Eat your heart out social media, this is where it all began. A stellar cast have scandalous fun in Sheridan’s raunchy comedy of celebrity gossip, ‘fake news’ and human vanity.

Summary

The play is introduced by Ian Hislop, Editor of Private Eye. Rosalind Ayres and Martin Jarvis direct an outstanding company in this brand-new production of Sheridan’s surprisingly up-to-date comedy. Written by the 27-year-old genius in 1777. Scandalmonger Lady Sneerwell controls a nest of gossipy vipers: Backbite, Crabtree, Snake, and two-faced Mrs Candour. Young Lady Teazle, bored by her elderly husband Sir Peter, has been lured into the circle too. What’s the latest? Which of the young Surface brothers is the good guy, and which the hypocrite? Rakish Charles or admired Joseph? Their Uncle Oliver puts them both to the test. Who deserves to win feisty Maria? Glittering performances. Wonderfully gossipy music specially composed by A-Mnemonic. Loads of wicked laughs in this sparkling new production. Can scandal ever die?

Stars

• Crabtree – Roger Allam
• Sir Oliver Surface – Hugh Bonneville
• Mrs Candour – Joanna Lumley
• Sir Benjamin Backbite – Mark Gatiss
• Lady Sneerwell – Lisa Dillon
• Lady Teazle – Susannah Fielding
• Sir Peter Teazle – Martin Jarvis
• Master Rowley – Nigel Anthony
• Joseph Surface – Joe Bannister
• Charles Surface – George Blagden
• Maria – Amy Morgan
• Snake – Ifan Meredith
• Mr Moses – Jon Glover
• Trip – Kieran Hodgson
• Careless/William – Simon de Deney
• Sir Harry – Richard Sisson

Production info.

Written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

Violinist: Francesca Barritt
Specially composed music: A-Mnemonic

Sound Design: Mark Holden
Directed by Rosalind Ayres and Martin Jarvis

listen on BBC Radio 3

Summary

Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam play a couple who have been married for over 40 years. Children of the Sixties, they’re still free spirits, drawn together by their passion for music – and each other.

The show follows their conversations that take them from the local café, to their kitchen table, taking in her resentment of new glasses – a symbol of ageing – and fury at being lectured by the dental hygienist. He has a dodgy knee and is on statins, and when they discuss the marriage break-up of their closest friends, Sally and Peter, there’s jealousy and talk of affairs. She suggests there are advantages to single beds, separate holidays and wants to go clubbing in Ibiza for her imminent ‘big’ birthday.

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Production info.

Written by Jan Etherington and produced by Claire Jones.

Interesting notes

Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam previously played an old married couple in Michael Frayn’s Matchbox Theatre (2015). A one-off episode of Conversations From A Long Marriage starring the duo was broadcast on Radio 4 on New Year’s Day 2018, picking up positive press reviews and listener feedback. The network recorded another episode for Christmas 2018, with a four-part series to follow in 2019. A BBC sitcom pilot of Conversations From A Long Marriage is also in the planning stages.

gallery || listen on BBC Radio 4 || interview with writer Jan Etherington

As my life’s so marvellous, would you mind living it for me? Please, feel free to have a go at being routinely abused by people who spend so much time lying down on the sofa they now share its DNA.

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Summary

Therapist Martha encourages her clients to sip at the well of self-examination – but is it working? Roger Allam’s character here is essentially an even more dejected version of Peter Mannion, if you can imagine such a thing. Though undoubtedly hilarious, the nature of some of Richard’s confessions also render the series quite dark and, utterly pathetic though he might be, it’s difficult not to feel sympathetic towards him.

Stars

• Roger Allam – Richard Fallon MP
• Marcella Riordan – Martha

The series also stars Rebecca Saire as Caroline and Tim McInnerny as Howard.

Production info.

Written by Shelagh Stephenson and directed by Eoin O’Callaghan.

