The perfect last-minute gift Shop credit bundles

Behind the Author's Desk: Dramas of Famous Writers' Real Lives by Mary Cooper, Jonathan Tafler, Anna Linstrum, Alistair McGowan, Elizabeth Lewis, Robin Brooks, Lucy Caldwell, Sarah Wooley, Stephen Wakelam, Frances Bingham, David Pownall, Katie Hims, Ian Billings, Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre & Judith Adam

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

Behind the Author's Desk: Dramas of Famous Writers' Real Lives

A BBC Radio 4 drama collection

by Mary Cooper, Jonathan Tafler, Anna Linstrum, Alistair McGowan, Elizabeth Lewis, Robin Brooks, Lucy Caldwell, Sarah Wooley, Stephen Wakelam, Frances Bingham, David Pownall, Katie Hims, Ian Billings, Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre & Judith Adam

Length 13 hours 33 minutes

Language English

Narrators Andrew Scott, Glenda Jackson, Toby Jones, Haydn Gwynne, Alistair McGowan, Ian McDiarmid, Richard Dormer, Full Cast, Paul Ritter & Tom Goodman-Hill

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more

Send as gift Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

Summary
About the authors

18 biographical dramas based on the lives and loves of celebrated writers

These surprising, revealing dramas take a behind-the-scenes look at some of our best-loved authors, mingling fact and fantasy to explore their extraordinary hidden lives. From love affairs, friendships and family relationships to traumas, tragedies and journeys of self-discovery, we glimpse the unwritten worlds that shaped their unforgettable fiction. Among the star casts are Andrew Scott, Toby Jones, Richard Dormer, Glenda Jackson, Bella Ramsey, Julia Davis, Ian McDiarmid, Haydn Gwynne, David Threlfall, Alistair McGowan, Tom Goodman-Hill, Hattie Morahan, Rosie Cavaliero, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Paul Ritter and Lia Williams

Jane and Tom - Writing to her sister, Jane Austen describes her love for Tom Lefroy - a love that would lead to Pride and Prejudice.

When Fanny Met Germaine - A delightful romp through the passionate, scandalous friendship between two 18th Century writers: Fanny Burney and Mme de Stael.

Comrade Ackland - Dorset, 1936. Newly returned from an illicit trip to Civil War Spain, Sylvia Townsend Warner and her lover Valentine Ackland have an unexpected visitor....

Tongues of Fire - 1913. When a Nobel laureate visits Dublin's Abbey Theatre, fireworks erupt between WB Yeats and Sean O'Casey.

A Year at the Races - Approaching the end of his career, Groucho Marx meets a wisecracking fan determined to teach him new comedy tricks.

Spike and the Elfin Oak - A comic fantasy inspired by Spike Milligan's madcap attempts in the mid-1960s to preserve a curious sculpture in Kensington Gardens.

Everybody's Got Conditions - Casting Bette Davis in his play The Night of the Iguana proves the biggest mistake in Tennessee Williams' career...

I Believe I Have Genius- Humble and obscure, young Charlotte Brontë travels to Brussels to study at a girls' school.

Marian and George - Marian Evans (aka George Eliot) must choose between her adored brother and the love of her life...

Lying Low - An intriguing drama imagining what happened to Samuel Beckett during his mysterious three weeks in Folkestone in 1961.

A Terrible Beauty - WB Yeats travels to France to propose to beautiful Maud Gonne, soon after her husband's execution in the 1916 Easter Rising.

The Watcher on the Wall - Dramatised from his letters, this is the story of Louis MacNeice's transatlantic love affair and the poetry it inspired.

Edith Sitwell in Scarborough - Returning to her birthplace, Edith Sitwell sets out to wreak revenge.

Mrs Tolstoy - A five-part drama charting the tempestuous marriage between Leo and Sofya Tolstoy.

The 'B' Word - The opening night of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion causes a scandal and sparks a passionate love/hate triangle...

The Rules of Palship - The young Noël Coward demanded fierce loyalty from his friends - but did he live up to his own high standards?

The Lost Road - A playful tribute to the long friendship between CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien and how it influenced their respective masterpieces.

Luxembourg Gardens - Re-imagined from Katherine Mansfield's stories, letters and journals, this Mansfieldesque play explores her last day in Paris, where she is dying of consumption aged 34.

Copyright © 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Fiction Romance Historical Fiction

David Pownall is an award-winning British novelist and playwright. He has had over eighty radio plays broadcast on the BBC and worldwide, including Elgar’s Third, which won the Sony Gold Award, Under the Table (winner of the Sony Silver Award), the 'Assassins' series of plays and Prayer Mask.

Katie Hims is a British writer who works extensively in radio drama. A graduate of the National Film and Television School, she began her career by writing theatre plays were were produced in Manchester, Bristol, and London. She was the BBC writer in residence from 2001-2002 and has also written several episodes of the TV series Casualty. Her first radio play The Earthquake Girl won the Richard Imison Memorial Award in 1998. The Gunshot Wedding won the Writers Guild Award for Best Radio Drama in 2009, and The Year My Mother Went Missing won a BBC Audio Drama Award in 2012 for Best Audio Drama.