Other books that might interest you

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  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are...

  Tom Stoppard

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  While attempting to discover the roots of Hamlet’s unhappiness, two courtiers go on a journey to plumb the depths of the universe’s mysteries. Tom Stoppard’s wildly inventive, Tony® Award-winning first play takes us through a tilted version of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy while casting new light on questions of fate, mortality and the meaning of existence. 
   
  Recorded at The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood in June 2022. 
   
  Directed by Rosalind Ayres 
  Producing Director: Susan Albert Loewenberg 
   
  An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast recording starring: 
  JD Cullum as Claudius and Soldier; 
  Seamus Dever as Hamlet; 
  Anna Lyse Erikson as Opehlia and Alfred; 
  Martin Jarvis as The Player; 
  Adhir Kalyan as Rosencrantz; 
  André Sogliuzzo as Polonius, Player-King, Ambassador, and Horatio; 
  Susan Sullivan as Gertrude; 
  Matthew Wolf as Guildenstern. 
   
  Senior Producer: Anna Lyse Erikson 
  Prepared for audio by Mark Holden for The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood 
  Sound Design: David Wilson, Neil Wogensen and Charles Carroll 
  Recording Engineer, Editor and Mixer: Charles Carroll 
  Senior Radio Producer: Ronn Lipkin 
  Foley Artist: Jeff Gardner

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  This May Hurt A Bit (NHB Modern...

  Stella Feehily

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  A witty, tender, and occasionally surreal exploration of one family's experience of the NHS.
  A month after stating 'we will stop the top-down reorganisation of the NHS that has got in the way of patient care', the government launched the biggest top-down reorganisation the service had seen in its 65-year history.
  Stella Feehily's play explores one family's journey through the digestive system of the NHS, and asks: what is the prognosis for this much-loved institution?
  This May Hurt A Bit premiered in 2014, on a UK tour co-produced by Out of Joint, and Octagon Theatre, Bolton.
  'urgent, clever, anarchic... I defy anyone to leave without a renewed sense of pride in our greatest institution, and some serious concerns about its future.' - Time Out
  'surreal, hilarious and hard-hitting' as theatrically entertaining as it is politically committed' - Observer
  'urgently topical' a passionate defence of nationalised medicine and a call to fight for its preservation - Guardian

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  The Poetry of Thomas Chatterton...

  Thomas Chatterton

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  Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol on 20th November 1752 some 15 weeks after the death of his father. For a time he was admitted to Edward Colston's Bristol charity school, on a limited curriculum of reading, writing, arithmetic and the catechism. 
    
  Although fascinated by the church of St Mary Redcliffe where his uncle was sexton, he was liable to fits of abstraction, sitting for hours in a trance or crying for no reason. When Chatterton was 8 he was so eager for books that he would read and write all day long and by 11 he had become a contributor to Felix Farley's Bristol Journal. He lived in thought with his 15th-century heroes and heroines. 
    
  The first of his literary mysteries, the dialogue of "Elinoure and Juga," was written before he was 12, and he showed it to the usher at the boarding school Colston's Hospital where he was a pupil, pretending it was the work of a 15th-century poet. Chatterton remained a boarder at Colston's Hospital for more than six years. His little pocket-money was spent borrowing books from a circulating library and always attempting to ingratiate himself with book collectors. 
    
  His holidays were mostly spent at his mother's house, and much of that in the attic study living for the most part in an ideal world of his own, centered on his mid-15th century imaginary world. 
    
  Chatterton soon conceived the romance of Thomas Rowley, an imaginary monk of the 15th century, and adopted for himself the pseudonym Thomas Rowley for poetry and history. He imagined he would become a famous poet who by his talents would be able to rescue his mother from poverty. 
    
  Chatterton needed a patron. Many were not interested. Horace Walpole was but discovering that the poems were most probably fake and Chatterton himself only 16 scornfully sent him away. 
    
    
    
  Badly hurt by Walpole's snub, Chatterton wrote very little for a summer. Then he turned his attention to periodical literature and politics, and the London periodicals. He was frequently published but received little reward for his startling efforts. 
    
  Chatterton wrote at Easter 1770, ‘‘Last Will and Testament,’’ a satirical mix in jest and seriousness. The will was possibly prepared so that John Lambert, the attorney to whom he was apprenticed, cancelled his indentures. His friends and acquaintances, having donated money, Chatterton proceeded to London. 
    
  He continued to write and publish in various styles and was paid little for his efforts. He wrote hopefully to his mother and sister, and spent his first earnings in buying gifts for them. 
    
  In June 1770, after nine weeks in London, he moved from a shared room in Shoreditch to an attic in Brook Street, Holborn. He now enjoyed uninterrupted solitude and now could write all night. The romance of his earlier years revived, and he transcribed from an imaginary parchment of the old priest Rowley his "Excelente Balade of Charitie." This poem, disguised in archaic language, he sent to the editor of the Town and Country Magazine, where it was rejected. 
    
  A neighbouring apothecary, repeatedly invited him to come for dinner or supper; but he refused. His landlady also, suspecting his necessity, pressed him to share her dinner, but in vain. "She knew," as she afterwards said, "that he had not eaten anything for two or three days." But he assured her that he was not hungry. 
    
  In August 1770, while walking in St Pancras Churchyard, Chatterton was much absorbed in thought, and did not notice a newly dug open grave in his path, and subsequently tumbled into it. His walking companion helped Chatterton out of the grave, and told him that he was happy in assisting at the resurrection of a genius. Chatterton replied, "My dear friend, I have been at war with the grave for some time now." 
   
