Showing results by narrator "Kobna Holdbrook-Smith" in All Categories

Haunting, uplifting, beautiful: the final work from Helen Dunmore. Helen Dunmore passed away in June 2017, leaving behind this remarkable collection of short stories. With her trademark imagination and gift for making history human, she explores the fragile ties between passion, love, family, friendship and grief, often through people facing turning points in their lives.

Things will never be the same again... Ben is driving on the motorway, on his usual commute to the school where he works. A day like any other, except for Adam, who in a last despairing act jumps in front of Ben's car, and in killing himself, turns the teacher's world upside down. Wracked with guilt and desperate to clear his conscience, Ben develops a friendship with Alice, Adam's widow, and her seven-year-old son, Max. But as he tries to escape the trauma of the wreckage, could Ben go too far in trying to make amends?

Rex Obano has written for the stage, television, radio and film. His plays have twice been shortlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award and he received the Roland Rees Bursary in 2018. He is part of the writing team for the BBC Radio series Faith, Hope and Glory and his TV credits include Shakespeare & Hathaway. Included here are five of his acclaimed dramas, as well as a fascinating discussion programme, Black Tudors.

It is the end of the 19th Century and the world is awash with marvels. But there is nothing so marvellous as the Wastelands: a terrain of terrible miracles that lies between Beijing and Moscow. Nothing touches this abandoned wilderness except the Great Trans-Siberian Express: an impenetrable train built to carry cargo across continents, but which now transports anyone who dares to cross the shadowy Wastelands. On to the platform steps a curious cast of characters. But the old rules are changing, and there are whispers that the train isn't safe.

In the darkest months of the Second World War, Churchill approved what seemed to many like a suicide mission. Under orders to attack the St Nazaire U-boat base on the Atlantic seaboard, British commandos undertook 'the greatest raid of all', turning an old destroyer into a live bomb and using it to ram the gates of a Nazi stronghold. Drawing on official documents, interviews, unknown accounts and the astonished reactions of French civilians and German forces, The Greatest Raid recreates in cinematic detail the hours in which the 'Charioteers' fought and died.

We join the action just as our ‘hero’ Tom, (early thirties, reads the ‘news’ on the radio) finds out that his girlfriend has not left him. Tom, I have not left you. But I am gone. Please carry on as normal. Love always, Hayley. Has Hayley gone or hasn’t she? Is she coming back? If she has gone, but is coming back, when is she coming back? And what is he supposed to bloody do in the meantime? And what if she’s never coming back?

K is sent into care before a year marks his birth. He grows up in fields and woods, and he is happy, he thinks. When K is 11, the city reclaims him. He returns to an unknown mother and a part-time father, trading the fields for flats and a community that is alien to him. Slowly, he finds friends. Eventually, he finds love. He learns how to navigate the city. But as he grows, he begins to realise that he needs more than the city can provide. He is a man made of pieces. Pieces that are slowly breaking apart.

What is the experience of black men in Britain? With continued conversation around British identity, racism and diversity, there is no better time to explore this question and give black British men a platform to answer it. Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space is that platform. Including essays from top poets, writers, musicians, actors and journalists, this timely and accessible book brings together a selection of powerful reflections exploring the black British male experience and what it really means to reclaim and hold space in the landscape of our society.