriage, Bertram flees to the wars in Italy with his companion Parolles. What ensues is Helena's increasingly desperate and complex attempts to retrieve her errant husband, which involves various machinations and a piece of mistaken identity and an infamous "bed-trick" which has never fully convinced audiences or critics. More recently critics have been kinder to the play, seeing its cynical disillusionment with romance as reflecting contemporary social and political anxieties about warfare and commerce, and feminist critics have been keen to celebrate Helena as a particularly complex heroine. The play is also fascinated by language, encapsulated in the character of Parolles (or "words"), and his memorable line for which the play is chiefly remembered: "Simply the thing I am / Shall make me live". -Jerry Brotton.
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2001-06-28
Price: £8.99
Review If I Don't Know: Unabridged (Penguin) / Penguin Audiobooks:Wendy Cope is one of the few modern British poets to regularly enter the bestsellers list and, with her book of verses If I Don't Know, it is easy to see why. Cope started out as a teacher and worked for a number of years in several of London's junior schools before becoming a freelance writer and columnist. In 1986, she produced her first book of poems Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, which contained various literary in-jokes, her work parodying the style of a number of key 20th-century poets; it was funny, accomplished and unique "light verse"-a term Cope dislikes because she feels that, "it is used as a way of dismissing poets who allow humour into their work". If I Don't Know is less dominated by both parody and humour, less subservient to the canon and is a stronger collection for it. The trademark skills are still here but a darker and warmer, more personal, more direct style is in evidence as is an abiding concern with love and loss. In "Dead Sheep Poem" a dead sheep ("the skull / and jawbone, clean as carved ivory") is contemplated, violated even, by the just-arrived "person with the notebook". In "Tulips" the pleasure of watching her flowers is overshadowed by the knowledge that they will soon die, "Every day I wonder how long they will be here. I almost wish them / gone". [+]And a more critical, political note is struck in "Sonnet of '68" and the tender, sad "After Prague": "Hope is a long leash, / drawn in slowly". The last, long narrative poem "The Teacher's Tale" is a moving account of Paul ("He teaches nowadays. / He isn't bad at it. ") and his troubled early years, "He got off with a caution. Vowed silently he'd never steal again". Wendy Cope is an eminently readable, intelligent and always sympathetic poet and this is another fine collection of her work. -Mark Thwaite.
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2002-03
Dewey code: 821.8
RRP: £8.99
Price: £7.99
Review The Life and Poetry of W.B.Yeats (Naxos Audio) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Publication date: 1988-09-12
Price: £9.00
Review King Lear: Starring Sir Alec Guinness (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Juliet Stevenson
Publication date: 2000-03-16
Dewey code: 808
RRP: £11.00
Price: £19.99
Review The Nation's Favourite Poems of Childhood (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Simon Russell Beale
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1994-11
Dewey code: 808
RRP: £8.99
Price: £6.00
Review Popular Poetry, Popular Verse: v. 1 (Poetry) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Creator: Anne-Marie Duff
Publication date: 1999-09-06
Dewey code: 822
RRP: £9.99
Price: £9.95
Review Twelfth Night: A BBC Radio 3 Full-cast Dramatisation. Starring Michael Moloney & Cast (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Run time: 120 min.
Creator: Richard Burton
Publication date: 1982
Review A Richard Burton Anthology - Poetry Readings / Argo / Emi:Richard Burton reads poetry by Samuel Taylor Coeridge, Dylan Thomas, Robert Graves and many more. Playing Time App. 2 hours. ARGO 1046.
