About A. Igoni Barrett / A. Igoni Barrett: A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

About A. J. A. Symons / A. J. A. Symons: The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

About A. J. Liebling / A. J. Liebling: A. J. Liebling, born in Manhattan in 1904, joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1935 and contributed innumerable articles to the magazine throughout his lifetime, on subjects ranging from food to boxing and France to horse racing. As a war correspondent during the Second World War, he reported from France, England and Algeria, and participated in the Normandy landings. In later life he married the writer Jean Stafford, his third wife. He died in 1963.

A. J. Liebling

About A. J. Rosen / A. J. Rosen: A. J. Rosen is an author of YA fantasy novels and is an ambassador for Wattpad, known as @agatharoza. Entwined is her first novel.

A. J. Rosen

A. K. Davidson

About A. M. Ellis / A. M. Ellis: A. M. Ellis is a speculative fiction author and lover of everything steeped in myth and mystery. Her stories often lean into diverse voices, not only in her identity as a Black woman, but in exploring neurodivergence and mental health. A proud introvert and nostalgic gamer, she lives in Maryland, USA, with her husband and three children.

A. M. Ellis

About A. O. Scott / A. O. Scott: A. O. Scott has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000. His writing has appeared in many other publications, including the New York Review of Books, Slate, the New Yorker and the Nation. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2010, Scott is currently Distinguished Professor of Film Criticism at Wesleyan University. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. 
 
@aoscott

A. O. Scott

About A. S. Byatt / A. S. Byatt: A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

A. S. Byatt

About A. T. Williams / A. T. Williams: A. T. Williams won the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2013 for his book A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa. He lives in Warwickshire.

A. T. Williams

A. W. Chase

About A.C. Glass / AC. Glass: Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by the Guardian newspaper, and ‘the real thing’ by the Washington Post, A.C. 'Ava' Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. The Traitor was a 2023 Richard and Judy Bookclub pick. Alias Emma was a Barnes and Noble book of the month. A former crime reporter and communications consultant, for five years Ava worked closely with spies. Her time in that world fascinated her, and the people she met back then inspire every book she writes.

A.C. Glass

A.E. Housman

About A.E. Waite / AE. Waite: Arthur Edward Waite was the designer and co-creator of the now famous Rider Waite Tarot deck. 
 
An American-born British poet and scholarly mystic, his strong interest in all esoteric matters - divination, magic, Kabbalism, alchemy and Freemasony - led to him penning a number of books. These include the Key to the Tarot, The Book of Ceremonial Magic and A New Encyclopedia of Freemasony.

A.E. Waite

About A.E. Warren / AE. Warren: A.E. Warren is the author of the Tomorrow's Ancestors series, which consists of Subject Twenty-One, The Hidden Base, The Fourth Species and The Final Rising. 
 
After spending eight years working as a lawyer, she began to write in the evenings and early mornings as a form of escapism from life in a very small cubicle with lots of files. She self-published her first novels in her spare time, which were picked up by Del Rey UK which is the science fiction/fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House. 
 
 She is an avid reader, occasional gamer and fair-weather runner. She lives in the UK with her husband, daughter and hopefully, one day, a wise border terrier named Austen.

A.E. Warren

A.G.D. Maran

A.J. Ayer

A.J. Cronin

About A.K.Benedict / AKBenedict: A K Benedict writes crime and speculative fiction in a room filled with clowns, mannequins and Doctor Who figures. Her first novel, The Beauty of Murder, was nominated for an eDunnit award and is in development for a major 8-part TV series by Company Pictures. Her second, Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts, came out in February 2016. She's written Torchwood audio dramas for Big Finish and her short stories have featured in anthologies including Great British Horror and Best British Short Stories. She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

A.K.Benedict

About A.L. Kennedy / AL. Kennedy: A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards – including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in Essex.

A.L. Kennedy

About A.N. Wilson / AN. Wilson: A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

A.N. Wilson

About A.T. Emerald / AT. Emerald: A. T. Emerald lives with her husband and baby daughter in Nottinghamshire. She discovered her love of writing in 2020 and has not shut up about enemies to lovers ever since. She loves iced matcha, torrid love confessions with knives pressed to throats (fictional, of course) and does not accept bills for any therapy her books might incur.

