Showing results by narrator "Louise Brealey" in All Categories

Composed in the early 1350s, in the wake of the Black Death, The Decameron comprises 100 short stories from all over the world, reset by Boccaccio among the flourishing merchant classes of Renaissance Italy. Their universal themes—love, sex, religion, fate, morality—resonate with us to this day, and their witty, satirical, bawdy voice sounds utterly modern. Monty Python star and medieval historian Terry Jones presents ten BBC Radio dramatisations of tales from Giovanni Boccaccio's humane and comic masterpiece

Beethoven yearns to see his famously unknown Immortal Beloved. A Victorian farmer proposes marriage to a woman he's never met. Zora Neale Hurston gives her ex-husband relationship advice. Mildred Loving asks the ACLU for help challenging the racist marriage laws of the Jim Crow South. Revealing deep, eternal truths from the heart, this intimate collection of 30 letters traces all of love's incarnations, from first blush and mutual enchantment to unrequited feelings and the ache of passions past. It offers a rare, passionate, and timeless look at what it means to love and be loved.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Louise Brealey read a love story in letters, played out against the backdrop of the Second World War. 'Can you feel, as you read these words, that I am thinking of you now; aglow, alive, alert at the thought that you are in the same world, and by some strange chance loving me.' A small blue box opened in 2008 revealed a wartime world of love, longing and frustration. Inside were bundles and bundles of letters written neatly on thin blue airmail paper or headed army notepaper.

In an unnamed British city, the virus is spreading, and like everyone else, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness retreats inside. She isolates herself in her immense studio, Burntcoat, with Halit, the lover she barely knows. As life outside changes irreparably, inside Burntcoat, Edith and Halit find themselves changed as well: by the histories and responsibilities each carries and bears, by the fears and dangers of the world outside, and by the progressions of their new relationship.

Ex-journalist Tash has been searching for a story to launch her freelance career. But she has also been searching for something else: new friends to help her navigate motherhood. She sees them at her son’s new playgroup. The other mothers. The sleek, the sophisticated, the successful mothers… The women she wants to be. And then one day they welcome her into their circle and Tash discovers the kind of life she has always dreamt of; their elegant London townhouses a far cry from her cramped basement flat and endless bills. They seem to have everything. But they also have their secrets.

In Ilmarsh, England, local police detective Alec Nichols discovers sixteen horses' heads on a farm, each buried with a single eye facing the low winter sun. After Veterinary Forensics expert Cooper Allen travels to the scene, a pathogen is discovered lurking within the soil, and many of those who have come into contact with the corpses grow critically ill. A series of crimes comes to light—disappearances, arson, and mutilations—and in the dark days that follow, the town slips into panic and paranoia.

The story begins in 1970. The day after Jimi Hendrix's death...dairy farmer Michael Eavis invites revellers to his field in Somerset to attend a 'Pop, Folk & Blues' festival. Tickets are £1 each, enticing more than a thousand customers with the promise of music, dance, poetry, theatre, lights and spontaneous entertainment - as well as free milk from his own Worthy Farm cows. Fast forward through five tumultuous decades, and the Eavises' vision now encompasses a gigantic 'city in the fields', with a total annual population nearing a quarter of a million.

Vincent Van Gogh curses the stare of the blank canvas. Salvador Dali contemplates mailing a piece of his "lobster-colored pajamas" to Federico Lorca. Hollis Frampton, to the MoMA, demands that artists be paid. The dean of students at San Francisco Art Institute argues to Alicia McCarthy, in very stern words, that graffiti is not art but, rather, a "pain in the ass". In a letter to the editor, Martin Scorsese defends and celebrates Fellini's filmmaking.

Defeated Cossacks taunt the pompous sultan of the Ottoman Empire. A black corporal beseeches Abraham Lincoln to ensure that his regiment receives proper payment for performing their duties. Mohandas Gandhi urges Adolf Hitler to turn back the tide of war. A suicide bomber in Iraq explains his simple motivation to his family. This poignant collection offers a nuanced and moving look at the act of armed conflict. Each of these 30 remarkable letters sheds light on what it means for us to take up arms against one another and record a piece of that terrible deed.

Young women are being discovered dead across the Old Town, all having suffered similarly gruesome ends. In the New Town, medical student Will Raven is about to start his apprenticeship with the brilliant and renowned Dr Simpson. Simpson's patients range from the richest to the poorest of this divided city. His house is like no other, full of visiting luminaries and daring experiments in the new medical frontier of anaesthesia.

The powerful new novel from number one Sunday Times best seller Clare Mackintosh. Max and Pip are the strongest couple you know. Only now they're facing the most important decision of their lives - and they don't agree. As the consequences of an impossible choice threaten to devastate them both, nothing will ever be the same again. But anything can happen after the end....

A high-speed crash leaves a man and woman clinging to life. Neither of them carries ID. Their car has fake number plates. In their luggage: a huge amount of cash. Who are they? What are they hiding? And what were they running from? DS Lynda Hagen, once a brilliant detective, gave it all up to raise her family. But something about this case reignites a spark in her. What begins as an investigation soon becomes an obsession. And it will lead her to a secret so dangerous that soon there will be nowhere left to hide.

In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later the family are forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.

Shaun Usher brings together fascinating correspondence about the universe beyond our planet, containing hopeful thoughts about the future of space travel, awestruck messages penned about the world beyond our own, and celebrations of the human ingenuity that has facilitated our understanding of the cosmos.

In Letters of Note: Dogs, Shaun Usher brings together a delightful collection of correspondence about our canine friends, featuring affectionate accounts of pups' playful misdemeanors, heartfelt tributes to loyal fidos, and shared tales of remarkable hounds.

Verdi writes to his publisher about a man who hated Aida so much that he wants his money back. Keith Richards tells his aunt about bumping into a former schoolmate named Mick Jagger, who also loves Chuck Berry. Yo-Yo Ma wonders whether Leonard Bernstein remembers introducing him onstage as a young boy. A Harvard psychiatrist begs CVS to change their on-hold music. Riffing on their passions and surroundings, the artists and entertainers in this volume candidly reveal the sources of their inspiration, what music means to them, why they create it, and so much more.

Alinor, a descendant of wise women, crushed by poverty and superstition, waits in the graveyard under the full moon for a ghost who will declare her free from her abusive husband. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run, and shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marsh, not knowing that she is leading disaster into the heart of her life. Suspected of possessing dark secrets in superstitious times, Alinor’s ambition and determination mark her out from her neighbours.

Near the dying English seaside town of Ilmarsh, local police Detective Alec Nichols discovers 16 horses’ heads on a farm, each buried with a single eye facing the low winter sun. After forensic veterinarian Cooper Allen travels to the scene, the investigators soon uncover evidence of a chain of crimes in the community - disappearances, arson and mutilations - all culminating in the reveal of something deadly lurking in the ground itself.

In Letters of Note: Sex, Shaun Usher collects together some of the most noteworthy missives ever written on the subject, from euphemism-laden, flirtatious exchanges and desire-driven expressions of passion to sincere and thoughtful meditations on the meaning of sex.

A fascinating new volume of messages about motherhood, from the author of the best-selling Letters of Note collections. In Letters of Note: Mothers, Shaun Usher gathers together exceptional missives by and about mothers, celebrating the joy and grief, humor and frustration, wisdom and sacrifice the role brings to both parent and child.