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.

What's a wise, witty travel writer to do when she reaches forty and is still single? Wander the globe searching for romance and adventure, of course.
On a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, to celebrate her fortieth birthday, Laura Fraser confronts the unique trajectory of her life. Divorced and childless in her thirties, she found solace in the wanderlust that had always directed her heart--and found love and comfort in the arms of a dashing Frenchman. Their Italian affair brought her back to herself--but now she wonders if her passion for travel (and for short-lived romantic rendezvous) has deprived her of what she secretly wants most from life: a husband, a family, a home.
When her Parisian lover meets her in Oaxaca and gives her news that he's found someone new, Laura is stunned and hurt. Now, it seems, she has nothing but her own independence for company--and, at forty, a lot more wrinkles on her face and fewer years of fertility. How is Laura going to reconcile what seem to be two opposite desires: for adventure, travel, great food, and new experiences, but also a place to call home--and a loving pair of arms to greet her there?
And so, she globe hops. What else is a travel writer to do? From Argentina to Peru, Naples to Paris, she basks in the glow of new cultures and local delicacies, always on the lookout for the "one" who might become a lifelong companion. But when a terrible incident occurs while she's on assignment in the South Pacific, Laura suddenly finds herself more aware of her vulnerability and becomes afraid of traveling. It seems as if she might lose the very thing that has given her so much pleasure in her life, not to mention the career she has built for herself as a world traveler and chronicler of far-flung places.
Finding herself again will be both more difficult and more natural than she imagined. Ultimately, Laura realizes the most important journey she must take is an internal one. And the tale of how she reaches that place will captivate every woman who has ever yearned for a different life.

"From the Hardcover edition."

When Laura Fraser's husband leaves her for his high school sweetheart, she takes off, on impulse, for Italy, hoping to leave some of her sadness behind. There, on the island of Ischia, she meets M., an aesthetics professor from Paris with an oversized love of life. What they both assume will be a casual vacation tryst turns into a passionate, transatlantic love affair, as they rendezvous in London, Marrakech, Milan, the Aeolian Islands, and San Francisco. Each encounter is a delirious immersion into place (sumptuous food and wine, dazzling scenery, lush gardens, and vibrant streetscapes) and into each other. And with each experience, Laura brings home not only a lasting sense of pleasure, but a more fully recovered sense of her emotional and sexual self. Written with an observant eye, an open mind, and a delightful sense of humor, An Italian Affair has the irresistible honesty of a story told from and about the heart.