Audiobooks narrated by Sam Dastor

The Murder of the Maharajah & The Governess: Two Full-Cast BBC Radio Crime Dramatisations

"BBC Radio adaptations of two historical crime novels by H. R. F. Keating, plus bonus extract from Bookshelf British detective writer H. R. F. Keating was best known as the creator of Inspector Ghote of the Mumbai CID. He won two Crime Writers’ Association Gold Daggers, and in 1996 was awarded the Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement. Included here are dramatisations of two of his most popular murder mysteries, set in 1930s India and Victorian London, plus a short clip from Radio 4’s Bookshelf featuring the award-winning author. The Murder of the Maharajah – His Highness the Maharajah of Bhopore delights in playing April Fool’s Day tricks on his guests – but the joke turns sour when one of his pranks inadvertently leads to his own murder. Five people apparently had the means and motive to kill him, but as District Superintendent of Police Howard investigates, he realises that the circle of suspects is wider than it seems. Zia Mohyeddin, Renu Setna and Sam Dastor star in this entertaining, Christie-esque drama, adapted from H. R. F. Keating’s Gold Dagger Award-winning novel. The Governess – When Harriet Unwin is hired as a governess in a wealthy London household, it seems that luck is on her side. That is, until the master of the house, William Thackerton, is found stabbed to death – and all the evidence points to her. Desperate to prove her innocence, she turns detective, uncovering the dark secrets hidden behind the family’s respectable Victorian facade.... Based on H. R. F. Keating’s novel written under the pseudonym Evelyn Hervey, this atmospheric adaptation stars Angela Pleasance and James Bolam. Bookshelf – Talking to fellow thriller writer Susan Hill, H. R. F. Keating holds up a magnifying glass to the art of crime fiction as he discusses his work and ideas. Please note: this collection contains language that reflects the attitudes of the era The Murder of the Maharajah text copyright © H. R. F. Keating 1980 The Governess text copyright © Evelyn Hervey 1983 Production credits Written by H. R. F. Keating The Murder of the Maharajah Maharajah – Zia Mohyeddin Dewan – Renu Setna Porgy – Lyndam Gregory D S P Howard – Sam Dastor Ram Singh – Amerjit Deu Sir Arthur – Philip Anthony Michael – Luke Beeson Schoolmaster – Bhasker Dolly – Rachel Atkins Judy – Oona Beeson Elaine – Sheila Mitchell Frere – Dominic Letts Joe – Steve Hodson Morton – Barry Gordon The Governess Harriet Unwin – Angela Pleasance Sergeant Drewd – James Bolam Pelham – James Holland Mrs Arthur Thackerton – Susan Jameson William Thackerton – Jack May Arthur Thackerton – Tony Mathews Joseph – Steve Hodson Vilkins – Emily Richard Grandmother Thackerton – Joan Matheson Hopkinson – David Sinclair Hannah – Victoria Carling Mrs Breakspear – Eva Stuart Newspaper voice – John Rye Miss Bond – Marian Diamond John – Stephen Tompkinson PC Wilson – Anthony Jackson Surgeon – Alan Dudley Mr Brattle – Kim Wall PC Smithers – Michael Troughton Superintendent – Stephen Thorne © 2024 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2024 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd"

H. R. F. Keating (Author), Angela Pleasence, Full Cast, James Bolam, Sam Dastor, Stephen Thorne, Stephen Tompkinson, Susan Hill, Zia Mohyeddin (Narrator)

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The Cooking of Books: A Literary Memoir

"It is not often that an author and his editor strike up a relationship which survives forty years of epistolary exchanges and intellectual sparring. The strangely enduring and occasionally fractious friendship which developed between the famously outspoken historian Ramachandra Guha and his reticent editor Rukun Advani is the subject of this quite eccentric and thoroughly compelling literary memoir. It started in Delhi in the early 1980s, when Guha was an unpublished PhD scholar, and Advani a greenhorn editor with Oxford University Press. It blossomed through the 1990s, when Guha grew into a pioneering historian of the environment and of cricket, while also writing his pathbreaking biography of Verrier Elwin. Over these years Advani was Guha’s most constant confidant, his most reliable reader. He encouraged him to craft and refine the literary style for which Guha became internationally known – narrative histories which have made vast areas of scholarship popular and accessible. Four decades later, though he no longer publishes his books, Advani remains Guha’s most trusted literary adviser. Yet they also disagree ferociously on politics, human nature, and the shape of their commitment to India. They usually make up – because it just wouldn’t do to allow such an odd relationship to die. Built around letters and emails between an outgoing and occasionally combative scholar and a reclusive editor prone to private outbursts of savage sarcasm, this book is never short of the kind of wit, humour, and drollery that has been strangled by contemporary political correctness."