NB

Series 1-10 are available on Audible, and are regularly repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra. Roger Allam’s episodes from series one and two are also on YouTube: S01E01 || S01E04 || S02E01 || S02E05

Summary

Part of the series Words and Music, a new episode celebrates the life of Johann Sebastian Bach, with readings from his own words, and the words of those who knew him. With readers David Annen and Roger Allam. airs Christmas Eve 2017 on BBC3 || talking Bach and his collaboration with Angela Hewitt on Private Passions 2016

Summary

Nikolai Gogol’s classic satire about the corrupt officials of a small Russian town, headed by the Governor, who react with terror to the news that anincognito inspector will soon be arriving in their town to investigate them. When Khlestakov, a penniless nobody from Moscow, is mistaken for this government inspector, a tangled web of misunderstandings ensues. Gogol portrays officialdom as self-satisfied philistines occupying positions for which they are ill-suited.

Widely held to have led the realist revolution in Russian drama, Nikolai Gogol (1809 – 1852) liberated comedy from a tradition of sentimentality. The Government Inspector (1835), regarded as Gogol’s masterpiece, caused such a furore when first performed that he was driven into exile.

Stars

• Roger Allam – the Governor
• Lenny Henry – Khlestakov

Production info.

Adapted by Adrian Mitchell and produced by Catherine Bailey.

Listen to The Government Inspector on BBC Radio 3 || read the play online

‘If I had my way, every idiot who goes around with Merry Christmas on his lips, would be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. Merry Christmas? Bah humbug!’

Summary

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol tells the story of a bitter old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation into a gentler, kindlier man. Exactly seven years after the death of his business partner Jacob Marley, Scrooge is working in his office. He refuses his nephew’s invitation to  Christmas dinner, tells off the people collecting charity donations, and complains that his clerk gets a paid day off for Christmas.

That same night, he is haunted by Marley’s ghost, who warns Scrooge that those who led bad lives will never find peace. The ghost tells him three other ghosts will appear to Scrooge, and that he must change his life before it’s too late.

Stars

• Roger Allam – Jacob Marley
• Sir Derek Jacobi – Dickens
• Kenneth Cranham – Ebenezer Scrooge
• Brendan Coyle – The Ghost Of Christmas Past
• Miriam Margolyes – The Ghost Of Christmas Present
• Tim Mcinnerny – The Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come
• Jamie Glover – Bob Cratchit
• Emily Bruni – Mrs. Cratchit
• Jenna Coleman – Belle
• Joshua James – Young Scrooge
• Hugh Skinner – Fred

Production info

Free for download until January 2017 as a festive gift. Please check the links below. behind the scenes video || listen on Audible.co.uk || Amazon

His rise coincided with… my decline. Then his descent was my earthly triumph… I stole a life, and I don’t intend to give it back.

Summary

My Purple Scented Novel is writer Ian McEwan’s tale of literary theft first published early 2016. It’s read in two episodes by Roger Allam as part of a Book at Bedtime celebration of McEwan’s recent work. Ian McEwan was commissioned to write a piece for an art exhibit at the Fondazione Prada in Milan entitled The Stolen Image, and was asked to address the subject of ‘unrepentant or guiltless theft.’ He decided to write about the betrayal of one fictional author, Jocelyn Tarbert, by another, Parker Sparrow, who is also an old friend. Both writers enjoy moderate success until Jocelyn Tarbert moves into television and earns himself the title of ‘national treasure’. Sparrow who is jealous of Jocelyn’s Tarbert’s elevated public status, has no qualms about ‘appropriating’ the work of Tarbert and presenting it as his own.

In the form of a confession by Parker Sparrow, McEwan records the crime as it unfolds and casts a wry look at the jealousies and insecurities that run close to the surface of the literary world. How far would someone go in the pursuit of success? Is Jocelyn Tarbert actually relieved to relinquish his role of National Treasure to Parker Sparrow and sink back into obscurity?

Production info.

Written by Ian McEwan and abridged by Sally Marmion. Produced by Jules Wilkinson.

read and listen on The New Yorker || listen on BBC Radio 4 || Ian McEwan’s website

Summary

Sitcom about the crumbling stately pile of an obscure 18th century poet. Peter Knight is the curator of Plum House, former dwelling of poet and artist George Pudding. Julian is his fogeyish but megalomaniacal deputy. Maureen runs the giftshop, and is more concerned with turning a profit than preserving Pudding’s legacy.

