Showing results by narrator "Rachel Bavidge" in All Categories

Self-Portrait reveals a life truly lived through art. In this intimate short smemoir, Celia Paul moves effortlessly through time in words and images, folding in her past and present selves. From her move to the Slade School of Fine Art at 16, through a profound and intense affair with the older and better-known artist Lucian Freud, to the practises of her present-day studio, she meticulously assembles the surprising, beautiful, haunting scenes of a life. Paul brings to her prose the same qualities that she brings to her art.

Selma van de Perre was 17 when World War Two began. Until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had been of no consequence. But by 1941 this simple fact had become a matter of life or death. Several times, Selma avoided being rounded up by the Nazis. Then, in an act of defiance, she joined the Resistance movement, using the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit. For two years 'Marga' risked it all.

Alfred Lord Tennyson is one of Britain’s greatest and most popular poets. Even during his lifetime, he was considered a national institution: Queen Victoria appointed him Poet Laureate in 1850, a position he held for 42 years, and in 1884 he became the first writer to be granted a baronetcy. In a long and fruitful career, he penned numerous classic works, and this BBC Radio collection showcases some of the very best. We begin with two of his masterpieces, dramatised by award-winning poet Michael Symmons Roberts.

Celia Paul has felt a lifelong connection to the artist Gwen John. There are extraordinary parallels in their lives and work. Both have always made art on their own terms. Both were involved with older male artists. Both worked hard to keep themselves and the sacred flame of their creativity from being extinguished by others. Letters to Gwen John is Paul's imagined correspondence with Gwen John, whose life and work have loomed so large in hers.

Don’t miss Starlight Over Bluebell Castle, the third book in the delightfully uplifting Bluebell Castle trilogy! The most magical time of the year… Jessica Ridley’s life has just been turned upside-down – and not in a good way! So when blast-from-the-past Tristan Ludworth invites her to...

Anna grew up in a house that was loving, even if her mum was ‘a little eccentric’. They knew to keep things clean, to stay quiet, and to look the other way when things started to get ‘a bit much for your mum’. It’s only when her mother reaches her 70s and Anna has a family of her own, that the cracks really start to appear. More manic. More irrational. More detached from the world. And when her father, the man who has calmed and cajoled her mother through her entire life is diagnosed with cancer, the whole world turns upside down.

Brought to you by Penguin. I’ve always been told that if I was good, I’d attract good things. So then, why am I unhappy? From a young age, women are taught to put everyone else first. The result? A society full of ‘Good Girls’, pushing themselves to meet expectations while ignoring their...

He watches them from afar. He knows who they are and where they are. He is waiting in the dark... A stranger stalks the streets of Houghton le Spring and he is getting too close for comfort for Detective Inspector Lorraine Hunt. Selina, the daughter of Lorraine's partner, DS Luke Daniels, is a...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of The Taken by Alice Clark-Platts, read by Rachel Bavidge. There's the lost. There's the missing. And there's the taken. She asked me once if we had any secrets, and I shook my head. 'No secrets between us,' she said. 'No,' I...

June, 1877: the petite 29-year-old Annie Besant stands motionless before the 75-year-old Judge towering over her in the Palace of Westminster. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn is presiding over the scandalous 'trial of the century' where Annie Besant and her confidante Charles Bradlaugh have been charged with the unforgiveable crime of publishing and selling a guide to birth control. Charged with obscenity, she argued—controversially and outrageously, for the time—that it was a woman's right to be able to choose to have children.

Classic Poems for Boys comprises a delightfully varied set of over 20 poems for 5- to 10-year olds. From rousing favorites like Felicia Dorothea Hemans’ "Casabianca" and John Keats’ "A Song About Myself", to dreamy, thoughtful poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Rudyard Kipling, this is a collection to be treasured.

From its opening sentences Agnes Grey introduces a heroine who is honest, perceptive and charming. Unfortunately, the Bloomfields, who engage her as a governess, are rather less appealing, and the incarnation of the suppressed cruelties and hypocrisies of the Victorian age. When Agnes moves to a marginally less alarming family, one of her charges sets out to disrupt her only romantic hope. Critical, satirical, direct, and honest, Agnes Grey is a fine reflection of its author.

A young woman walks home by herself, the tapping of her high heels the only sound. At two o' clock in the morning, it's cold, the streets are deserted and she thinks she's all alone. Waiting for her, sleeping soundly in his bed, is her baby son. When he wakes the next morning his mother still...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee, read by Rachel Bavidge. From a writer praised by Junot Díaz as 'the fire, in my opinion, and the light', a mesmerizing novel that follows one woman's rise from circus rider to courtesan...

Understand the menopause with all its changes and challenges - and choose practices and treatments to make this next stage in your wellness journey healthy, positive, and joyful.Your menopause is unique to you - a milestone on your personal wellbeing journey. A lucky few will breeze through it, but for most women this time of hormonal upheavals throws up a variety of challenging symptoms. Understand the menopause better and find the right combination of resources for you - to stay physically, mentally and spiritually well throughout.

A dark and humid night on a London highway… a ghostly woman asking directions… and the reader is away on a tale of deceit, murder, madness, stolen identities and scheming cads, elaborate plots and outrageous coincidences, in the company of some of the most extraordinary characters in fiction. Hailed as a classic the moment it was written in 1859, The Woman in White uses a dozen different narrators to tell the tale of a man’s determination to save the woman he loves....

Brought to you by Penguin. On a winter morning she lost a piece of her heart. Can she find it? Evangeline isn't feeling festive this December. The frost and fairy lights only remind her it's been a year since she lost the mother who took her in as a baby and raised her. She's never felt more...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) and Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) were both regarded as the female poet laureates of their time, and between them their writings spanned almost the entire Victorian age, from the end of Romanticism to the beginnings of Modernism. This selection of their shorter works contains all the major themes that animated them - social justice, faith, love and mortality - and some of the best-loved poetry in English, including "In The Deep Midwinter" and "How Do I Love Thee?"

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Bitter Fruits by Alice Clark-Pitt, read by Kristin Atherton, Rachel Bavidge, Stefan Booth, Roy McMillian and Tania Rodrigues. The murder of a first-year student at Durham University shocks the city. But the very last thing...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of To Die For by Alice Clark-Platts, read by Rachel Bavidge. In an empty car park, Ryan James sits in his car contemplating death. He has set up a hose pipe that is pouring carbon monoxide into the car, and his deciding whether or...