A.T. Emerald

A.W. Priest

About ABC Merriman-Labor: A.B.C. Merriman-Labor was a barrister, writer and munitions worker born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1877. His published works include A Series of Lectures on the Negro Race and The Story of the African Slave in a Nutshell. He also edited two editions of the Handbook of Sierra Leone. He arrived in the UK in 1904 to study law. In 1907, he organised a centenary commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in Westminster Abbey. He later embarked on an 'entertainment-lecture' tour called Life and Scenes in Britain, travelling across thousands of miles of West, South West and Central Africa, which he expanded on to create Britons Through Negro Spectacles.

ABC Merriman-Labor

AJ Cronin

AJ Molloy

About Aabria Iyengar: Aabria Iyengar is an American actress and author.

Aabria Iyengar

About Aaliya Jaleel: Aaliya Jaleel is a freelance illustrator, designer, and visual development artist, currently majoring in Animation at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also the illustrator of Under My Hijab and Muslim Girls Rise. You can visit her online at www.aaliyamj.com.

Aaliya Jaleel

Aaron Allston

About Aaron Balick: After more than fifteen years of experience as a clinical psychotherapist, Dr Aaron Balick has taken the amazing insights from psychology and psychotherapy out of the consultation room and made them accessible to the wider world. 
 
He has been an ‘agony uncle’ for many years for both CBBC and BBC Radio 1, as well as on television, including BBC Worldwide, BBC 3 and BBC Learning.

Aaron Balick

Aaron Carroll

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Katie Hims

Shaun McKenna

Sebastian Baczkiewicz

Sarah Daniels

Richard Monks

Lucy Catherine

Series 6-10 of the epic BBC Radio 4 drama charting life on the home front during the First World War – plus special episode Home Front: A Lightening 
 
First heard on radio between 4 August 2014 and 9 November 2018, each episode of Home Front is set exactly one hundred years before the broadcast date, and each follows one character’s day. Together they create a mosaic of experience from a wide cross-section of society, mixing historical fact with enthralling fiction to explore how ordinary people coped with daily life in wartime Britain. 
 
We resume the story in Folkestone, where hospital staff face pressure to return wounded men to duty as conscription is introduced. Zeppelin bombs leave residents jumpy, and ‘spy fever’ is at a pitch as the Secret Service comes to town. Food shortages begin to bite – and the town is rocked by Britain’s first ever air raid, causing the greatest number of civilian casualties of the war to date. 
 
We also meet the residents of Ashburton, Devon, where the future of Isaac Cox's family hangs in the balance as old feuds are reignited at Halecot Farm. 
 
In Tynemouth, paranoia is rife and emotions run high for those at Marshall’s factory. The repercussions of a devastating explosion ripple through people's lives, but they face the future with fortitude, taking small but courageous steps forward. 
 
Tackling themes including nursing and casualties, conscription and objection, espionage and propaganda, xenophobia and suspicion and the church and class are some of radio’s foremost dramatists including Richard Monks, Mike Walker and Sarah Daniels. Among the extensive cast are Martine McCutcheon, Anton Lesser, Maggie Steed and Gunnar Cauthery. Also included is Home Front: A Lightening, a special 45-minute episode marking the centenary of Britain’s first Gotha Air Raid, which devastated Folkestone on 25 May 1917.

Home Front: The Complete BBC Radio Collection Volume 2

Series 11-15 of the major BBC Radio 4 drama charting life on the home front during the First World War – plus special extended episode Home Front: A Fragile Peace 
 
First heard on radio between 4 August 2014 and 9 November 2018, each episode of Home Front is set exactly one hundred years before the broadcast date, and each follows one character’s day. Together they create a mosaic of experience from a wide cross-section of society, mixing historical fact with enthralling fiction to explore how ordinary people coped with daily life in wartime Britain. 
 
Back in Folkestone, the residents are dealing with the after-effects of a devastating air raid. Howard Argent is kept busy at the Bevan, while Ulysses Pilchard experiments with electro-shock therapy. Meanwhile, women’s suffrage, prostitution and unmarried mothers are hot topics, and Kitty Lumley experiences the sharp end of intolerance. 
 