The six episodes follow the successful pilot that aired in 2014 on BBC Radio 4. In episode 4, “Peter vs Pryne”, Tom has organised a special summer event and invited the great and good from the world of George Pudding scholarship to gather round the museum’s celebrated plum tree. It’s bound to be a day to remember. But with Peter encountering his arch nemesis – the unbearably pompous Mungo Prynne, Julian upsetting a neighbouring farmer and Emma rather enjoying the plum punch, will it be remembered for the right reasons?

Stars

• Roger Allam – Mungo Prynne
• Simon Callow –  Peter Knight
•  Miles Jupp – Julian
• Jane Horrocks – Maureen
• Tom Bell – Tom
• Pearce Quigley – Alan
• Louise Ford – Emma
• Sean Gilder – Barry Bunting

Production info.

Written by Ben Cottam and Paul McKenna.

The series is based on McKenna’s experience of working at Dove Cottage, Wordsworth’s ‘wonderfully out-of-touch’ historical residence in Cumbria.

more info || Listen on BBC Radio 4

Summary

A star cast perform short scenes based on the latest book from comic philosophical writer Michael Frayn, Matchbox Theatre, exploring communication.

Episode 1

In this opening episode listeners hear Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam as stone effigies in a cathedral talking to each other like an old married couple.

Younger couples Charles Edwards and Sophie Winkleman bicker over who should finish whose sentences, and Lisa Dillon and Alex Jennings discuss the irritations that occur when making an apparently simple decision – whether or not to accept a kind invitation.

Martin Jarvis has trouble with a rare type of cold-calling – how to tell someone they’ve won a Nobel Prize.

Finally, there’s an excerpt from a documentary on a species of creature that scurries and scuttles in the darkness. The wildlife narrator sounds suspiciously like Sir David Attenborough. It is.

Stars

• Roger Allam
• Charles Edwards
• Sophie Winkleman
• Lisa Dillon
• Alex Jennings
• Martin Jarvis
• Joanna Lumley
• Sir David Attenborough

Production info.

Written by Michael Frayn and directed by Martin Jarvis.

official site

Aha! Could this be the first groan of the wounded beast?

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Summary

A ten-hour-long dramatisation of War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy’s epic tale of three Russian aristocratic families during the Napoleonic War. Roger Allam stars as General Kutuzov, a wise old Russian brought out of retirement to act as commander-in-chief.

Stars

• Roger Allam – General Kutuzov
• Paterson Joseph – Pierre Bezukhov
• Countess Rostov – Lesley Manville
• Count Rostov – Alun Armstrong
• John Hurt – Prince Bolkonsky
• Harriet Walter – Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskoy
• David Calder – Prince Vassily Kuragin
• Nelly Harker – Lise Bolkonsky
• Tom Glenister – Nikolenka Bolkonsky
• Ronald Pickup – Basdeev
• Simon Russell Beale – Napoleon
• Jonathan Slinger – Captain Denisov
• Tom Goodman-Hill – Dolokhov

For a full cast list, please visit the cast list on the BBC’s War and Peace website.

Production info.

Dramatised by Timberlake Wertenbaker from a translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky with music specially composed by Stephen Warbeck. Directed by Celia de Wolff.

Interesting note

Recorded entirely on location at Borde Hill House and Garden and other Sussex locations.

BBC Website for War and Peace – includes articles and features on the production || The Guardian article

I don’t have an airline. I have one jet. You cannot put one jet in a line. If MJN is anything, it is an air dot.

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Summary

Cabin Pressure is a sitcom about a tiny, one plane, charter airline staffed by two pilots: one on his way down, and one who was never up to start with.

Stars

• Roger Allam – Douglas Richardson
• Stephanie Cole – Carolyn Knapp-Shappey
• Benedict Cumberbatch – Martin Crieff
• John Finnemore – Arthur Shappey
• Anthony Head – Hercules Shipwright
• Geoffrey Whitehead – Mr Birling

Production info.

