Showing results by narrator "Juliet Stevenson" in All Categories

For seventy years now Desert Island Discs has managed that rare feat – to be both enduring and relevant. By casting away the biggest names of the day in science, business, politics, showbiz, sport and the arts, it presents a cross-sectional snapshot of the times in which we live. As the decades have passed, the programme has kept pace; never frozen in time yet always, somehow, comfortingly the same.

Published in 1897, The Spoils of Poynton is one of the quintessential works of James's middle period. The "spoils" of the book's title refer to furniture and other objets d'art that the widow Adela Gereth moves to her cottage so that they are kept away from the clutches of her coarse future daughter-in-law, Mona Brigstock. However, events take an unexpected turn when her married son Owen is attracted to her friend, Fleda Vetch.

The Gospel of Mark: Juliet Stevenson reads St Mark's account of the life and teachings of Jesus. Specially composed music is included. The readings were part of BBC Radio 4's series of 341 daily episodes of the Bible, broadcast in 1991 and 1992. Abridged by Michael Jones.

Fourteenth-century physician Alejandro Guzman, caught performing an autopsy in Spain, flees across Europe at the time of the Black Death to escape execution for his heretical deed. When he arrives in the Papal city of Avignon, he is conscripted against his will to serve as a Plague Doctor in the court of England's Edward III. Unfolding in a dramatic counterpoint is the story of American medical archaeologist Janie Crowe, in England at the turn of the 21st century to recover from the tragic loss of her family.

Evoking a pivotal moment at the birth of modernity, a time of fear, conspiracy and uprising, and featuring some of the most unusual and brilliant personalities of the eighteenth century, Every Valley tells the story behind the creation of Handel’s Messiah: a cinematic and moving drama of hope in the darkness and the entangled lives that shaped a masterpiece.

Themis is part of a family bitterly divided by politics and, as a young woman, her fury with those who have collaborated with the Nazis drives her to fight for the Communists. She is eventually imprisoned on the notorious islands of exile, Makronisos and Trikeri, and has to make a life or death decision. She is proud of having fought, but for the rest of her life is haunted by some of her actions. Forty years after the end of the civil war, she finally achieves catharsis.

A dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the Thames. The regulars are entertaining themselves by telling stories when the door bursts open on an injured stranger. In his arms is the drowned corpse of a little child. Hours later the dead girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life. Is it a miracle? Is it magic? Or can it be explained by science? An exquisitely crafted multilayered mystery brimming with folklore, suspense and romance as well as with the urgent scientific curiosity of the Darwinian age.

Published in 1791, A Simple Story concerns Miss Milner, who announces her passion for her guardian, a Catholic priest, thereby breaking through the barriers of his religious vocation and society’s standards for proper female behaviour.

The stories of David Constantine are unlike any others. His characters possess you instantly, making you see the world as they do, sometimes as exiles, driven into isolation by convictions that even they don't fully understand; sometimes as carriers of an unspoken but unbearable weight. The things they pursue or evade are often unseen and at a distance, like the perfectly preserved body of a woman in the title story, waiting to be discovered in the receding ice of a Swiss glacier.

Audiobook queen Juliet Stevenson joins Robin Morgan in the Audible Studios to discuss her latest audio project, her career as an audiobook narrator, and the books that have inspired her.

Lord and Lady Brockenhurst play host to some troublesome relatives while the Trenchards receive an unexpected invitation. Julian Fellowes's Belgravia is a story in 11 episodes published week-by-week in the tradition of Charles Dickens. Belgravia is the story of a secret. A secret that unravels behind the porticoed doors of London's grandest postcode. The story behind the secret will be revealed in weekly bite-sized installments complete with twists and turns and cliff-hanger endings.

How can we begin to talk about what is happening to the world? We are facing a global emergency. Temperatures are rising. Mass species extinction has begun. The time for denial is over. It is time to act. Letters to the Earth is the beginning of a new story. It is an invitation to act and an opportunity to extend the invitation. These letters are the result of a callout from Culture Declares Emergency to the public to write a response to climate and ecological emergency.

Picking up where Things I Don't Want to Know left off, this short, exhilarating memoir shows a writer in radical flux, facing separation and bereavement and emerging renewed from the ashes of a former life. Faced with the restrictions of conventional living, she dismantles her life, expands it and puts it back together in a new shape. Writing as brilliantly as ever about mothers and daughters, about social pressures and the female experience, Deborah Levy confronts a world not designed to accommodate difficult women and ultimately remakes herself in her own image.

Thérèse is a half Algerian orphan, brought up in provincial France by her aunt and married off to her sickly cousin Camille. His ambition takes the three of them to Paris, where they set up home in the dank and dingy backstreets that run down to the Seine. The relentless tedium of life for Thérèse is eventually broken by the presence of Camille’s unscrupulous friend Laurent, sparking a series of increasingly desperate acts.

Things I Don't Want to Know is the first in Deborah Levy's essential three-part 'Living Autobiography' on writing and womanhood. Taking George Orwell's famous essay 'Why I Write' as a jumping-off point, Deborah Levy offers her own indispensable reflections of the writing life.

Jennifer Quinn has a secret. Her love of baking has just won her a spot as a contestant on a primetime TV show. It's only the second time in fifty-nine years that she's kept something from her beloved husband Bernard. She's about to be whisked into an unfamiliar world of cameras, timed challenges and celebrity judges. She could be in with a chance of being crowned the best baker in Britain. But, as Mrs Quinn's quiet ambitions turn into unexpected stardom, the other secret she's been keeping is in danger of resurfacing. It was supposed to stay hidden forever.

Anne Elliot has grieved for seven years over the loss of her first and only love, Captain Frederick Wentworth. When their paths finally cross again, Anne finds herself slighted and all traces of their former intimacy gone. As the pair continue to share the same social circle, dramatic events in Lyme Regis, and later in Bath, conspire to unravel the knots of deceit and misunderstanding in this beguiling and gently comic story of love and fidelity.

Arrogant, self-willed, and egotistical, Emma is Jane Austen's most unusual heroine. Her interfering ways and inveterate matchmaking are at once shocking and comic. She is "handsome, clever, and rich" and has "a disposition to think too well of herself." When she decides to introduce the humble Harriet Smith to the delights of genteel society and to find her a suitable husband, she precipitates herself and her immediate circle into a web of misunderstanding and intrigue, from which no one emerges unchanged.

Told in a series of letters, this true story of the correspondence between a New York writer and a London bookseller has touched the hearts of thousands.

Mrs Harris is a salt-of-the-earth London charlady who cheerfully cleans the houses of the rich. One day, when tidying Lady Dant's wardrobe, she comes across the most beautiful thing she has ever seen in her life - a Dior dress. In all the years of her drab and humble existence, she's never seen anything as magical as the dress before her, and she's never wanted anything as much before. Determined to make her dream come true, Mrs Harris scrimps, saves and slaves away until one day, after three long uncomplaining years, she finally has enough money to go to Paris.