From the globally bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring It is 1932, and the losses of the First World War are still keenly felt. Violet Speedwell, mourning for both her fiance and her brother and regarded by society as a `surplus woman' unlikely to marry, resolves to escape her suffocating mother and strike out alone. A new life awaits her in Winchester. Yes, it is one of draughty boarding-houses and sidelong glances at her naked ring finger from younger colleagues; but it is also a life gleaming with independence and opportunity. Violet falls in with the broderers, a disparate group of women charged with embroidering kneelers for the Cathedral, and is soon entwined in their lives and their secrets. As the almost unthinkable threat of a second Great War appears on the horizon Violet collects a few secrets of her own that could just change everything...

The collected BBC radio adaptations of Virginia Woolf's pioneering modernist novels The Voyage Out A sea voyage to South America turns into a journey of self-discovery for naive Rachel Vinrace. Night and Day In pre-First World War London, aristocrat Katharine Hilbery and suffragette Mary Datchet have their assumptions about love challenged. Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf's masterpiece charts one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, as she prepares to host an important party. To the Lighthouse Centring around a summer home on Skye, Virginia Woolf's landmark tale follows the Ramsay family and their guests before and after World War I. Orlando The adventures of time-travelling, gender-swapping poet Orlando, who is born male in Elizabethan England and dies female over 300 years later. The Waves In this radical 'play-poem', six characters look back on their childhood and first forays into adulthood, and reflect on the loss of their friend Percival. Between the Acts An eccentric artist devises a pageant celebrating English history - but it is 1939, and the shadow of war hangs over England's present. Among the stars of these seven poignant, penetrating dramatisations are Bertie Carvel, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Dervla Kirwan, John Lynch, Geraldine James, Anna Massey and Don Warrington.

**Winner of the Gold Award for Best Drama in the New York Festivals Radio Awards 2018*** A BBC radio adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Michael Cunningham, inspired by Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway Three separate women, living in different locations and eras, are linked by their passion for Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. As they each live through a Tuesday in June, their thoughts and experiences mirror each other and become interwoven. In Richmond in 1923, Virginia Woolf struggles to write a novel whose protagonist is Mrs Dalloway. In Los Angeles in 1949, Laura ignores her chores and small son to sit in bed reading Mrs Dalloway. In 1990s New York, Clarissa goes to buy flowers for a party, mirroring the start of the fictional Mrs Dalloway's day. The party is in honour of her sick friend Richard, who long ago dubbed her Mrs Dalloway. As their stories intertwine, they converge to become one, weaving together themes of storytelling, domestic tension, friendship, love, loss, parental guilt, loneliness, bisexuality and the challenges of hosting social rituals. Adapted by Sony Award-winning dramatist Frances Byrnes, this affecting dramatisation stars Fenella Woolgar as Virginia Woolf, Teresa Gallagher as Laura and Rosamund Pike as Clarissa. 'I am so thrilled by the BBC's production of my novel, The Hours, and - believe me - a novelist does not thrill easily' - Michael Cunningham Directed by Judith Kampfner and Polly Thomas Produced by Judith Kampfner A Corporation For Independent Media production for BBC Radio 4 Duration: 2 hours approx.