  On 24th August 1770, Thomas Ch

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  Fifty Shades of Slumber - 50 of...

  James Joyce, Sara Teasdale,...

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  Sleep. That most mysterious of times.  The unconscious hours. 
   
  Everyone needs it. Whether it’s the recommended eight hours, forty winks, cat naps, power naps or other shades of blissful slumber.  
   
  Sleep offers a respite from the rigors and challenges of the day. A chance for the brain to process what has happened and bring rest and recuperation before the cycle of daytime activity begins again. 
   
  Also, perchance to dream or, if we are unlucky, the visitation of nightmares. 
   
  But for some people sleep does not come easy.  These can be wakeful hours of frustration or tedium where closing the eyes does not bring the closing of the mind and the slumber so keenly wanted. 
   
  Part of the problem, in this increasingly frenetic 24/7 world is that we seem reluctant or unable to switch off enough to recuperate; we might miss something.  But slumbered hours bring gains in health that far outweigh transitory loss. 
   
  01 - Fifty Shades of Slumber - An Introduction 
  02 - Rest by Richard Le Gallienne 
  03 - To Sleep by John Keats 
  04 - Sleep by James Weldon Johnson 
  05 - Sleep on Thine Eyes by Hafiz 
  06 - Ode To Sleep by Thomas Warton 
  07 - Sleep by Tagore 
  08 - Sleep Now, Oh Sleep Now by James Joyce 
  11 - Sonnet XI - To Sleep by Charlotte Smith 
  12 - Sleeping Together by Katherine Mansfield 
  13 - Care Charming Sleep by John Fletcher 
  14 - Sleep by Mirabai 
  15 - Song VIII - While Ye Deemed Him A Sleeping by William Morris 
  16 - Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal from The Princess by Alfred Lord Tennyson 
  17 - Love and Sleep by Algernon Charles Swinburne 
  18 - Nupital Sleep by Dante Gabriel Rossetti 
  19 - Celia, Sleeping or SInging by Thomas Stanley 
  20 - Idea's Mirror. Sonnet XXXVII. Dear Why Should You Command Me To My Rest 
  21 - The Indian Serenade by Percy Bysshe Shelley 
  22 - From Dewy Dreams, My Soul Arise by James Joyce 
  23 - At That Hour When All Things Have Repose by James Joyce 
  24 - Seal Lullaby by Rudyard Kipling 
  25 - Bed In Summer by Robert Louis Stevenson 
  26 - Lullaby by Louisa May Alcott 
  27 - Dreams by Robert Tannahill 
  28 - The Dream by John Donne 
  29 - The Dream by Amy Levy 
  30 - A Ballad of Dreamland by Algernon Charles Swinburne 
  31 - Dreamland by Edgar Allen Poe 
  32 - Angel Spirits of Sleep by Robert Seymour Bridges 
  33 - For the Bed at Kelmscott by William Morris 
  34 - A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allen Poe 
  35 - The Haunting Dream by Victor Plarr 
  36 - Dreamland by Christina Georgine Rossetti 
  37 - Hallucination by F S Flint 
  38 - The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe 
  39 - Good Night by Edward Thomas 
  40 - Good Night by Mary Gilmore 
  41 - My Sister's Sleep by Dante Gabriel Rossetti 
  42 - The Promise of Sleep by Amy Levy 
  43 - When Day Is Done by Tagore 
  44 - A Sleepless Night by Alfred Austin 
  45 - The Day is Done by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
  46 - Sonnet XXVII - Weary with Toil by William Shakespeare 
  47 - The End of the Day by Katharine Tynan 
  48 - Sleepless by Sara Teasdale 
  49 - What of the Darkness by Richard Le Gallienne 
  50 - The Owl Disturbs the Bard's Sleep by Dafydd ap Gwilym 
  51 - Insomnia by James Thomson

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  The Other Side of Sleep -...

  Kate Foley, Adrienne Silcock,...

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  What started as a complaint about the '40-line rule' in much of the poetry world has turned into an anthology that not only breaks that rule, but stomps all over it. Featuring 25 poems which break the rules - these are long, narrative, but by no means traditional poems, by contemporary voices.
  
  Themes both great and small are explored in narrative poems that pack a punch. Human interactions from conversation, storytelling, lending and borrowing, theft, prayer, memory, shopping and a long walk, right through to sexuality, time travel, truce negotiations, disappearance, natural disaster, violence and death are all explored, many of them rooted in landscape and place. These lie alongside equally rooted mythological and historical tales drawn from Greece, Turkey, Africa, Scandinavia and Britain.
  
  What draws all these themes together is the strength of the storytelling. Emotions as diverse as frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, hope, nostalgia, anger, and fear are channelled through spectacular poetry in many different forms into truly satisfying work.

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  The Beacon (NHB Modern Plays)

  Nancy Harris

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  A mysterious accident. A dead husband. People are talking. Secrets are resurfacing from the depths. Is the past ever truly dead?
  Beiv, a celebrated artist, has moved from suburban Dublin to her holiday cottage on an island off the coast of West Cork. But a dark shadow from the past hangs over her. When her estranged son and his new young wife arrive to stay, she is faced with some difficult questions.
  Nancy Harris's play The Beacon was premiered at the Town Hall Theatre, Galway, in September 2019 before transferring to the Gate Theatre, Dublin, as part of the 2019 Dublin Theatre Festival, in a co-production between Druid and the Gate, directed by Garry Hynes.

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