Showing results by narrator "Carole Boyd" in All Categories

In the middle of the night, Evie is torn away from her beloved home and close-knit community as her family run away to the south. Her father's luck has finally run out, but what should mark a hopeful new beginning is just the start of young Evie’s troubles. With the weight of her family's future on her shoulders, Evie has no one to turn to. Her mother, worn down by life, runs off with a new man, and with her grandmother's sight failing, it's left to Evie to earn their keep and run the house. Holding her family together is only made harder when tragedy strikes at its heart.

In this rich and memorable evocation of the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire are the lives, loves and sorrows of the central characters. There is Sarah Burton, fiery young headmistress; Robert Carne of Maythorpe Hall, a councillor tormented by his own disastrous marriage; Jo Astell, a socialist fighting poverty and his own illness; and Mrs Beddows, the first woman Alderman of the district (like Winifred’s own mother).

Summer 1939 and five cousins gather at the house with the camomile lawn for what, for many of them, will be the last summer of their youth.

Full-cast adaptations of three of Winifred Holtby’s best-known novels, plus short stories and bonus programmes about the author: Winifred Holtby was an acclaimed novelist, journalist, feminist and social reformer. Her work encompasses six novels, two short story collections, a play and the first critical study of Virginia Woolf, but she is best known for her posthumously published masterpiece South Riding, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Award. She died in 1935, aged just 37.

In these four supernatural dramas, first broadcast on radio in 1984, a house hides more than meets the eye; a B & B landlady helps her guests forget their troubles; a Japanese man inadvertently awakens a vengeful spirit; and a mother and baby become unsettled in remote mill.

In June 1940 France fell to the Nazis. The effects of this momentous event on the lives of ordinary Parisians and the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation are brilliantly explored in Irène Némirovsky’s gripping and heartbreaking novel. Némirovsky herself was a tragic victim of the Nazi regime but she left behind her this exceptional masterpiece. In Suite Française she conjures up a vivid cast of wonderful characters who find themselves thrown together in ways they never expected.

The dramatic and shocking events of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 are to be the backdrop to Juliet Barker's latest book: a snapshot of what everyday life was like for ordinary people living in the middle ages. The same highly successful techniques she deployed in Agincourt and Conquest will this time be brought to bear on civilian society.

The pretty Arnold sisters have grown up on their father's farm and yearn for something more out of life than drudgery and toil. Ellen, loyal and honest, is her father's favourite, but Georgina is impulsive and unreliable, and can't please a father who has never shown her love.The big house, Grindle Hall, offers them both a chance of betterment, but while Ellen follows the steady path, Georgina takes a darker road and soon, her actions will have fateful consequences for them all. Only Ellen can help them, but will a sister's love be enough?

In the summer of 1952 when two lonely people arrive in the seaside hamlet of West Bay. Strangers from very different backgrounds, they are there for the same reason: to find peace and the chance to start a new life. Tom Arnold has left a highly paid job after his family died in a car accident. Kathy Wilson is recovering from a painful divorce. For both Tom and Kathy, it seems there is hope of rebuilding their lives. Yet even now, someone means to wreck both Tom's and Kathy's search for happiness.

Set in 1952, this story begins when three people meet in a churchyard. One is a local farmer, Ben Morris, walking through the churchyard from his farmhouse. The other two, Lucy and Eileen Baker, are mother and daughter, bringing flowers to lay at the resting place of a man by the name of Barney Davidson. There is an air of mystery about them that greatly intrigues Ben.

It’s 1954 and Adam Carter is 12 years old, an only child with no friends nor any self-confidence. His father Edward is a bully of a man. A successful and ruthless businessman, he breeds fear into the heart of his family. Adam’s mother Peggy is too cowed to protect her son, so Adam’s only support comes in the shape of Jake Wallis, the school bus driver. One particular afternoon, when Adam is his last drop of the day, Jake decides to accompany him along the darkening wood land to his house.

In the riverside town of Bedford, four students can hear the haunting voice of a woman singing. The beautiful melody is coming from their neighbour, a recluse who never opens her door to anyone or leaves her home in daylight. They have no way of knowing that the woman next door, Madeleine Delaney, is driven by a dangerous memory that for over 20 years has controlled her meagre existence.

Maureen Bancroft has never learned the art of putting herself first. As a widow with a gentle temperament and humble ways, she’s been easy to take advantage of. All that changes when an unexpected windfall comes her way. Determined to make up for lost time, she decides to take a holiday and, needing a companion, looks up her friend Barbara Hayle. Glamorous, and with a successful career on the stage, Barbara seems to be everything that Maureen is not. But things aren’t as they seem, and what starts out as a nostalgic trip between friends becomes something different altogether.

Our perception of Victoria the Queen is coloured by portraits of her older, widowed self – her dour expression embodying the repressive morality propagated in her time. But Becoming Queen reveals an energetic and vibrant woman, determined to battle for power. It also documents the Byzantine machinations behind Victoria’s quest to occupy the throne, and shows how her struggles did not end when finally the crown was placed on her head.

In a small Lancashire cotton town in the 1930s, Daisy Bell dreams her life away. At twenty-six, still a spinster and heiress to her mother's potato pie shop, she's resigned to a lonely old age. But toiling over the bake-house fire she dreams of a better world- a world of glamour and romance as seen on the silver screen. Then she meets Sam, a dashing Clarke Gable look-alike and chauffeur to a wealthy London businessman- and suddenly her life is changed forever...

Miss Read heard about the sale of Tyler's Row from the always well-informed Mrs Pringle - and before long Fairacre was alive with rumours. Why were the present owners selling?

The new novel from Sunday Times best-selling author Josephine Cox, who gets straight to the hope and heartbreak of family drama. One fateful night changes the course of a child's life forever.... Rosie's mother is a cruel woman and has Rosie's kind and loving father wrapped around her finger. Though John Tanner does his best to protect her, Rosie often bears the brunt of her mother's rage. And his protection can't last forever. In one tragic moment, Rosie's fragile world is shattered.

When the rector, Peter, and his wife Caroline, decide to go to Africa for a year to work in a mission, they take their twins with them. The village inhabitants whose lives revolve around the church and this family are bereft. They don't immediately take to the woman locum, Anna, who has modern ideas, happy clappy hymns and so forth, but she does fill the church with parishioners determined to keep an eye on her.

Francis I (1494-1547) was inconstant, amorous, hotheaded and flawed. Yet he was also arguably the most significant king that France ever had. This is his story. A contemporary of Henry VIII of England, Francis saw himself as the first Renaissance king, a man who was the exemplar of courtly and civilised behaviour throughout Europe. A courageous and heroic warrior, he was also a keen aesthete, an accomplished diplomat and an energetic ruler who turned his country into a force to be reckoned with.

Angie is 18 years old, and, with the help of a mini skirt, a pair of false eyelashes and a tube of pale pink lipstick, has made herself into a beauty. She's living in London in the Swinging Sixties, and knows she's in the best city in the world at the best possible time. She's got that world at her pretty, white-booted feet as she dances the night away with every handsome bloke on the booming, strobe-lit floor of the Canvas Club.