Ramachandra Guha (Author), Sam Dastor (Narrator)

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Murder in Transit

"1866. On a dark, brooding summer's evening, Agnes Lenham seats herself in an empty first-class compartment on the train to Portsmouth. She is joined by a naval officer and a middle-aged man, in high spirits after dining at his club, travelling to his home on the Isle of Wight. His name is Giles Blanchard - and within moments of the train leaving the station, the sailor strangles him . . . At Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called to Superintendent Tallis's office, and given details of the violent murder. Their investigation will take them all the way to Osborne House, Queen Victoria's favourite country home, to find out exactly what took place on that dreadful, eerie night."

Edward Marston (Author), Sam Dastor (Narrator)

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Rabindranath Tagore: A BBC Radio Collection: Including The Home and the World & The Red Oleander

"A comprehensive anthology of dramatisations and readings of Tagore's finest works, plus bonus documentaries Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. A novelist, poet, playwright, composer, artist and philosopher, he wrote both the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems; exchanged ideas with Yeats, Einstein and Gandhi, and was hugely influential in promoting Indian culture to the West. This collection includes some of Tagore's key novels, plays and short stories, as well as his best-known poem and four fascinating biographical programmes. We begin with two adaptations by award-winning dramatist Tanika Gupta. The Home and the World, starring Indira Varma and Sacha Dhawan, relocates Tagore's classic 1916 novel of love, power and political awakening to a contemporary British Muslim setting. Often acclaimed as Tagore's best play, The Red Oleander stars Saeed Jaffrey and Aileen Gonsalves, and tells the story of a beautiful girl who comes to a gold mining community and foments a revolution against its tyrannical king. Next up is a dramatisation of the novelette Farewell, My Friend, a romantic, delightful tale of two young lovers starring Sam Dastor and Shireen Shah. It is followed by three short stories: 'The Postmaster' and 'The Kabuliwalah', read by Ronny Jhutti, and 'Wealth Surrendered', read by Renu Setna. Tagore bared his musical soul in the poem 'Broken Song', read here by Peter Barker, and in Centurions: Rabindranath Tagore, poet William Radice and theatre director Jatinder Verma explain why it ranks as one of the 100 greatest art works of the 20th Century. Tanika Gupta joins presenter Matthew Parris and translator Ketaki Kushari Dyson to share her love of Tagore's writing in Great Lives: Tanika Gupta on Rabindranath Tagore, and Zia Mohyeddin reads a selection of his epistolary observations on English society and customs in Letters from Europe. Concluding the collection, Rabindranath Tagore: The Bard of Bengal explores the life and legacy of South Asia's Shakespeare. First published 1891 ('The Postmaster'), 1891-2 ('Wealth Surrendered'), 1892 ('The Kabuliwalah'), 1910 ('Broken Song'), 1916 (The Home and the World), 1925 (The Red Oleander), 1929 (Farewell, My Friend) Contents The Home and the World The Red Oleander Farewell, My Friend 'The Postmaster' 'The Kabuliwalah' 'Wealth Surrendered' 'Broken Song' Centurions: Rabindranath Tagore Great Lives: Tanika Gupta on Rabindranath Tagore Letters from Europe Rabindranath Tagore: The Bard of Bengal © 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd"

Rabindranath Tagore (Author), Aileen Gonsalves, Full Cast, Indira Varma, Peter Barker, Renu Setna, Ronny Jhutti, Sacha Dhawan, Saeed Jaffrey, Sam Dastor, Shireen Shah, Zia Mohyeddin (Narrator)

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The Collector

"A frightening dystopian horror novel in which grief is forbidden and purged from the mind Sorrow is inefficient. It’s also inescapable. Lieutenant Dev Singh dutifully spends his days recording the memories of people who, struck with incurable depression, will soon have their minds erased in order to be more productive members of society. At night though, hidden in the dark, Dev remembers and writes in his secret journal the special moments shared with him—the small laugh of a toddler, the stillness of a late afternoon, the first flutter of love. But when the Bureau finds out that he has been recounting the memories—and that the depression is in him too—he is sent to a sanitarium to heal. After all, the Bureau knows what’s best for you. A nightmarish descent from sadness to madness, The Collector is a nightmarish mix of 1984 and Never Let Me Go."

Laura Kat Young (Author), Sam Dastor (Narrator)

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Death at the Terminus

"1865. A passenger train stands in York station. Jack Follis, the guard, patrols the platform to make sure that everyone is safely aboard. Returning to the brake van to load a box into it, he is alarmed by a smell of burning. Before he can find the cause, there is an explosion and the van is engulfed in flames. Responding to summons from the North-Eastern Railway, Robert Colbeck and Victor Leeming are sent to investigate. The two are split on whether a murder has taken place. Although the information they received was scant, Colbeck is convinced this is a murder case. The longer the investigation goes on, the more complex it becomes. Guilt shifts at a bewildering speed. It will take the combined skills of the detectives to identify and catch the person responsible for causing Jack Follis' death."

