BBC Radio 4.

A child's nursery rhyme holds three clues to finding a cunning killer when a well-to-do household becomes infested with murder

"Hercule Poirot is summoned by his old acquaintance, writer-detective Ariadne Oliver, to attend a "Murder Hunt" at Nasse House in Devonshire." --

“One of the really remarkable books of our day”—the story of the Roman emperor on which the award-winning BBC TV series was based (The New York Times).
 
Once a rather bookish young man with a limp and a stammer, a man who spent most of his time trying to stay away from the danger and risk of the line of ascension, Claudius seemed an unlikely candidate for emperor. Yet, on the death of Caligula, Claudius...

When the parish church bells toll out the death of an unknown man, Lord Peter investigates the sinister affair.s

When a terminally ill woman dies much earlier than expected, Lord Peter Wimsey suspects murder: “First-rate detection” (The Cincinnati Enquirer).
Though never quick-witted, Agatha Dawson had an iron constitution and a will to fight that never abated in her old age. Even after three operations failed to rid her of her cancer, she refused to give in. But as her body began to weaken, she accused lawyers, nurses,...

An English family's complex lives are followed and picked up again after a 10 year hiatus in order to explore the effects of time. "Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is one of her greatest literary achievements and among the most influential novels of the twentieth century. The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement...

James Wormold, a cash-strapped vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, finds the answer to his prayers when British Intelligence offers him a lucrative job as an undercover agent. To keep the checks coming, Wormold must at least pretend to know what he's doing. Soon, he's apparently deciphering incomprehensible codes, passing along sketches of secret weapons that look suspiciously like vacuum parts, and claiming to recruit fellow operatives from his country...

In this brilliant work of historical reconstruction Neil MacGregor and his team at the British Museum, working together in a landmark collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC, bring us twenty objects that capture the essence of Shakespeare's universe and the Tudor era of Elizabeth I.

In the second part of John le Carré's Karla Trilogy, the battle of wits between spymaster George Smiley and his Russian adversary takes on an even more dangerous dimension.
As the fall of Saigon looms, master spy George Smiley must outmaneuver his Soviet counterpart on a battlefield that neither can afford to lose.
 
The mole has been eliminated, but the damage wrought has brought the British Secret Service to...

A woman disappears and her husband, who admits he hates her, hires Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe to find her.