Created and written by John Finnemore and produced by David Tyler. A Pozzitive Production for the BBC.

John Finnemore said:

“During the recording he [Benedict Cumberbatch] and Roger are very spontaneously funny if something goes wrong, or in the way they react to the audience. Roger sort of becomes Douglas, saying things in a very dry, laconic voice. I think, I didn’t write that, but that’s a really good Douglas line! It is a very Roger Allam role, yes. It’s not a stretch for him.” (source)

Awards and nominations

John Finnemore won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Best Radio Comedy and the British Comedy Guide Award for best radio sitcom of 2011. The series also won the award for Best British Radio Sitcom in 2011, 2013,  and 2014. Over the years Cabin Pressure won several Comedy.co.uk awards and was voted Comedy of the Year across TV and radio for 2014, making it the first radio show to be given the honour. reviews || gallery || buy it || our review of ‘Zurich’ || John Finnemore’s blogspot || BBC website

You know I’m your mother- what’s that? Do you know what it means?  If you turn back now, I’d push you off this mountain so you wouldn’t spend the rest of your life knowing you turned back. Knowing your mistake. That’s what a mother would do.

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Summary

A young man embarks on two journeys, but is only in control of one of them – and soon discovers there is no going back from either.

Stars

• Roger Allam – Father
• Helen Bang – Mother
• Tim O’Hara – Son

Production info.

Written and directed by Edward Bond, produced by Turan Ali.

Review

“A new radio play written and directed by Edward Bond, one of our greatest living playwrights, who turns 80 this year. In true Bond style, this confronting and disturbing drama connects with realities of our lives and societies. A young man embarks on two journeys, He is in control of only one. He soon discovers there is no going back, from either. An arresting drama about the world today…” (BBC website)

Summary

John Sessions selects favourite pieces of literature, read by Roger Allam and Amanda Root. John Sessions tells us his reasons for choosing each piece as well as providing a fascinating insight into the background of each before they are brought to life in the readings. Texts read by Sessions and Root include: ‘Binsey Poplars’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘Valediction Forbidding Mourning’ by John Donne, ‘There’s a Certain Slant of Light’ by Emily Dickinson and ‘On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer’ by John Keats.

Allam reads: 

•  An extract from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

• An extract from 1066 and All That by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman

• The poem ‘Aubade’ by Philip Larkin

gallery

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.

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Summary

A fairyland quarrel causes a night of mayhem for Athenian citizens in this magical comedy recorded on location deep in the heart of a Sussex wood at the height of midsummer.

Stars

• Roger Allam – Nick Bottom
• Lesley Sharp – Titania
• Toby Stephens – Oberon

Review

‘This production is a masterpiece. Recorded in a forest in Sussex, it bedazzles with its sound effects and music. The starry cast makes every line sing. It’s the finest Shakespeare play that I have heard on radio.’ (Radio Times) production info. || listen on YouTube

Now that I care for no one, the world is but a great chess board and I will sit down in earnest and play with fortune.

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Summary

A new adaptation by Kate Clanchy of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s vibrant and good-hearted satirical comedy. The play was recorded on location at Knebworth House, Hertfordshire, the stately home of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, which he inherited in 1843 shortly after writing Money.

Stars

• Roger Allam – Henry Graves
• Tom Goodman-Hill – Captain Dudley Smooth
• Laura Rees – Clara Douglas
• Celia Imrie – Lady Franklin
• Blake Ritson – Alfred Evelyn
• Ian McDiarmid – Sir John Vesey
• Phoebe Waller-Bridge – Georgina Vesey
• Bertie Carvel – Sir Frederick Blount
• Richard Cordery – Benjamin Stout
• Nicholas Boulton – Flash

Production info.

Samuel West directs. The music, specially recorded for the play, is performed by the Endellion String Quartet.

Interesting note

In this radio play, Roger Allam reprises the role for which he won a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Olivier Award in 2000.

 You write frankly, that’s your charm. You make a virtue of inconsistency.

