
The Evelyn Waugh BBC Radio Drama Collection
Decline and Fall, Brideshead Revisited and Other Full-Cast Dramatisations
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About this listen
Evelyn Waugh is one of the pre-eminent English novelists of the 20th century. This collection comprises six of his finest works, dramatised by award-winning writer Jeremy Front.
Decline and Fall
Paul Pennyfeather, an earnest, scholarly Oxford student, knows nothing of 1920's high-life – until one night he encounters The Bollinger Club.... This darkly comic romp set in the early Jazz Age stars Kieran Hodgson, John Sessions, Emilia Fox and Tom Hollander.
Brideshead Revisited
During the Second World War, a disillusioned Captain Charles Ryder finds himself posted to Brideshead Castle: the scene of the happiest years of his life and the beginnings of his friendship with Sebastian Flyte. A classic tale of life, love and a forgotten era, starring Ben Miles, Jamie Bamber, Anne-Marie Duff and Toby Jones.
Scoop
Hapless journalist William Boot is mistakenly sent to report on a war in Africa, where he finds love and ends up in the middle of a revolution... Waugh’s celebrated satire of newspaper life stars Rory Kinnear and Tim McInnerny.
Sword of Honour (The Waugh Trilogy)
This three-part dramatisation of Waugh’s satirical masterpiece follows the comic adventures of Guy Crouchbank during World War II. In Men at Arms, Guy is scarred by a broken marriage and searching for a purpose to live. When war breaks out, he feels he may have at last found a cause worth fighting for. Officers and Gentlemen sees Guy sent home in disgrace following a misbegotten raid in Dakar. But his next posting takes him somewhere totally unexpected.... In Unconditional Surrender, Guy is beginning to lose his idealism about the war – but his military career is revived with selection for a mission to Italy.
Winner of Best Audio Drama (Adaptation) at the 2014 BBC Audio Drama Awards, this moving trilogy stars Paul Ready as Guy with Tim McInnerny as the Narrator, Tim Pigott-Smith as Brigadier Ritchie-Hook, Lee Ingleby as Trimmer and Lydia Leonard as Virginia.
Text copyright © Evelyn Waugh 1928 (Decline and Fall), 1938 (Scoop), 1945 (Brideshead Revisited), 1952 (Men at Arms), 1955 (Officers and Gentlemen), 1961 (Unconditional Surrender). All rights reserved.
Dramatised by Jeremy Front
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 27 October-10 November 2013
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Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.
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Seriously, that was the ending?
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He Who Fights with Monsters 2
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But Jason Asano is settling into his new life. Now, a contest draws young elites to the city of Greenstone to compete for a grand prize. Jason must gather a band of companions if he is to stand a chance against the best the world has to offer. While the young adventurers are caught up in competition, the city leaders deal with revelations of betrayal as a vast and terrible enemy is revealed. Although Jason seems uninvolved, he has unknowingly crossed the enemy’s path before.
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Contrary to common reviews
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Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."
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Wish I Hadn't Cliff Noted This in High School
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Johnnie Rico never really intended to join up—and definitely not the infantry. But now that he’s in the thick of it, trying to get through combat training harder than anything he could have imagined, he knows everyone in his unit is one bad move away from buying the farm in the interstellar war the Terran Federation is waging against the Arachnids. Because everyone in the Mobile Infantry fights. And if the training doesn’t kill you, the Bugs are more than ready to finish the job.
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The definitive version!
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Brain Damage
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As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury, she begins to realize that the events of that fateful night are trapped in the damaged right side of her brain. Now, she must put the jigsaw pieces together to discover the identity of the man who tried to kill her...before he finishes the job he started.
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Who Else Laughed, Cried, and Shuddered?
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The House on the Water
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Every year, Caroline Reed takes a trip with her best friend, Esme Lamont. They’re usually accompanied by their spouses - but this year, everything’s changed. Esme has just gone through a bitter divorce, and Caroline's wondering if her own marriage is reaching its breaking point as she and her husband, John, cope with the discovery that their son has been abusing drugs. Still, the inseparable duo books a weeklong stay at a beach-front home in Shoreham, Florida, inviting Esme’s brother, Nick, and his new husband. After a blissful first night in the vacation home, tragedy strikes.
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Wonderful Story
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Punk 57
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In fifth grade my teacher set us up with pen pals from a different school. Thinking I was a girl, with a name like Misha, the other teacher paired me up with her student Ryen. My teacher, believing Ryen was a boy like me, agreed. It didn't take long for us to figure out the mistake. And in no time at all, we were arguing about everything. The best take-out pizza. Android vs. iPhone. Whether or not Eminem is the greatest rapper ever. For the next seven years, it was us. She's the only one who keeps me on track, talks me down, and accepts everything I am.
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Way better than expected
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By: Penelope Douglas
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What listeners say about The Evelyn Waugh BBC Radio Drama Collection
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Henry Riely
- 09-11-20
One of the best dramatizations I have listened to!
Wonderful production with many wonderful performances, and with such evocative music and songs of those times. I particularly enjoyed Rory Kinnear's performance in "Scoop" and Paul Ready's in the "Sword of Honour" trilogy, but there are many other excellent performances as well. I have enjoyed many radio dramatizations from the BBC, and this is one I will cherish and listen to many times.
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- Findlaigh
- 02-20-22
Almost a WWII anthology...
Waugh is dead serious writer. His satire is sombre, his lightest jibes leave scars, and his quips have heft. He delivers subtext through peripheral characters and his protagonists are often unwordly, even artless.
On the page, a Waugh hero can almost be viewed as a sacrificial lamb; we care for them from the start and wish we could ring them up and say "look, this is a Waugh story, you're headed towards a life-altering loss of innocence, read some Schopenhauer or something before you leave the house..." But a Waugh character would only offer a few polite words of appreciation and gently recradle the phone. Imbued with optimism, faith in humanity, and unerring decency, a Waugh character sallies forth...
An audible Waugh character casts a more complex shadow, particularly in a first rate production. And these are first rate productions - absolutely stellar.
Audible Waugh characters at war, at least for me, do not delight. I could not engage, couldn't keep up with the characters, and everything seemed soaked in testosterone and cynicism. It's astonishing in a way - familiar and well loved words rendered too potent for comfort when heard.
...so the second half of this collection felt oppressive, claustrophobic, even turgid at times. I am setting it aside for now and I will try again.
If you're not keen on Waugh's war stories, or indeed any war stories, this might not be the collection for you.
For those who are, you won't find better....
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