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Forty Years On

Author : Alan Bennett

Performed By : Full Cast Production

Publisher : BBC Audiobooks Ltd

Runtime : 1 hour 35 minutes

Categories : Dramatizations

Our Price : $13.49

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The Headmaster has been at Albion House for fifty years, man and boy. Now he is retiring and tal<es part in the end-of-year entertainment for the last time. Entitled Speak For England, Arthur, It weaves together a multi-generational story of England: the glorious era at the turn of the century, when the summers were always golden: the fast-living inter-war years peopled by the Bloomsbury Group: and the growing cynicism of a country facing a second world war with the scars of the first still fresh in their memories.

Tongue-in-cheek, the play-within-a-play prompts an outraged response from the Headmaster, who can only see his beloved standards being mocked. Yet within the parody lies an almost painful nostalgia for a more peaceful age and the timeless misunderstanding of one generation by another.

Clever, funny and poignant, Alan Bennett's masterful play is rightly regarded as a modern classic.

Written By
Alan Bennett

First Broadcast
BBC Radio 4
28 August 2000

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Elsie in New York and The Purple Dress

Author : O. Henry

Performed By : Susan McCarthy, David Thorn, and Bobbie Frohman

Publisher : Blackstone Audio Inc

Runtime : 30 minutes

Categories : Classic Literature

Our Price : $19.95 $9.95

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"In O. Henry's world, establishment figures become boobs and rich men become dunces,
while rogues become heroes and down-and-outers become gentlemen."Coconut Telegraph

In "Elsie in New York," Elsie is an innocent young woman who, upon the death of her father, must look
for work to make a living. Her father expected her to trust to the goodheartedness of his previous employer,
but Elsie prefers to make her own way in life. Although she visits an employment agency and applies for
several positions, do-gooders interfere. Thinking they are saving her soul, in actuality they point her to her
destruction.

In "The Purple Dress," two young women clerks have been saving money all year to buy new dresses for
the one gala of their year, the annual Thanksgiving dinner given by their employer. Both are hoping to catch
the eye of one attractive gentleman bachelor at the party. But interactions with a landlady and a dressmaker
intervene, and things turn out much differently than either girl could have imagined.