Showing results by narrator "Samantha Bond" in All Categories

The Queen identifies the 70 year-old victim, Edward St Cyr, from his signet ring. But the search for his killer is not so straightforward. Suspects include the Queen's horse groom, a shady land agent, an aristocrat neighbour, as well as the victim's many cousins and relations. The investigation leads the Queen - and her trusted assistant, Rozie - to a local pigeon racing club, back to London, and to the ancient, moated Godwick Hall. But how do the seemingly disparate pieces of the puzzle fit together? And who is the next victim?

Queen Elizabeth II is having a royal nightmare. A referendum divides the nation, a tumultuous election grips the United States - and the body of a staff member is found dead beside Buckingham Palace swimming pool. Is it a tragic accident, as the police think? Or is something more sinister going on? As Her Majesty looks for answers, her trusted assistant, Rozie, is on the trail of a treasured painting that once hung outside the queen's bedroom.

David Edgar is among the UK’s leading contemporary dramatists, well known for his powerful plays chronicling Britain's changing political landscape over the past 50 years. More than 60 of his original plays, adaptations and translations have been performed around the world, and in 2023 he was honoured with a Writers’ Guild Outstanding Contribution award for his service to British playwriting. This radio anthology contains some of his most notable work.

What would you do if you woke up to find all the grown-ups had disappeared? If you're like Lucy Dungston, you'll do anything to get to the bottom of it. With no grown-ups, chaos descends on Lucy's town. Kids are running wild, building roads of trampolines and eating cereal for every meal - but Lucy wants her mum back, and nothing is going to stop her. Not even the monsters who live in the upside-down world beneath her bed....

What silently waits in the shadows at night? What's under your bed, keeping just out of sight? Do you ever hear strange, creaking noises at night? Ever wonder what makes those noises? Lucy Dungston always did. Until, one morning, Lucy discovers that all the grown-ups have disappeared - as if into thin air. Chaos descends as the children in Lucy's town run riot. It's mayhem. It's madness. To most kids, it's amazing!

Sonea knew that she'd face a tough time training within the Magicians' Guild but she little realised the level of animosity she would face from her fellow novices. The sons and daughters of the most powerful families in the realm, her classmates seem determined to see her fail - at whatever cost. But in accepting the protection of the guild's high lord, Sonea may have embraced an even bleaker fate. For High Lord Akkarin harbours a secret that is far darker than his magician's robes.

Disgraced in the US, maverick ad man Eliott Thurber is forced to transfer to the newly opened London offices of Parabola Media. The clash of cultures has hilarious consequences as he tries to cope with promoting a range of peculiar products, challenging clients and not to mention his disgruntled new colleagues. His first assignment is a gourmet cat food for an intensely conservative company but Eliott has his eyes on a bigger prize, American investment in the NHS. After all, "where there's pain, there's gain..."

Based in Devon in the 1940s, these two dramas follow the lives and loves of a group of young women, all from different backgrounds, but all determined to do their bit for king and country in the Land Army. Billeted in a hastily converted farmhouse, they face cramped conditions and gruelling work - but there's always dances at the village hop and the chance of romance with a GI....

From the moment Judi Dench appeared as a teenager in the York Mystery Plays, it was clear that acting would be her career. Trained at London's Central School of Speech and Drama it was her performance in her twenties as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's memorable Old Vic production that turned her into a star. In the theatre since she has played every classic role from Titania (three times, most recently in 2010) to Cleopatra.

One of Britain's most distinguished biographers turns her focus on one of the most vilified woman of the last century. Historian Anne Sebba has written the first full biography of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, by a woman which attempts to understand this fascinating and enigmatic American divorcee who nearly became Queen of England. 'That woman', as she was referred to by the Queen Mother, became a hate figure for allegedly ensnaring a British king.

As a little girl Katherine of Aragon was betrothed to Arthur, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of Henry VII of England, and was raised in the palace of the Alhambra, knowing that she would be queen of England. In 1501, the teenage Spanish princess arrives in her new kingdom, but the future is turned upside down with the death of her handsome young husband - only six months after the wedding. Transformed from beloved bride to superfluous widow, Katherine endures hardship and loneliness as the Tudor court slowly squeezes her out of royal circles.

A hard-working trainee doctor, Megan Jewell, finds herself accidentally pregnant. She wants a baby one day, but God, not now! Can Megan really bring a baby into the world when she can hardly look after herself?

Two weeks before D-Day, the French Resistance attack a chateau containing a telephone exchange vital to German communications. But the building is heavily guarded, and the attack fails disastrously. Flick Clairet, a young British secret agent, proposes a daring new plan: she will parachute into France with an all-woman team known as the "Jackdaws", and they will penetrate the chateau in disguise.

Seeking refuge and anonymity in the cobbled streets of Montmartre, Yanne and her daughters, Rosette and Annie, live peacefully, if not happily, above their little chocolate shop. Nothing unusual marks them out; no red sachets hang by the door. The wind has stopped, at least for a while. Then into their lives blows Zozie de l'Alba, the lady with the lollipop shoes, and everything begins to change.

It is late at night on a notorious council estate in east London. A van - garishly painted with a grinning clown's face on the side - is being driven erratically. When the police pull over the driver to question him, they discover, inside the van, the body of a young woman. A murder suspect . . . an arrest . . . a confession . . . A case done and dusted? But their suspect claims his victim is not his first, but his third.

Under the watchful eye of Detective Chief Superintendent James Langton, Anna is given her first case. But is it a full-blown murder investigation or purely a missing person's case? An ominous pool of blood and no victim lead Anna on a desperate hunt for a man who has disappeared without trace.As Anna becomes obsessed with seemingly irrelevant details, Langton fears that she is losing control of the case. They still have no body and Anna is under increasing pressure to make an arrest....

Etta Bancroft - sweet, kind, still beautiful - adores racing and harbours a crush on one of its stars, the handsome high-handed owner-trainer Rupert Campbell-Black. When her bullying husband dies, Etta‘s selfish, ambitious children drag her from her lovely Dorset house to live in a hideous modern bungalow in the Cotswold village of Willowwood and to act as an unpaid Nanny to their children.Her neighbour, powerful tycoon and ex-footballer Valent Edwards, has bought the big house next door.

Richard (played by Peter Davison) and Sarah (Samantha Bond) juggle their way through life's minor disruptions, such as well-meaning TV crews turning up unannounced, summons to the headmaster's office to discuss teen Kate and the arrival of Sarah's sister with a horse-box full of expressionist art and three moulting cats. On top of it all, Sarah considers a third child. Perhaps a holiday will do?

A collection of 52 nature poems - one for every week of the year. Filled with familiar favourites and new discoveries, written by a wide variety of poets. Beautifully read by award-winning actor Samantha Bond, star of Downton Abbey and the James Bond film series, this collection is perfect for children (and grown-ups!) to share at the beginning or the end of the day, or just to dip into.

At Bagley Hall, a notoriously wild, but increasingly academic, independent, crammed with the children of the famous, trouble is afoot. The ambitious and fatally attractive headmaster, Hengist Brett-Taylor, hatches a plan to share the facilities of his school with Larkminster Comprehensive, known locally, as 'Larks'.