In Tyneside, ripples from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution lead to a rise in union activity, and the factory faces the threat of strike action from the munitionettes. 
 
And in Devon, women, children and prisoners of war are being put to work on the land. With Britain on the brink of starvation, summer 1918’s harvest is crucial – but conscientious objectors, unwilling or unable to help, arouse fury. 
 
As the Great War moves towards its end, can the wounded communities back home find some sort of peace, however fragile? 
 
Tackling themes including trauma and madness, industrial unrest, morality and sexuality, surrogate labour and the outbreak of peace are some of radio’s foremost dramatists including Katie Hims, Shaun McKenna and Sarah Daniels. Among the extensive cast are Helen Schlesinger, Kathryn Beaumont, Roy Hudd and Billy Kennedy, with guest appearances from Geoffrey Palmer and Mark Heap. Also included is Home Front: A Fragile Peace, a special 75-minute episode which flashes forward to explore the lives of the characters on 10 November 1919.

Home Front: The Complete BBC Radio Collection Volume 3

Jonathan Ruffle

Michael Chaplin

Nick Warburton

Avin Shah

Nandita Ghose

Neil Brand

Patricia Cumper

A major BBC Radio 4 drama series following the lives of those on and behind the battlefront of World War I 
 
Meticulously based on unit war diaries and eye-witness accounts, each of these 42 episodes of Tommies traces one real day at war, exactly 100 years ago. 
 
We follow the fortunes of Mickey Bliss and his fellow signallers from the Lahore Division of the British Indian Army, as they experience life – and death – on the front line. Meanwhile, Dr Celestine de Tullio battles to save soldiers suffering from gas gangrene and trench fever – and experiences the fighting firsthand when she enlists in the Serbian Army and commands a dangerous offensive. 
 
They are all cogs in an immense machine, one which connects situations across the whole theatre of the war, over four long years. Through their voices – and a host of others – we hear untold stories about the conflict in Gaza, Gallipoli, Salonika, Serbia, Mesopotamia, Russia, Macedonia, Italy, Turkmenistan and Tanzania, as well as on the Western Front. 
 
Lee Ross, Pippa Nixon and Indira Varma are among the extensive cast of this gripping series, created by Jonathan Ruffle, who produced the acclaimed real-time radio dramatisation of Len Deighton’s Bomber. Based on actual historical records, it paints a vivid portrait of daily life for soldiers and their families during 1914-1918, and sheds new light on the reality of the Great War.

Tommies: The Complete BBC Radio Collection

R C Sherriff

Journey's End is an unflinching vision of life in the tranches towards the end of the First World War. 
 
The play opens in a dugout in the trenches in France. Raleigh, a new 18-year-old officer fresh out of school, joins the besieged company of his friend and hero Stanhope. But when he arrives in the trenches, he finds Stanhope dramatically changed. 
 
This vintage BBC radio production from 1970 stars Martin Jarvis as Captain Stanhope. 
 
Bonus content: This BBC radio release includes The Man From Esher and his Theatre of War, a 30-minute documentary about R C Sherriff and the story behind Journey’s End. 
 
Journey's End was an instant stage success in 1928 (starring Laurence Olivier) and remains a remarkable anti-war classic, regularly revived in theatres. A film was released in February 2018, starring Sam Claflin (Hunger Games, Me Before You) as Stanhope and Asa Butterfield (Hugo) as Raleigh, along with Paul Bettany, Toby Jones and Tom Sturridge. 
 
Cast: 
Captain Stanhope...Martin Jarvis 
Osborne...Garard Green 
Raleigh...Derek Seaton 
Trotter...Kevin Brennan 
Hibbert/Private...Michael Harbour 
Colonel...Richard Hurndall 
Sergeant Major...John Bentley 
Mason...Malcolm Hayes 
Hardy...John Graham 
German soldier...Patrick Tull 
 
Adapted by Peter Watts. 
Produced by Christopher Venning.

Journey's End

A BBC Radio 4 drama

Erich Maria Remarque

A full-cast dramatisation of one of the greatest war novels of all time. 
 
