BBC Radio 4
1) Thank You
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BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live, the network's flagship Saturday morning programme, has been on the air since 2006 and is hugely popular, with 1.8 million weekly listeners. Since 2013 it has featured a slot called 'Thank You', for which members of the public phone in to thank people for kind acts they have done for them in the past—sometimes decades and decades ago—and who they didn't get a chance to thank at the time. It's a lovely, heartwarming...
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"When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to enjoy the freedom that her fortune has opened up and to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. Then she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond. Charming and cultivated, Osmond sees Isabel as a rich prize waiting to be taken. Beneath...
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P. D. James is “the reigning mistress of murder.” –Time
Handsome Cambridge dropout Mark Callender died hanging by the neck with a faint trace of lipstick on his mouth. When the official verdict is suicide, his wealthy father hires fledgling private investigator Cordelia Gray to find out what led him to self-destruction. What she discovers instead is a twisting trail of secrets and sins, and the strong scent of murder.
An...
Handsome Cambridge dropout Mark Callender died hanging by the neck with a faint trace of lipstick on his mouth. When the official verdict is suicide, his wealthy father hires fledgling private investigator Cordelia Gray to find out what led him to self-destruction. What she discovers instead is a twisting trail of secrets and sins, and the strong scent of murder.
An...
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When a terminally ill woman dies much earlier than expected, Lord Peter Wimsey suspects murder: “First-rate detection” (The Cincinnati Enquirer).
Though never quick-witted, Agatha Dawson had an iron constitution and a will to fight that never abated in her old age. Even after three operations failed to rid her of her cancer, she refused to give in. But as her body began to weaken, she accused lawyers, nurses,...
Though never quick-witted, Agatha Dawson had an iron constitution and a will to fight that never abated in her old age. Even after three operations failed to rid her of her cancer, she refused to give in. But as her body began to weaken, she accused lawyers, nurses,...
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"An enthralling and profoundly humane book that every civilized person should read."
—The Wall Street Journal
The blockbuster New York Times bestseller and the companion volume to the wildly popular radio series
—The Wall Street Journal
The blockbuster New York Times bestseller and the companion volume to the wildly popular radio series
When did people first start to wear jewelry or play music? When were cows domesticated, and why do we feed their milk to our children? Where were the first cities, and what made them succeed? Who developed
...9) I, Claudius
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“One of the really remarkable books of our day”—the story of the Roman emperor on which the award-winning BBC TV series was based (The New York Times).
Once a rather bookish young man with a limp and a stammer, a man who spent most of his time trying to stay away from the danger and risk of the line of ascension, Claudius seemed an unlikely candidate for emperor. Yet, on the death of Caligula, Claudius...
Once a rather bookish young man with a limp and a stammer, a man who spent most of his time trying to stay away from the danger and risk of the line of ascension, Claudius seemed an unlikely candidate for emperor. Yet, on the death of Caligula, Claudius...
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A young copywriter takes a fatal fall on the job, but not before alerting his boss that something far more dire than bad copy has infiltrated the ad agency. The boss hires detective Death Bredon, Whimsey in disguise, who poses as an copywriter taking over the dead man's job.
12) Towards zero
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Lady Camilla Tressilian lives with her companion and secretary, Mary Aldin, at Gull's Point. As the late summer approaches, Lady Tressilian is hosting a series of guests. Tennis player Nevile Strange has brought his beautiful young wife Kay to Gull's Point to meet the woman who helped raised him. As it happens, Audrey, his ex-wife, arrives for her annual visit. No one can quite understand why either party would agree to this rather awkward reunion,...
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James Wormold, a cash-strapped vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, finds the answer to his prayers when British Intelligence offers him a lucrative job as an undercover agent. To keep the checks coming, Wormold must at least pretend to know what he's doing. Soon, he's apparently deciphering incomprehensible codes, passing along sketches of secret weapons that look suspiciously like vacuum parts, and claiming to recruit fellow operatives from his country...
14) Pollyanna
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"In early twentieth-century Vermont, orphaned, eleven-year-old Pollyanna comes to live with her austere and wealthy Aunt Polly, and uses her philosophy of gladness to bring happiness to her aunt and other unhappy members of the community." --
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When Germanic troops in the service of the empire begin to rebel, and a Roman general disappears, Emperor Vespasian turns to the one man he can trust: Marcus Didius Falco, a private informer whose rates are low enough that even the stingy Vespasian is willing to pay them. To Falco, an undercover tour of Germany is an assignment from Hades. On a journey that only a stoic could survive, Falco meets with disarray, torture, and murder. His one hope: in...
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An English family's complex lives are followed and picked up again after a 10 year hiatus in order to explore the effects of time.
"Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is one of her greatest literary achievements and among the most influential novels of the twentieth century. The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement...
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George Smiley ; 8
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Ned considered delivering his own speech to the new "Joes" at Saratt, but in the end, he called on George Smiley, the legendary officer who had retired to Cornwall. Smiley's "fireside chat" gives the dangerous edge back to Ned's memory, transporting him to his own beginnings as an agent in the 60s when the Red Peril was everywhere.
19) Smiley's people
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In London at dead of night, George Smiley, sometime acting Chief of the Circus (aka the British Secret Service), is summoned from his lonely bed by news of the murder of an ex-agent. Lured back to active service, Smiley skillfully maneuvers his people -- "the no-men of no-man's land" -- into crisscrossing Paris, London, Germany, and Switzerland as he prepares for his own final, inevitable duel on the Berlin border with his Soviet counterpart and archenemy,...
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On its publication In 1964, John le Carre's The Spy Who Came In from the Cold forever changed the landscape of spy fiction. Le Carre combined the inside knowledge of his years in British intelligence with the skills of the best novelists to produce a story as taut as it is twisting, unlike any previously experienced, which transports us back to the shadowy years in the early 1960s when the Berlin Wall went up and the Cold War came to life. When the...