I love Radio 7 but we’re so spoiled for choice at the moment with all the great books that are on the go there. It such a damn shame that there are blocks on the BBC iplayer which mean that people outside the U.K. can’t listen in.
The banned season has just started and they are having dramatizations and readings of:
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Madame Bovary
Animal Farm
Fahrenheit 451
A Clockwork Orange
Brave New World
But the one that I really have to get around to listening to on the iplayer isn’t part of the banned season at all. It’s vintage crime – The Murder of the Maharajah by H.R.F. Keating. I haven’t read it and it’ll be interesting to see what it’s like.
There’s scary stuff scheduled for around Hallowe’en too. The Turn of the Screw, Frankenstein and Sherlock Holmes versus Dracula.
On a more personal note, the builder has finally finished all the work and we’re pleased with the results, now I just have to sort out my devastated garden before the ground freezes up.
We were stuck in the house the whole first week of the school holidays, but today we managed to have a lovely day out in Edinburgh. All going well, my post tomorrow should have some nice photographs of the Water of Leith, the castle and Rose Street.
Looking forward to those Rose Street photos! I have yet to dig out our box of vacation photos to compare them to.
I just finished a mystery by Kate Carlisle called ‘If Books Could Kill’. It takes place at a book fair in Edinburgh and describes in detail many of the places we visited when we were there.
I do wish we could listen to some of those BBC broadcasts, too. We sometimes watch BBC America on television. I subscribe to a podcast of old American radio shows called Strange Tales. Most were original scripts, but some are adaptations of short stories. I feel like a kid again when I listen in bed in the dark with my headphones on – and my husband sleeping soundly beside me, just in case they’re too scary!
I’m glad your builder is finished and that you’re happy with the result. Good luck with your garden. Now that we’re living in the city again, I only have pots to plant in, but I’ve stuffed several with bulbs for next spring.
Joan,
Great to hear from you again. I haven’t heard of Kate Carlisle and I looked in the Fife library catalogue, they only have one book of hers. It seems that she’s more famous in America but I’m going to try her out.
I didn’t have headphones as a kid and when I listened to the radio in bed the sound used to go up and down all the time as the signal was so erratic. Sometimes it would blare out and I’d get into trouble – happy days. I’ve thought about using headphones to listen in bed, I suppose you can now get wireless ones, I have visions of falling asleep with them on and being strangled by a wire!
It’s a weight off our minds to get the house repairs done because old houses tend to crumble in cold, wet weather if you neglect things. But we could have done without having to pay out the £1,550 which it cost us.
You’re further on than I am, I still have tulip and crocus bulbs to get planted before it’s too late.
Please let me know about any other books which you are reading in the future, or tell me which are your old favourites.
Regards, Katrina
I’m always envious to hear of all the literary shows you have on the radio there. I don’t listen to any radio here, though I expect NPR has some good shows–not certain if they do dramatizations, though–I think not. I do wish we could watch and listen online to the BBC over here, but they do block it–why should they give it away free to the world, eh? Still…I don’t even get BBC America as I have the most basic cable channels. It’s all books for me, I guess.
Danielle,
The great thing about the radio is that you can listen to it on the computer while you are doing your computer stuff.
We pay £145 a year for a TV license and the money goes to the BBC, you must have a license if you have a TV otherwise you can be fined as much as £1,000. I really wouldn’t mind people in other countries being able to access it on-line though.
I don’t watch a lot of TV either although I can be a bit of a news junky.