First published as a novel in 1929, All Quiet on the Western Front tells the story of a group of young German soldiers who are enduring, and then coming to terms with, the realities of the First World War. 
 
At the age of 19, following the outbreak of the First World War, Paul Bäumer enlists in the German Army. He is deployed to the Western Front, where the experience of life and death in the trenches has an enormous effect on him. He begins to feel disconnected from his past life: his family, his love of poetry, and his feelings. As the war progresses, Paul becomes increasingly lost in battle. 
 
Haunting yet comic, lyrical yet desperate, the novel became a bestseller on its original publication. It inspired an Oscar-winning film of the same name, and has been adapted for television and stage. This powerful radio dramatisation stars Robert Lonsdale as Paul Bäumer, with a supporting cast including Simon Trinder, Stephen Critchlow, Carolyn Pickles and Malcolm Tierney.

All Quiet on the Western Front

A BBC Radio Drama

Michael Morpurgo

A BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of the powerful novel set in the First World War, from the author of War Horse. 
 
This is the story of Thomas ‘Tommo’ Peaceful, a young soldier who finds himself in Belgium, in the trenches of the First World War, with his brother Charlie. It is also the story of Tommo’s life, growing up in Devon with his brothers, and of his love for Molly, the beautiful girl he met on his first day at school. 
 
As the story unfolds, from past to present, so approaches the hour when Tommo and Charlie will be separated for ever. The horrors of the First World War, and the injustice meted out to the soldiers who fought in it, are movingly described. 
 
Recorded on location Iddesleigh, the Devon village where the book is set, this radio dramatisation features among its cast Paul Chequer, Nicholas Lyndhurst and author Michael Morpurgo himself. 
 
It also features; Ted Allpress, Harvey Allpress, Amy Reade, Daniel Houghton, Paul Chequer, Mark Quartley, Annette Chown, Ben Allen, Alison Reid, Nick Brimble, Christopher Bianchi, Peter Ellis, Jonathan Keeble, Terence Mann, Simon Reade and Susan Roberts.

Private Peaceful

Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Gerda Stevenson

Gerda Stevenson's dramatisation of the 1932 novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, set in north-east Scotland before and during the First World War. Episode 1: Chris Guthrie is torn between her love of the land and her ambition to become a teacher. As Chris' domineering father struggles with the harshness of the land, her mother's fear of childbirth leads her to despair. A full cast dramatisation. Directed by David Ian Neville.Episode 2: After her father's death, Chris is determined to stay and work the farm alone if need be. Joined by Ewan Tavendale in marriage and on the farm, Chris gives birth to a son. But the outbreak of the First World War brings devastating change to her family, the rural landscape and the community. A full cast dramatisation. Directed by David Ian Neville.

Sunset Song

Karl Kaus

The story of man's inhumanity to man across the whole canvas of the First World War. 
 
German playwright Karl Kraus's early twentieth-century satirical play about the First World War.Karl Kraus 's masterpiece tells the story of man's inhumanity to man across the whole canvas of the First World War. The original 15-hour play has been distilled into a four-hour kaleidoscopic montage of scenes with over 100 characters and depicts the decline of a corrupt, hypocritical society into the brutality and desperation of war-the only thing surviving being hypocrisy.

The Last Days of Mankind

A Full-Cast BBC Radio Dramatisation

A Private Thriller

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

A Puffin Book

A Ripley Novel

A Slice of the Moon

A Victorian Mystery

A Walk in...

A Women’s Murder Club Thriller

A chef Paul Delamare Mystery

Aberrations

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Adelia Aguilar

Adrian Mole

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Detective Aidan Waits is a troubled junior detective haunted by his past. Facing an uncertain future, and disconnected from his history, DC Waits and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter 'Sutty' Sutcliffe work on Manchester's streets to uncover the city's worst criminals among the grime of the underworld.

Aidan Waits

Air Ministry Survival Guide

Alan Partridge on the BBC

Aldrin Adams Adventure

Alec Devlin

Alex Craft

Alex Cross

Alex Delaware

Alex vs Axel

Alexei Sayle's Imaginary Sandwich Bar

Alfie

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