Showing results by narrator "Miranda Raison" in All Categories

East Anglia, 1645. Martha Hallybread, a midwife, healer and servant, has lived peacefully for more than four decades in her beloved Cleftwater. Everyone in the village knows Martha, but no one has ever heard her speak. One bright morning, Martha becomes a silent witness to a witch hunt, led by sinister new arrival Silas Makepeace. As a trusted member of the community, she is enlisted to search the bodies of the accused women for evidence. But whilst she wants to help her friends, she also harbours a dark secret that could cost her own freedom.

When a young woman named Talissa answers an advert to carry a child, she cannot begin to imagine the consequences. Behind the doors of the Parn Institute, a billionaire entrepreneur plans to stretch the boundaries of ethics as never before. Through a series of IVF treatments, one they hope no one ever discovers, they set in motion an experiment that is set to upend the human race as we know it.

The Civil War was the most traumatic conflict in British history, pitting friends and family members against each other and tearing down the old order. Award-winning historian Jessie Childs plunges the listener into the shock of the struggle through one of its most dramatic episodes: the siege of Basing House. To the parliamentarian Roundheads, the Hampshire mansion was a bastion of royalism, popery and excess. Its owner was both a Catholic and staunch supporter of Charles I. His motto Love Loyalty was etched into the windows. He refused all terms of surrender.

January 1950. Lady Anne Coke, daughter of the fifth earl of Leicester, is in Scunthorpe on a business trip when she is called home after a sudden death in the family. She returns to Holkham Hall to discover a mystery: her beloved grandfather has been found dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs with a valuable piece of jewellery in his pocket. No one can find a cause of death, and some even suspect foul play from the ghost who supposedly haunts the house. But Anne's suspicions are aroused.

Laura is a perfectionist and extremely capable air ambulance doctor. As part of the ethics committee at the hospital, she is also the person who chooses whether critical care patients live or die. She's worked hard to get here. And then, one night, life overturns in a moment and the past threatens to shatter everything they hold dear in the present. Can even those we trust with our lives be dangerous in the right circumstances? And is there a limit to what we would do for those we love?

In Provence, under a sweltering sun, Sylvie returns to the crumbling family home of La Reverie. In her hand is the letter that summoned her, and by her side is Emma, her youngest daughter. Yet every corner of the house is haunted by the spectre of Elodie, her first child. Beautiful, manipulative Elodie, whose long-ago death the villagers still whisper about. Sylvie has tried to put the past behind her. But like the spreading forest fires, memories of Elodie seem to be creeping ever closer. Because there's a secret Sylvie has concealed about what happened to Elodie.

Long before he'd produced any of his great works, Oscar Wilde was already famous for being famous. Armed only with some witty epigrams, a carefully crafted persona and his genius for self-promotion, he had conquered America and transformed himself from nobody to star. This radio collection opens with four plays from Radio 4's Born to be Wilde season, offering a 21st-century perspective on the making of one of the first true celebrities. First up are two sparkling and surprising productions of his two most popular comedies, marking the peak of his theatrical career.

When a young woman is savagely assaulted, the four members of the Jansen family find themselves increasingly involved. All four have secrets they keep from the police - and from each other. Johann is a disgruntled husband and planning to have an affair with a colleague. His wife, Sue, is a new member of The Society of Unexampled Brilliance and allowing its ‘self-improvement’ cause to take over her life. Rebecca, their daughter, is a teacher who moonlights for a private investigator, trapping adulterous men (though her own love life would come as a surprise to her targets).