Authors
- William Shakespeare
- John Fletcher
Publication date: 1999-08-26
Dewey code: 822
RRP: £8.99
Price: £2.49
Review The Two Noble Kinsmen: Unabridged (Arkangel) / Penguin Audiobooks:Shakespeare's last dramatic work, Two Noble Kinsmen has often been marginalised by editors who believe that Shakespeare was just one of its many writers. This does a disservice to what is a fascinating and haunting play. The two noble kinsmen of the play's title are Palamon and his cousin Arcite, Thebans who have sworn a vow of friendship until death, claiming, "Is there record of any two that loved/Better than we do?" King Theseus of Athens leads an invasion against Thebes, and returns to Athens with the two cousins, who both fall in love with Princess Emilia, Theseus' sister-in-law. Both become rivals for Emilia's hand, incurring the wrath of Theseus. The action moves to the forest, where Palamon and Arcite prepare to duel over Emilia, only to be interrupted by Theseus, who delays the duel for one month, commanding that whoever wins the duel will marry Emilia, whilst the loser will be executed. On the day Arcite defeats Palamon, but is then crushed under his own horse. As he dies he bequeaths Emilia's hand to his cousin. The play ends with their wedding ceremony. Two Noble Kinsmen concludes with a note of resignation, as Theseus says "Let us be thankful/For that which is, and with you leave dispute/That are above our question", but as always, it is dangerous to see this as Shakespeare pronouncing on life itself, or simply another character in one of his plays voicing a particularly elegiac viewpoint on the sad events portrayed. -Jerry Brotton.
Creator: Geraldine McEwan
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1996-02-19
Dewey code: 822
RRP: £10.99
Price: £1.00
Review Love's Labour's Lost: Performed by Derek Jacobi, Geraldine McEwan & Cast / HarperCollins Audio:Another example of Shakespeare's comic fascination with the battle between and misunderstanding of the sexes, Love's Labour's Lost is a difficult play to read, but one which is extremely effective on stage. The Play opens with King Ferdinand of Navarre and his courtiers taking a vow of study and sexual abstinence for a period of three years. However, their vows are soon placed under strain with the arrival of the Princess of France and her ladies in waiting. The inevitable happens, and the different couples attempt to surreptitiously communicate, causing much hilarious confusion and embarrassment in the process. Shakespeare deploys every farcical element in the book, including impersonation, wrongly delivered letters, outrageous puns and word play, fights, drunkenness and masquerades, as Ferdinand's entourage soon learn that rather than running from women to books, it is in fact the opposite sex that "are the books, the arts, the academes/That show, contain, and nourish all the world". However, one of the most interesting aspects of the play is that it does not end with everyone marrying and living happily ever after. The women give as good as they get from the men, and in the end turn the tables in extremely interesting ways. One of Shakespeare's most linguistically challenging, but also intelligent comedies. -Jerry Brotton An early romantic comedy of mistaken identities and word play, Love's Labours Lost is a delight to watch performed. The Arden third series offers a distinctive interpretation of this previously neglected play, in particular its innovative linguistic patterning. [+]The story revolves around the king of Navarre and his courtiers, who decide to devote themselves to three years of study and denial of the opposite sex, but reluctantly fall in love with the Princess of France and her three ladies in waiting. From here, the tangles and cross-purposes begin and the men decide to devote themselves to the study of love. Although dense with sophisticated literary techniques, the play is a wonderful satire of romance and aristocratic pretensions. This edition of Loves Labour's Lost is suitable for both drama and literature students of Shakespeare, as it is a practical guide to staging the play, but also an insightful critique into the play's meaning and history. -Simon Priestly.
Creator: Gareth Brown
Publication date: 1997-10-06
Price: £6.99
Review I Luv You Jimmy Spud: Starring Gareth Brown as Jimmy (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Authors
- David Jones, Robert Graves, Philip Larkin T.S.Eliot
Publication date: 1985
Review 20th Century Poetry - T.S. Eliot, Jones, Graves and Larkin read their own works / ARGO, EMI Records Ltd:T. S. Eliot, David Jones, Robert Graves and Philip Larkin read their own works. Side One - T. S. Eliot:Old Possum's Book Of Practical Cat's. Side Two - David Jones: Extracts From In Parenthesis and The Anathemata. Side Three - Robert Graves: Poems. Side Four - Philip Larkin: High Windows. Playing Time Approximately 3 Hours.
