Showing results by narrator "Bill Paterson" in All Categories

'Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.' So says Magnus Pym, the spy of the title; and he has betrayed a lot in his life - countries, friends, family and lovers. When Magnus disappears after his father's funeral, MI6 launches an urgent manhunt to prevent his defection. But Pym is on a search of his own - to unravel the mystery of what made him the perfect spy.

Smiley, wrestling with retirement and disillusionment, is summoned to a secret meeting with a member of the Cabinet Office. Evidence has emerged that the Circus has been infiltrated at the highest level by a Russian agent. 'Find the mole, George. Clean the stables. Do whatever is necessary.' Reluctantly Smiley agrees, and so embarks on a dark journey into his past a past filled with love, duplicity and betrayal.

A junkie lies dead in an Edinburgh squat, spreadeagled, cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, a five-pointed star daubed on the wall above. Just another dead addict - until John Rebus begins to chip away at the indifference, treachery, deceit and sleaze that lurks behind the facade of the Edinburgh familiar to tourists. Only Rebus seems to care about a death which looks more like a murder every day, about a seductive danger he can almost taste, appealing to the darkest corners of his mind.

David Edgar is among the UK’s leading contemporary dramatists, well known for his powerful plays chronicling Britain's changing political landscape over the past 50 years. More than 60 of his original plays, adaptations and translations have been performed around the world, and in 2023 he was honoured with a Writers’ Guild Outstanding Contribution award for his service to British playwriting. This radio anthology contains some of his most notable work.

After the brutal abduction and murder of two young girls, now a third is missing, presumably gone to the same sad end. Detective Sergeant John Rebus, smoking and drinking too much, his own daughter spirited away by his estranged wife, is one of many policemen hunting the killer. Then, the messages begin: knotted string and matchstick crosses taunt Rebus with a puzzle only he can solve.

A collection of BBC dramatisations and readings of William Boyd's award-winning novels and short stories. One of Britain's foremost contemporary writers, William Boyd is renowned worldwide for his bestselling novels, which have been translated into over 30 languages. He has won numerous awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award (for A Good Man in Africa), the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for An Ice-Cream War) and the Costa Book Award (for Restless).

A naive young man, a railway enthusiast and radio buff, was caught up in the fall of the British Empire at Singapore in 1942. He was put to work on the 'Railway of Death' - the Japanese line from Thailand to Burma. Exhaustively and brutally tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio, Lomax was emotionally ruined by his experiences.

An anthology of over 50 classic poems, read by some of our finest actors. This collection contains a selection of the very best poems, from verses inspired by love to war poetry, nature poems and children's rhymes.

Eleven BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramas telling the stories of Mary Queen of Scots and the Stuart royals. Under the Stuarts, Britain entered the modern world. But with great change came turmoil, and for 111 years, the Stuart monarchs faced dynastic struggles, religious conflict, the rise of parliamentary democracy - and civil war. These dramas chart that turbulent epoch through its royal family, from Mary, Queen of Scots to the ‘last Stuart’, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s daughter Charlotte.

London,1953. Josephine Daunt and Susan Dervish both worked for the Ministry of Defence during the Second World War, doing top-secret, highly dangerous espionage work. But in peacetime, they find themselves without a job and feeling useless. Determined to put their talents to good use, they decide to set up a detective agency, with the help of former private eye Bill Mackie. From their Covent Garden office, they handle a steady flow of business.

The White Hotel, one of seven 'unmade movies' available on audio, centres around circus performer Lisa, who visits famous Berlin psychoanalyst Dr Probst to discover the cause of her mysterious breast and pelvic pains. Reading her sexually charged journal, Probst concludes that the answer lies in her past. But then Lisa reveals her unsettling premonitions - 'I see what is going to happen. And what is going to happen cannot be endured.' Is her trauma really the result of childhood memories or a dark vision of the future?

Arthur Conan Doyle is well known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, but he also wrote numerous works in which the great detective played no part. Included here are a selection of the best, ranging from science fiction to tales of supernatural terror and rip-roaring adventures set in Jacobean and Regency England.

Baker Street Four follows Billy (Charlie Brand), Charlie (Kiki May), and Tom (Nathan Moses), three young apprentices of Sherlock Holmes (Paterson Joseph) who assist the famous detective in London’s dodgy East End. With the help of their faithful cat, Watson (Bill Nighy) and Sherlock’s beloved housekeeper Mrs. Hudson (Celia Imrie), this foursome takes local crimes into their own hands while Holmes is off solving mysteries abroad. Follow the Baker Street Irregulars as they pursue different cases, growing by the day as young detectives and as friends.

An anthology of over 60 classic love poems, read by some of our finest actors. Love has always been the supreme inspiration for poets, whether romantic or platonic, reciprocated or unrequited. This collection contains a range of the very best love poems, including Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress", Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" and Byron's "So We'll Go No More A-Roving" - as well as several sonnets from the master himself, William Shakespeare.

Four of JM Barrie’s finest plays, plus two documentaries exploring the history of Peter Pan. JM Barrie is famous worldwide for his iconic creation, Peter Pan. However, many of his other works have been undeservedly forgotten. This collection contains three of his lesser-known plays, revisited for radio, as well as a dramatisation of his beloved story of the boy who never grew up.

Bill Paterson narrates Captain Robin L. Hutchison’s fascinating and humorous insider’s take about life onboard some of Scotland's most iconic ships including the Waverley, Queen Mary II, Caledonia, Jupiter, and Hebridean Princess. Bill brings his natural warmth and authenticity to the story of one of the Clyde's longest-serving captains.

Here is a classic memoir of childhood that will strike a chord with anyone who's ever played and dreamed, with little thought of life "when I grow up". The much loved Scots actor Bill Paterson was brought up in those halcyon days of post-war Britain when a child could still play happily - and safely - in his own back green and the streets beyond.

Trapped by the strength of the public adoration of his character Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle was desperate to write other works not involving the sleuth. The Tales of Terror and Mystery have all the recognisable qualities that made Conan Doyle's work so popular - the attention to gruesome detail, the meticulous logic and the intricate and wittily bemusing plotting - yet they are free of the constraints put on Conan Doyle by Mr. Holmes.

Ex-army officer Bradley Shoreham is a war game expert. As a soldier, he created a host of mock conflict exercises simulating various disasters - and now, as a civilian, he does it for a living. His scenarios may be fictional, but they're authentic: and that's exactly what the governments and corporations who employ him pay big money for. But as the participants are about to find out, his games can have real, deadly consequences....

Thomas Pakenham's classic portraits of 60 distinctive trees, available in download form for the first time. Written by Thomas Pakenham and read by Bill Paterson with an introduction read by the author and music by Orlando Gough. This download includes a fully illustrated accompanying PDF booklet. In 1996, with this astonishing collection, Thomas Pakenham produced a new kind of tree book. The arrangement owes little to conventional botany.