Audiobook

 

Arabian Nights, The

Author : Sir Richard Burton

Performed By : Philip Madoc

Publisher : Select Music & Distribution

Runtime : 3 hours 50 minutes

Categories : Classic Literature
Classics

Our Price : $15.49

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Though The Arabian Nights are generally known as stories for children, they were originally tales for adults full of adventure, sexuality, violence and the supernatural.

They certainly inspired the imagination of Sir Richard Burton, the 19th century explorer, linguist and erotologist who brought all his worldly experience and a superbly expressive prose style to bear on the tales of Sindbad the Seaman and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Scheherazade must keep her king entertained with stories if she is to avoid the promised sentence of death.

Philip Madoc's sonorous performance allows the tales to weave their own enchantment as they have done down the centuries.

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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