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Young Julien Sorel, the son of a country timber merchant, carries a portrait of his hero Napoleon Bonaparte and dreams of military glory. A brilliant career in the Church leads him into Parisian high society, where, ‘mounted upon the finest horse in Alsace’, he gains high military office and wins the heart of the aristocratic Mlle Mathilde de la Mole. Julien’s cunning and ambition lead him into all sorts of scrapes, but it is the struggle between his passion for two beautiful women – the quixotic Mathilde and the loyal Mme de Rênal – which ultimately decides his destiny.

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The Red and the Black

The Trojan War is over and Odysseus, the cunning King of Ithaca, sets out for home, his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus. It proves a long, 10-year journey, fraught with dangers, from Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclops, and the seductive Sirens, to the love of Calypso on her all-too-comfortable isle. When he arrives in Ithaca, he has to contend with a group of suitors who have been pressing his wife to forget about her husband, admit she is a widow, and marry one of them. Anton Lesser, one of Britain’s finest audiobook stars, brings this great classic to life in the new and imaginative translation by Ian Johnston.

The Odyssey

The masterpiece of Rome’s greatest poet, Virgil’s Aeneid has inspired generations of readers and holds a central place in Western literature. The epic tells the story of a group of refugees from the ruined city of Troy, whose attempts to reach a promised land in the West are continually frustrated by the hostile goddess Juno. Finally reaching Italy, their leader Aeneas is forced to fight a bitter war against the natives to establish the foundations from which Rome is destined to rise. This magnificent poem, in the modern translation by Cecil Day Lewis, is superbly read by David Collins.

The Aeneid

With her virtuoso translation, classicist and bestselling author Caroline Alexander brings to life Homer’s timeless epic of the Trojan War Composed around 730 B.C., Homer’s Iliad recounts the events of a few momentous weeks in the protracted ten-year war between the invading Achaeans, or Greeks, and the Trojans in their besieged city of Ilion. From the explosive confrontation between Achilles, the greatest warrior at Troy, and Agamemnon, the inept leader of the Greeks, through to its tragic conclusion, The Iliad explores the abiding, blighting facts of war. Soldier and civilian, victor and vanquished, hero and coward, men, women, young, old—The Iliad evokes in poignant, searing detail the fate of every life ravaged by the Trojan War. And, as told by Homer, this ancient tale of a particular Bronze Age conflict becomes a sublime and sweeping evocation of the destruction of war throughout the ages. Carved close to the original Greek, acclaimed classicist Caroline Alexander’s new translation is swift and lean, with the driving cadence of its source—a translation epic in scale and yet devastating in its precision and power.

The Iliad

Faust is one of the pillars of Western literature. This classic drama presents the story of the scholar Faust, tempted into a contract with the Devil in return for a life of sensuality and power. Enjoyment rules until Faust’s emotions are stirred by a meeting with Gretchen, and the tragic outcome brings Part 1 to an end. Part 2, written much later in Goethe’s life, places his eponymous hero in a variety of unexpected circumstances, causing him to reflect on humanity and its attitudes to life and death.

Faust

Do you want to listen to The Rime of The Ancient Mariner? If so then keep reading… The Poem relates the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. The mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The wedding-guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience to fear to fascination as the mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem. What are you waiting for The Rime of The Ancient Mariner is one click away, select the “Download” button in the top right corner NOW!

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

In one of the first novels in the English language, we follow the picaresque adventures of Joseph Andrews, a virtuous young man who is keen to maintain his innocence, despite being coerced into bed by nearly every woman he encounters. The episodic journey sees him head home to London with his tutor, Parson Adams, with the aim of finding his sweetheart, Fanny. Much mayhem ensues along the way as they become embroiled in a series of escapades and slapstick brawls. Fielding is an expert satirist and through the many twists and turns of narration, he combines high and low literature with high and low humour to create a witty novel that he aptly named a ‘comic epic poem in prose’.

Joseph Andrews

Lord Byron’s satirical take on the legend of Don Juan is a moving and witty poem that sees the young hero in a reversal of roles. Juan sheds his image as a womaniser and instead becomes the victim of circumstance as he is relentlessly pursued by every woman he meets. Comprising seventeen cantos of rhyming iambic pentameter, the poem is a crisp and accessible meditation on the madness of the world.

Don Juan

In the grotesque bell-ringer Quasimodo, Victor Hugo created one of the most vivid characters in classic fiction. Quasimodo’s doomed love for the beautiful gypsy girl Esmeralda is an example of the traditional love theme of beauty and the beast. Yet, set against the massive background of Notre Dame de Paris and interwoven with the sacred and secular life of medieval France, it takes on a larger perspective. The characters come to life: the poet Gringoire, the tormented priest Claude Frollo, the fun-loving captain Phoebus and above all Quasimodo and Esmeralda themselves. It is a tale peppered with humour but fuelled by the anguish which unfolds beneath the bells of the great cathedral of Paris.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Candide is a delightful story filled with boundless misadventure while tackling the great philosophical issues of the Enlightenment era. The story is about Candide, a young man who is the illegitimate nephew of a German baron with whom he resides. When it is discovered he is kissing the baron's beautiful daughter he is thrown from the castle where he experiences the horrors of war, poverty, the maliciousness of man, and the hypocrisy of the church. Obviously, Voltaire is poking fun at Leibniz, Pope, and others who assail that the world created by God was the best possible of all worlds with perfect order and reason, as spoken through the greatest of all fictional philosophers, Candide's tutor, Pangloss. As you listen to segments of Candide, take the time to research both the book and Voltaire to gain a richer understanding of the themes interlaced throughout the book.

Candide

The Metamorphoses, by Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC–AD 17) has, over the centuries, been the most popular and influential work from our classical tradition. This extraordinary collection of some 250 Greek and Roman myths and folk tales has always been a popular favourite and has decisively shaped western art and literature from the moment it was completed in AD 8. The stories are particularly vivid when read by David Horovitch in this new lively verse translation by Ian Johnston.

Metamorphoses

Considered to be French novelist Victor Hugo's masterpiece, Les Miserables, which was published in 1862, is a sprawling historical and philosophical epic that covers from 1815 through the Paris Uprising in 1832. Notable for its many subplots and digressions from the main storyline, the novel's stated aim is a progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, which can be seen most clearly in the story of the central character Jean Valjean, an ex-convict who struggles to shake the sins of his past and become a good man. Widely adapted, the novel inspired the blockbuster musical and movie colloquially known as Les Mis. This is an unabridged audio recording of the 1887 Isabel F. Hapgood translation.

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