Great Classics

Seventeen favourite stories about the irrepressible William Brown, specially selected and read by Martin Jarvis. Whether a long-standing fan or a first time listener, this collection of stories is the ultimate

Just William audio experience. With over four hours of laugh-out-loud stories, including two stories performed to a live audience,

Just William's Greatest Hits! is the perfect entertainment for the whole family.

Did you know that: Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture famously includes the use of real cannon fire Tchaikovsky's ballet "Swan Lake" in 1877 was initially met with mixed reviews Tchaikovsky was an accomplished conductor and travelled extensively to conduct his own works “The Nutcracker” did not gain widespread popularity until after Tchaikovsky’s death Find out about these and many more fascinating events that shaped the life of one of Russia’s most influential Romantic composers in, Classical Giants: Tchaikovsky. Classical Giants brings to life the most famous composers in history, ...

Published in 1915 and set in the 1890s, The Song of the Lark tells the story of Thea Kronberg, a gifted young singer who blazes her way into the world’s greatest opera houses. Thea’s arduous journey begins in Moonstone, Colorado, a burgeoning Western town, where she is one of seven children. Following an artistic awakening at an Arizona canyon, she eventually finds fame as an acclaimed opera singer, performing in Germany and at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

Regarded as one of the most important works in American literature and among the greatest American novels of the twentieth century, The Great Gatsby is the quintessential portrait of Jazz Age America, depicting not only the wild parties, romance, love, and the intense and often unfulfilled desire for wealth and status, but also the immorality, loneliness, disappointment and corruption of The Roaring Twenties.

Annus mirabilis is Latin for "wonderful year," "miraculous year," or "amazing year." For jazz, that year was 1959. It was a pinnacle and hinge point year where the forms and advancements of the past decade were consolidated and recapitulated, and jazz stretched out in a new direction. Vistas and possibilities opened up to be explored, explicitly considered, and developed in the next decade. It was a zenith with the Janus-like quality of looking backward and forward and created some of the most beautiful and challenging music ever recorded. Included here are the albums released in 1959 that ...

Poor orphan Pip is wandering the marshes of Kent when he encounters the convict Magwitch - and the child's life changes forever. Follow the haunting and humorous epic as Pip receives a mysterious fortune, encounters the strange Miss Havisham and the beautiful, cold Estella, rejects his old friends, and gradually grows to maturity through a painful process filled with gripping drama and piercing satire.

Pip, un niño huérfano de 6 años, tiene un terrorífico encuentro con un preso evadido al que se ve obligado a entregar víveres y una lima. Poco después, es llamado a la tenebrosa mansión de una rica y recluida dama como compañero de juegos de una niña hermosa y altiva de quien Pip termina enamorándose. Luego, gracias a un misterioso benefactor, recibe una fortuna, le dice adiós a su familia y se va a Londres para intentar convertirse en un caballero.

At the heart of each of these great classic stories is an adoptee with an indomitable spirit who becomes the heroine (or hero) of her own life. "The bravery it takes for an unwanted orphan to forge their own path in life was as great when these stories were written as it is today," says narrator Alison Larkin, who draws on her own adoption experience to bring these stories to authentic new life.

Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College, to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offer an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world. But from his erratic new colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, to incomprehensible farmers, herds of semi-feral cattle, a pig called Nugent and an overweight Pekingese called Tricki Woo, James finds he is on a learning curve as steep as the hills around him. And when he meets Helen, the beautiful daughter of a local farmer, all the training and experience in the world can’t help him.

In a world on the brink of madness...In the summer of 1914, a young man beyond reproach awakens under police guard grievously injured and accused of heinous, impossible murder.

The 1590s were bleak years for England. The queen was old, the succession unclear, and the treasury empty after decades of war. Amid the rising tension, William Shakespeare published a pair of poems dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton: Venus and Adonis in 1593 and The Rape of Lucrece a year later. Although wildly popular during Shakespeare's lifetime, to modern readers both works are almost impenetrable. But in her enthralling new book, the Shakespearean scholar Clare Asquith reveals their hidden contents.

The focus of the book is on Shakespeare's London, how it influenced his drama, and how he represents it on stage. Taking listeners on an imaginative journey through the city, the book moves both chronologically, from beginning to end of Shakespeare's dramatic career, and geographically, traversing London from west to east.

"The Great Wall of China" is a short story by Franz Kafka. While written in 1917, it was not published until 1930, seven years after his death. Its first publication occurred in Der Morgen, a German literary magazine. A year later, Max Brod included it in Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer, the first posthumous collection of short stories by Franz Kafka. Contained within the story is a parable that was separately published as "A Message from the Emperor" ("Eine kaiserliche Botschaft") in 1919 in the collection Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor).

First published in 1883, Treasure Island remains one of Robert Louis Stevenson's best-known and best-loved works.

A classic coming of age adventure, featuring buried treasure, treacherous pirates, and the eponymous Long John Silver, Treasure Island tells the enthralling story of Jim Hawkins, a young cabin boy, who sets sail on an 18th century voyage in search of a pirate's buried gold.

Manly P. Hall explores the secret purpose of the great pyramid and examines the anatomy of this massive structure’s architecture.

《大学》是一篇论述儒家修身治国平天下思想的散文，相传为曾子所作，实为秦汉时儒家作品，是一部中国古代讨论教育理论的重要著作。…… 《大學》是一篇論述儒家修身治國平天下思想的散文，相傳為曾子所作，實為秦漢時儒家作品，是一部中國古代討論教育理論的重要著作。

Timeless poetry for moments of reflection and contemplation. The masters of literature are brought together in this unique program.

Written in 1923 and originally published in France, The Great American Novel examines the impossibility of writing such work in America. Williams not only writes the novel with poetic satire and pathos but allows us into his writing process, as he strives to define a young America at the end of a World War and the beginning of the “Roaring ‘20s”.

The inspiration for the BBC series of the same name. Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College, to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offer an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world. But from his erratic new colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, to incomprehensible farmers, herds of semiferal cattle, a pig called Nugent and an overweight Pekingese called Tricki Woo, James find he is on a learning curve as steep as the hills around him.

The story of noble Black Beauty is one of the most popular children's books of all time. In this sensitive children's adaptation, Beauty movingly describes the friends, people, and places - good and bad - that he encounters in the course of his dramatic life as he is passed from master to master.