Showing results by narrator "Jenny Agutter" in All Categories

This is a story from the Ballet Stories collection.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's classic poem recounting the astonishing variety of ways in which she loves her beloved, read by Jenny Agutter.

Little Clara, her brother Fritz, the giving of presents, the Nutcracker soldier, and toys that come to life all form the basis of the story which Tchaikovsky brought to life in one of his finest scores.

This is a story from the Ballet Stories collection.

"A Birthday": Christina Rossetti's joyful celebration that her one true love has arrived, read by Jenny Agutter.

Beauty of Britain breaks the embarrassed silence about what happens to us when we get old and start to lose our faculties. It shows the process in all its chaotic tragi-comedy but it does so from the point of view of a migrant worker, Beauty, whose Zimbabwean Shona background has taught her to respect age. Beauty sees Britain at its best and its worst and also sometimes without its clothes on running the wrong way down the M6 with a toy dog shouting, 'Come on!'

Heidi is the story of a five-year-old orphan who goes to live with her grandfather in the mountains. Everyone in the village is afraid of him, but Heidi soon wins his heart. She loves her life and her friendship with the young goatherd, Peter. But one terrible day her aunt takes her to the city to help take care of a sickly child, Clara. Heidi can't bear to be away from her grandfather and finally, she brings Clara back to her Alpine home, where a miracle of healing occurs. Retold from the original by Sally Grindley.

At 32, Harriet Swift thinks she has the perfect life: a satisfying career, her own flat, and a new boyfriend. But when her only sister is killed in a car crash, Harriet is forced to give up her well-ordered life and to help parents look after her orphaned niece and nephew. Moving back to her childhood home and sacrificing so much doesn't come easy, and Harriet discovers things about her family she never believed possible.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." So opens this famous novel which has become Jane Austen's best loved and best known work.

Overlooking Angel Sands, an idyllic bay tucked into the Pembrokeshire coastline, sits Paradise House. It is home to the Baxter girls, or the "Sisters of Whimsy" as they're known locally. Despite their own chaotic love lives, they're determined to find a suitable partner for their divorced father. But this will be no easy task, for he's a man so shy of women he would rather climb up onto the roof in a howling gale to fix a broken slate than go on a date.

A beautiful extract from the famous biblical hymn to love, read by Jenny Agutter.

Dorothy Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth in 1771, being one year younger than her brother William. After their mother died in 1778, they were separated and did not return to the Lake District until 1794, when they spent two happy months walking around the hills near Keswick, eventually settling down at Grasmere in 1799. The journals that Dorothy kept are remarkable for the detailed observations she makes of the surrounding countryside and people, often providing glimpses of poverty and suffering, as well as displaying her complete love affair with nature.

Gilly Ramsey's lonely childhood was brightened only by visits to her godmother until her death, when the grown-up Gilly inherits the family cottage, “Thornyhold.” Set deep in a wild wood, with its magical and peaceful strength and its sovereign defenses against evil, Thornyhold is like something out of a fairy tale. The old house strikes an end to Gilly's bleak future, offering more than just a new home. It presents a chance to start over—despite its reputation for magic, history of witchcraft, and a resident black cat.