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Summary

In 1588 the essayist and landowner Michel de Montaigne set out on a journey round the troubled kingdom of France to reconcile the Valois King Henri the Third, a Catholic, with his likely successor, the Bourbon King of Navarre, a Protestant.

Stars

• Roger Allam – Michel de Montaigne
• James Norton – Peslier
• Jane Lapotaire – Catherine de Medici

Production info.

Written by Stephen Wakelam and directed by Jeremy Mortimer. listen to a section on YouTube

Oh, Christ, what to write?

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Summary

Andrea’s former husband, boozy columnist Barry, is at the tail end of a career marked by low achievement in pugnacious, snide journalism. By contrast, Nigel – recent partner until her sudden death – is an alternative but ultra-orthodox, politically-correct naturopath.

Stars

• Roger Allam – Barry
• Nigel Planer – Nigel

Production info.

Written by Nigel Planer and directed by Peter Kavanagh. gallery || buy it

Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter…

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 Summary

A selection of five essays from the polemical journalist Christopher Hitchens. They were selected for BBC Radio 4‘s Book Of The Week, and all originally appeared in The Atlantic Journal.

Stars

Roger Allam reads Christopher Hitchens’s columns.

NB

As far as we know, the audio version of these essays are not released on CD or otherwise available for purchase. However, you can buy the book here.

Listen on YouTube:

Believe Me – It’s Torture (1/5) || Let Them Eat Pork Rinds (2/5) || The Vietnam Syndrome (3/5) || The Swastika and the Cedar (4/5) || Flaws of Gravity (5/5)

It’s only by examining Churchill’s other lives that we can gain a deeper appreciation of the full dimensions of his personality and his genius.

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Summary

Historian Sir David Cannadine (pictured) explores Winston Churchill’s life outside politics. An intriguing insight into the unseen aspects of the life of one of Britain’s most famous historical figures. This series is well-researched and entertainingly produced with its mixture of documentary commentary, dramatisation and interviews with those who knew the man himself.

Stars

• Roger Allam – Winston Churchill

gallery

It was a token of appreciation, Griff, for services rendered- a thank you present, if you like.

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Summary

Terence Griffiths was a top industrial correspondent back in the eighties during the miners’ strike. Twenty-eight years later he commits suicide. His best friend Simon was the last person to see him alive. Or was he?

Stars

• Roger Allam – Griff
• Reece Dinsdale – Simon

Production info.

Written by Christopher Reason, produced by Gary Brown. listen on YouTube

Fifteen. He had no idea what the figure signified but it was both urgent and vital, he did know that.

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Summary

Amateur detective Albert Campion wakes in hospital suffering from amnesia. He knows there is something vital he must do, but he cannot remember what it is – or even his own name. He finds himself on the run, suspected of attacking a policeman, as he tries to avert a catastrophe. This is a gripping and satisfyingly old-fashioned mystery, undoubtedly thrilling but not relying on some of the gratuitous scenes we might expect today. That isn’t to say that the drama is without action, merely that the emphasis is on building up tension through other means (cliffhangers, for example, abound).

Read by

Roger Allam

Production info.

Adapted from Margery Allingham’s mystery.

If you’re an old man when you read this- it is my intention for this letter that you will read it then- I’ll have been gone a very long time. I’ll know most of what there is to know about being dead, but I’ll probably keep it to myself. That seems to be the way of things.

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Summary

Reverend John Ames is nearing the end of a long life but his son is still a young boy, the product of a late flowering love. Ames knows he will never see his son grow to be a man. The letter he writes to his son is both a memoir of a life lived, and the journal of the present.

Stars

• Roger Allam – John Ames
• Elizabeth McGovern – John’s wife, Lila

Production info.

From the novel by Marilynne Robinson, adapted for radio by Mike Kenny. Directed by Annie Castledine. listen to a section on YouTube

In the end it’s an instinct. People will tell you the absolute opposite of what the case is. But you ignore that and you just develop a sense, a sensor.

