Showing results by narrator "Paul Scofield"

Three powerful radio productions from the BBC archives starring Ian McKellen, Ronald Pickup and Paul Scofield and a host of celebrated acting talent. These three legendary plays, performed by some of the best-known theatrical actors of the 20th century, are the perfect way to commemorate England's greatest dramatist.

These are masterly readings, by renowned thespian Paul Schofield, of two substantial works of poetry by T.S. Eliot.

Paul Scofield, Siobhan McKenna and John Neville perform Twelfth Night. This is Shakespeare's comedy of gender confusion, in which a girl disguises herself as a man to be near the count she adores - only to be pursued by the woman he loves.

The tragedy of King Lear receives an outstanding performance in an all-star cast led by Britain’s senior classical actor, Paul Scofield. He is joined by Alec McCowen as Gloucester, Kenneth Branagh as The Fool, Harriet Walter as Gonerill, Sara Kestelman as Regan and Emilia Fox as Cordelia. This is the ninth recording of Shakespeare plays undertaken by Naxos AudioBooks in conjunction with Cambridge University Press, and is directed by John Tydeman. It was released to mark the 80th birthday of Paul Scofield in January 2002.

These three legendary plays, performed by some of the best-known theatrical actors of the 20th century, are the perfect way to commemorate England's greatest dramatist. The Winter's Tale: one man's consuming jealousy threatens to destroy both himself and those around him, but his actions arouse a passionate sense of honour, love, justice and self-sacrifice in members of his Court and family. First broadcast in 1982, starring Ronald Pickup as Leontes, with Hannah Gordon as Hermione and John Gielgud as Time.

This story's orphaned hero, Pip, who undergoes change and growth, progressing from thoughtless selfishness to humble industry and generosity, is one of Dickens's best-loved characters. "It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home," finding himself apprenticed to his blacksmith brother-in-law and "dusty with the dust of small coal."

I am a man more sinned against than sinning.

The welfare of children - a theme that ennobles many of the novels of Charles Dickens - captures the sympathy of our century as profoundly as it did that of the author's own contemporaries. Following the history of a fatherless young man, his mother, and his sister as they find themselves at the mercy of a greedy and unscrupulous uncle, Nicholas Nickleby is both a vivid indictment of the exploitive, brutal boarding schools of the late 19th century and a celebration of a little family's resilient generosity of spirit.

Esther Summerson is an orphan who comes to live with John Jarndyce and is a companion to his wards Richard Carstone and Ada Clare, who are in love. Soon a mysterious connection comes to light between Esther and Lady Dedlock and the romantic tangle of trails is followed by three unforgettable sleuths, Guppy, Tulkinghorn and Bucket. When Lady Deadlock's astonishing secrets are revealed it becomes plain that she has been concealing an all-too-passionate past.

First published in 1843-4, the novel which Dickens considered 'in a hundred points immeasurably the best of my stories' concerns the Chuzzlewit family in all various branches. At the heart of the story is young Martin, who is disowned by his wealthy grandfather and dismissed from the household of the architect Pecksniff, and sets out to make his own way in the world and win the hands of Mary Graham, an orphan raised by his grandfather.

This quintessential Christmas tale shows Dickens at his dazzling and provocative best, leaving Scrooge no doubts about the true spirit of Christmas, nor about the perils of ignoring the insistent ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Yet to Come.

Murder, a bitter love triangle and a mysterious inheritance. In the last of Dickens's completed novels, the power of money ultimately motivates both character and action. One night Hexam, who makes his living pulling bodies from the Thames, pulls out a body bearing the identification of John Harmon, heir to the fortune of a 'dust-collector'. In fact, Harmon has swapped clothes and identities with a sailor, John Rokesmith.

Paul Scofield evokes all the warmth and laughter of the unlikely adventures of the immortal Samuel Pickwick and the other members of the Pickwick Club - Tracy Tupman, Nathaniel Winkle and Augustus Snodgrass. Helped by Sam Weller, Pickwick's faithful manservant, the Pickwickians bumble through hilarious romantic misadventures and other twists of plot, encountering such characters as the tricky Job Trotter, his quick-witted master Alfred Jingle and the greedy Mr Stiggins along the way.

" I have endeavored in this Ghostly little book to raise the Ghost of an Idea which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their house pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it." With this modest preface affixed to the first edition, Charles Dickens introduced A Christmas Carol to the world. It has since come to embody the true spirit of Christmas. This reading by Academy Award-winning British actor, Paul Scofield, brings the classic story to life once again.

Paul Scofield and Patricia Routledge star in Noël Coward’s classic comedy of manners. Private Lives was written in 1930 and has been a mainstay of British theatre ever since. This sharply funny play of reversals focuses on Elyot and Amanda, a passionate but feuding couple who divorced five years before. Now, on the first night of their honeymoons with their new partners, they find that they are all staying in the same hotel on the French Riviera. Fireworks are inevitable....

Scofield evokes all the warmth and laughter of the unlikely adventures of the immortal Samuel Pickwick, Esq., and the other members of the Pickwick Club. Abetted by Pickwick's faithful manservant, Sam Weller, the Pickwickians bumble through hilarious romantic, misadventures, and other twists of plot, encountering many delightfully Dickensian characters along the way. English stage and screen actor Paul Scofield, delivers an articulate performance which is quite superb.

Hamlet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father, the King, and then taken the throne and married Gertrude, Hamlet's mother.

In the squalor of a textile town, successful businessman and arch-pragmatist Thomas Gradgrind, proclaiming that he is a self-made man, teaches his children to suppress their imaginations and embrace hard facts. He arranges the marriage of his daughter Louisa to Josiah Bounderby, an unattractive, boastful manufacturer who is thirty years older than she. Gradgrind believes that he has succeeded as a father when his son Thomas goes to work in Bounderby's bank.

"Every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding," says Scrooge. Mean old Scrooge despises Christmas...until Christmas Eve, when a haunted voice from the past changes his life overnight. You know the story; now experience the marvel of the book.

Perhaps the finest novel of nineteenth-century England, Bleak House embodies artful narrative, an engaging cast of characters, biting satire, and a detailed depiction of Victorian society. At the height of his creative power in this great work, Dickens pursues two great themes.