Showing results by narrator "Kenneth Branagh" in All Categories

Narrated by Kenneth Branagh, with poetry readings from Sir Anthony Hopkins. Academy Award-winning actor Sir Anthony Hopkins delves into his illustrious film and theatre career, difficult childhood and path to sobriety in his honest, moving and long-awaited memoir. Born and raised in Port Talbot...

A Signature Performance: Kenneth Branagh plays this like a campfire ghost story, told by a haunted, slightly insane Marlow.

The tranquillity of a cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot through the head. She was young, stylish and beautiful, a girl who had everything – until she lost her life. Hercule Poirot recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: ‘I’d like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.’ Yet in this exotic setting’ nothing is ever quite what it seems....

The first in the series of the classic fantasy tales – The Chronicles of Narnia. A complete and unabridged edition. Written after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but designed by C.S.Lewis to be read first, this enchanting prequel – with its story of time travel, sorcery and magic rings...

Agatha Christie's most famous murder mystery, recorded by the director and star of the blockbuster film adaptation, Kenneth Branagh. Just after midnight, a snowdrift stops the Orient Express in its tracks. The luxurious train is surprisingly full for the time of the year, but by the morning it is one passenger fewer. An American tycoon lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside. Isolated and with a killer in their midst, detective Hercule Poirot must identify the murderer - in case he or she decides to strike again.

In this second part of the famous diary specially adapted for audio, Pepys gives us vivid eye-witness accounts of two famous events: the Plague and the Great Fire of London. Not only do we learn how these two events affected the people of London but also how Pepys and his family were affected, along with his usual minute observations of seventeenth century London life.

How can we look afresh at Shakespeare as a writer of sonnets? What new light might they shed on his career, personality, and sexuality? Shakespeare wrote sonnets for at least 30 years, not only for himself, for professional reasons, and for those he loved, but also in his plays, as prologues, as epilogues, and as part of their poetic texture.

Written in 1593, King Richard III is one of Shakespeare's earliest plays. This play differs from its predecessors, being amore structured piece, examining the development and motivations of a single character, Richard Duke of Gloucester, who will stop at nothing to gain control of the throne occupied by his brother Edward IV.

In this, the final part of the Diary, Pepys is well established in his post in the Navy office but troubled by failing eyesight which eventually leads him to stop writing his journal. Much of this portion of the diary is about his affair with his wife's servant, Deb Willett, which took up much of his energy throughout this period of his life. But we are also treated to his customary vivid portrait of London life in all its rich variety.

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.

Samuel Pepys' classic diaries, brought to life by Kenneth Branagh.

Pepys' Diary is one of the most celebrated journals of all time. Such is the wit and style of Pepys' writing that listeners to this selection from the early years of the diary will gain not only a unique view of 17th century London life but also a vivid picture of Pepys the man as he strives to establish himself in his career and in society.

Kenneth Branagh stars in BBC Radio 4's ambitious eight-hour dramatisation of Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman's epic masterpiece set during the Battle of Stalingrad. This powerful work, completed in 1960, charts the fate of both a nation and a family in the turmoil of war. Its comparison of Stalinism with Nazism was considered by Soviet authorities to be so dangerous that the KGB placed the manuscript under arrest and Grossman was informed his book would not be published for at least 200 years.

A two-part radio dramatisation of Vasily Grossman's dark, honest account of the Battle of Stalingrad; a prequel to Life and Fate - plus Stalingrad: Destiny of a Novel. With this astonishing prequel published in its first ever English translation by Richard and Elizabeth Chandler, we are transported back to the very beginning of Vasily Grossman’s panoramic tale, as the ‘harsh whirlwind’ of war approaches the city of Stalingrad.

Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston star in Shakespeare's tragedy of love and power. As part of BBC Radio 3's celebration of the 450th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare, Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston star in this brand-new production. Lovers, politicians, superstars... Antony & Cleopatra is Shakespeare’s late and epic tragedy of mature love, and the catastrophic fall from grace and power that it brings about.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Academy Award–winning actor Sir Anthony Hopkins delves into his illustrious film and theater career, difficult childhood, and path to sobriety in his honest, moving, and long-awaited memoir. Born and raised in Port Talbot—a small Welsh steelworks town—amid...

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, is Mary Shelley's passionate and Gothic tale of terror, in which a man's desire to know the unknowable sweeps him into a living nightmare. Victor Frankenstein's experiments with life itself give birth to an extraordinary force with the potential for either good or evil.

Here are 11 short stories and one novella by Anton Chekhov, one of the finest masters of what is acknowledged as a difficult genre. There is the richly comic "Oh! The Public" about a hassled ticket inspector, a wry look at morals and manners in "The Chorus Girl", and the melancholic tale of a cab driver in "Misery".

A timeless, terrifying tale of one man’s obsession to create life—and the monster that became his legacy. “If ever a book needed to be placed in context, it’s Frankenstein” (The New York Times Book Review). A timeless, terrifying tale of one man's obsession to create life—and the...

Brought to you by Penguin. A young boy, Victor, is collected from school by a stranger in a bowler hat - the stranger says he has won Victor in a game of backgammon with Victor's father. The stranger, known as the Captain, takes Victor to live with the sweet but withdrawn Lisa, where he serves...

This is a story from the In the Ravine and Other Stories collection.