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Summary

When Natasha Lonsdale, loving mother and respected businesswoman goes missing, neither her husband, her family or even her lover have any idea why. Natasha it appears had a secret life; a life which is now starting to unfold in both the newspapers and on the worldwide web with devastating results.

Stars

• Roger Allam – DCI Parsons
• Rebecca Saire – Natasha Lonsdale
• Margot Leicester – Barbara
• Andrew Sachs – Desmond
• John McAndrew – Dan
• Nick Dunning – Peter
• Richard Dormer – Nick

Production info.

Written by Mark Lawson and directed by Eoin O’Callaghan. listen on YouTube

This is a degree of beastliness which would appear detestable even in the capital of North Britain…

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Summary

Part of the BBC’s Book at Bedtime series. Roger Allam reads from the 1766 travel memoir by Tobias Smollett. He and his wife set off on a long journey, determined to see France and Italy, but was rarely happy with what he found there. Episode 1: The road from Dover to Calais provides endless opportunity to be lodged uncomfortably. Episode 2: It seems impossible to find the right kind of coach in France, and Smollett is unimpressed by Versailles and Paris fashion. Episode 3: The horses in France seem uncontrollable – even more so when Smollet decides to demonstrate his blunderbuss. Episode 4: t is snowing in the south of France- which gives Tobias Smollett only one option – to head to Italy. Will the Italians impress him more than the French? Episode 5: Having given Rome the most cursory of glances, Smollett thinks he will fare better in Florence, but a broken carriage forces him to walk the last five miles. Will the great City gates stay open to receive him?

Reader

Roger Allam

Production info.

Written by Tobias Smollett.

You must do your utmost to dematerialise my husband’s first wife as soon as possible!

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Summary

When writer Charles Condomine invites a medium to hold a séance at his country house, he receives a ghostly visitation from his dead first wife, much to the chagrin of his very much alive second one.

Stars

• Roger Allam – Charles Condomine
• Maggie Steed – Madame Arcati

Production info.

Adapted for radio by Bert Coules. Directed by Philip Franks and produced by Patrick Rayner.

I recently turned thirty five, and it forced me to take a long, hard look at where my life has been and where it’s going.

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Summary

Comedian Will Smith seeks help and advice- primarily from his godfather Peter- on coping with the onset of middle age. Peter invites different ‘guests’ in each episode to help Will to speak his mind. In this pastiche of a radio lifestyle show the lead character – Will – presents a hopeless yet endearing persona, unintentionally providing the comedy in response to the questionable yet presumably well-intentioned advice from his godfather.

Stars

• Will Smith – ‘Himself’
• Roger Allam – his godfather, Peter Black

Interesting to note…

Roger Allam and Will Smith also star together in The Thick of It (see picture) as another Peter- in this case, Mannion- and his hapless assistant, Phil.

Production info.

Written by Will Smith. Listen on YouTube: S01E01 || S01E02 || S01E03 || S01E04 || S01E05 || S01E06

I expect you to be mine…

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 Summary

The Ring and the Book tells the story of a murder trial in Rome in 1698, whereby an impoverished nobleman, Count Guido Franceschini, is found guilty of the murders of his young wife Pompilia Comparini and her parents, having suspected his wife was having an affair with a young cleric, Giuseppe Caponsacchi. This dark tale of sex, lies and murder has been skillfully adapted from Robert Browning’s narrative poem by Martyn Wade.

Stars

• Roger Allam – Guido Franceschini
• Anton Lesser – Robert Browning
• Loo Brealey – Pompilia

Production info.

Adapted by Martyn Wade and directed by Abigail le Fleming.

And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.

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Summary

The first-person narrator and his companion are on a canoe trip, intending to travel the entire length of the Danube River to the Black Sea. The river is in flood and has swiftly carried them of course into a completely wild and uninhabited area. As far as the eye can see, there is nothing on either bank but limitless clusters of large willow bushes among which strange sights begin to appear…

Read by

Roger Allam

Production info.

Short story by Algernon Blackwood.

Interesting note

According to American horror writer H.P Lovecraft, The Willows is the finest supernatural tale in English literature.