Creator: et al
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2000-05-10
Dewey code: 820
RRP: £8.99
Price: £2.98
Review Cymbeline (Arkangel) / Penguin Audiobooks:One of Shakespeare's most perplexing and unclassifiable late plays, Cymbeline is often labelled a "Romance", due to its themes of pastoralism, exile and familial reconciliation which critics notice recur throughout Shakespeare's last plays, from Pericles to The Tempest. Set in ancient Roman Britain at the court of the British king Cymbeline, the main action of the play revolves around the relationship between Cymbeline's daughter, Imogen, and Posthumous Leonatus. Attempting to marry Imogen off to Cloten, the grotesque son of Cymbeline's second wife, the king banishes Posthumous in a rage when he discovers he has secretly married Imogen. As the personal relationships in the play deteriorate, on the public stage Rome prepares to invade Britain due to Cymbeline's failure to pay tribute to his imperial master. As the play builds to its militaristic climax, Posthumous returns to Britain, where he eventually contrives a reunion with Imogen and Cymbeline's long-lost sons, who unite in their attempt to resist the might of Rome. The ending of the play, with its series of mystical riddles, unlikely coincidences and extraordinary reunions has baffled critics for centuries. Some read it as a heavy-handed political allegory of Jacobean national union under the new sovereign of the time, King James I, whilst others see in it Shakespeare pushing theatrical realism to its furthermost limits, with its decapitated bodies, complex staging and unlikely mistaken identities. Cymbeline remains a puzzling, enigmatic play. -Jerry Brotton.
Creator: Robert Stephens
Publication date: 1996-01-22
RRP: £10.99
Price: £8.25
Review All's Well That Ends Well: Performed by Claire Bloom, Robert Stephens & Cast / HarperCollins Audio:All's Well That Ends Well has generally been considered one of Shakespeare's most difficult and unpopular plays. Labelled a "Problem Comedy", editors believe that the play was written between 1604 and 1605, and exhibits a darkening of Shakespeare's interest in comedy. The play deals with the complicated relationship between Helena, the daughter of a famous physician, and Bertram, the arrogant son of the Countess of Roussillon. Helena is secretly in love with Bertram, and when she miraculously cures the ailing King, she asks for Bertram's hand in marriage, to which the grateful sovereign happily agrees. Bertram bitterly opposes marriage to Helena, who he regards as a social inferior. After reluctantly agreeing to the marriage, Bertram flees to the wars in Italy with his companion Parolles. What ensues is Helena's increasingly desperate and complex attempts to retrieve her errant husband, which involves various machinations and a piece of mistaken identity and an infamous "bed-trick" which has never fully convinced audiences or critics. More recently critics have been kinder to the play, seeing its cynical disillusionment with romance as reflecting contemporary social and political anxieties about warfare and commerce, and feminist critics have been keen to celebrate Helena as a particularly complex heroine. The play is also fascinated by language, encapsulated in the character of Parolles (or "words"), and his memorable line for which the play is chiefly remembered: "Simply the thing I am / Shall make me live". -Jerry Brotton.
| Models & Brands:
Dialect Monologues: Vol 1 (Dialect Monologues), Letters: 1926-51 v. 1 (BBC Radio Collection), The Poetry Quartets 6: Exiles v. 6 (Poetry Quartets), Revolting Rhymes: Unabridged, Thriller Playhouse: The Thrilling Adventures of Norman Conquest Vol 3 (BBC Radio Drama), Stepping Stones (Penguin/Faber audiobooks), All's Well That Ends Well: Unabridged (Arkangel complete Shakespeare), If I Don't Know: Unabridged (Penguin), The Life and Poetry of W.B.Yeats (Naxos Audio), King Lear: Starring Sir Alec Guinness (BBC Radio Collection), The Nation's Favourite Poems of Childhood (BBC Radio Collection), Popular Poetry, Popular Verse: v. 1 (Poetry), Twelfth Night: A BBC Radio 3 Full-cast Dramatisation. Starring Michael Moloney & Cast (BBC Radio Collection), A Richard Burton Anthology - Poetry Readings, The Two Noble Kinsmen: Unabridged (Arkangel), Love's Labour's Lost: Performed by Derek Jacobi, Geraldine McEwan & Cast, I Luv You Jimmy Spud: Starring Gareth Brown as Jimmy (BBC Radio Collection), 20th Century Poetry - T.S. Eliot, Jones, Graves and Larkin read their own works, Cymbeline (Arkangel), All's Well That Ends Well: Performed by Claire Bloom, Robert Stephens & Cast |
