Showing results by narrator "Neil McFarlane" in All Categories

Composed in the early 1350s, in the wake of the Black Death, The Decameron comprises 100 short stories from all over the world, reset by Boccaccio among the flourishing merchant classes of Renaissance Italy. Their universal themes—love, sex, religion, fate, morality—resonate with us to this day, and their witty, satirical, bawdy voice sounds utterly modern. Monty Python star and medieval historian Terry Jones presents ten BBC Radio dramatisations of tales from Giovanni Boccaccio's humane and comic masterpiece

Revenge. Betrayal. Murder. In the gritty underbelly of 1980s Glasgow, Scotland, one cop stands tall - even with a fear of heights. Faced with a daunting task, DI Luc Kidston must focus on finding a samurai sword-wielding vigilante while untangling the case of one of his protégés, who's accused of a chilling crime. To solve both problems Kidston will have to take some unorthodox steps, including enlisting the help of a forensic hypnotist and challenging his own colleagues.

It ranges from the wild waters of the North Atlantic, the ice-filled fjords of Greenland and the remote islands of Faroe to the dining tables of London's middle classes, the bacalao restaurants of Spain and the Jewish shtetls of Eastern Europe. As well as following the historical thread and exploring how very different cultures were drawn together by the salt fish trade, John Goodlad meets those whose lives revolve around the industry in the twenty-first century and addresses today's pressing themes of sustainability, climate change, and food choices.

Modern communications have driven motorways and pylons through the countryside, dwarfed us with TV and telephone masts, and drastically altered the way in which we move around, see, and understand Scotland. Recent politics and logistics have established borders and jurisdictions which now seem permanent and impervious. The Faded Map looks beyond these to remember a land that was once quiet and green.