Edward Marston (Author), Sam Dastor (Narrator)

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The Railway Detective's Christmas Case

"December 1864. As a cold winter wind scours the Worcestershire countryside, an excursion train comes through a tunnel in the Malvern Hills, only to be confronted by a blockage on the line ahead. The driver manages to slow the train down so that the impact is minimised, but the passengers are alarmed. The first person to alight is Cyril Hubbleday, the man in charge of the excursion. He walks to the front of the locomotive - and, as he is talking to the driver, fireman and guard, he is shot dead by a sniper. With Christmas around the corner, Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Leeming are under pressure to solve the case quickly. However, between enemies in the shadows and an investigation hampered by heavy snow, their hunt for a cold-blooded killer is far from straightforward."

Edward Marston (Author), Sam Dastor (Narrator)

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Rebels Against the Raj: Western Fighters for India’s Freedom

"WINNER OF THE ELIZABETH LONGFORD PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY ‘A narrative of startling originality … As discussions of Britain’s colonial legacy become increasingly polarised, we are in ever more need of nuanced books like this one’ SAM DALRYMPLE, SPECTATOR Rebels Against the Raj tells the little-known story of seven people who chose to struggle for a country other than their own: foreigners to India who across the late 19th to late 20th century arrived to join the freedom movement fighting for independence. Of the seven, four were British, two American, and one Irish. Four men, three women. Before and after being jailed or deported they did remarkable and pioneering work in a variety of fields: journalism, social reform, education, organic agriculture, environmentalism. This book tells their stories, each renegade motivated by idealism and genuine sacrifice; each connected to Gandhi, though some as acolytes where others found endless infuriation in his views; each understanding they would likely face prison sentences for their resistance, and likely live and die in India; each one leaving a profound impact on the region in which they worked, their legacies continuing through the institutions they founded and the generations and individuals they inspired. Through the entwined lives, wonderfully told by one of the world’s finest historians, we reach deep insights into relations between India and the West, and India’s story as a country searching for its identity and liberty beyond British colonial rule."

Ramachandra Guha (Author), Sam Dastor (Narrator)

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India: A Million Mutinies Now

"Arising out of Naipaul’s lifelong obsession and passion for a country that is at once his and totally alien, India: A Million Mutinies Now relates the stories of many of the people he met traveling there more than fifty years ago. He explores how they have been steered by the innumerable frictions present in Indian society—the contradictions and compromises of religious faith, the whim and chaos of random political forces. This book represents Naipaul’s last word on his homeland, complementing his two other India travelogues, An Area of Darkness and India: A Wounded Civilization."

V.S. Naipaul (Author), Sam Dastor (Narrator)

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India: A Wounded Civilization

"In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s “Emergency,” V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left one hundred years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured in a mythic vision of its past. Drawing on novels, news reports, political memoirs, and his own encounters with ordinary Indians—from a supercilious prince to an engineer constructing housing for Bombay’s homeless—Naipaul captures a vast, mysterious, and agonized continent inaccessible to foreigners and barely visible to its own people. He sees both the burgeoning space program and the five thousand volunteers chanting mantras to purify a defiled temple; the feudal village autocrat and the Naxalite revolutionaries who combined Maoist rhetoric with ritual murder. Relentless in its vision, thrilling in the keenness of its prose, India: A Wounded Civilization is a work of astonishing insight and candor."

V.S. Naipaul (Author), Sam Dastor (Narrator)

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Tragedy on the Branch Line

"When Bernard Pomeroy, a young undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, finds a letter slipped under his door in the early hours of a rainy day, he flies into a panic. He hurries to the railway station. But he doesn't reach his destination alive. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called upon to investigate this tragedy on the railway. It soon becomes apparent that Cambridge's hopes of success in the forthcoming Boat Race rested on Pomeroy's shoulders. With academic disputes, romantic interests and a sporting rivalry with Oxford in play, the Railway Detective will have his work cut out to disentangle the threads of Pomeroy's life in order to answer the truth of his death."

Edward Marston (Author), Sam Dastor (Narrator)

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The Case of the Reincarnated Client: From the Files of Vish Puri, India’s Most Private Investigator

"A client claiming she was murdered in a past life is a novel dilemma even for Vish Puri, India’s most private investigator. When a young woman comes forward saying she’s the reincarnation of Riya Kaur, a wife and mother who vanished during the bloody 1984 anti-Sikh riots, Puri is dismissive. He’s busy enough dealing with an irate matrimonial client whose daughter is complaining about her groom’s thunderous snoring. Puri’s indomitable Mummy-ji however is adamant the client is genuine. How else could she so accurately describe under hypnosis Riya Kaur’s life and final hours? Driven by a sense of duty—the original case was his late father’s—Puri manages to acquire the police file only to find that someone powerful has orchestrated a cover-up. Forced into an alliance with his mother that tests his beliefs and high blood pressure as never before, it’s only by delving into the past with the help of his reincarnated client that Puri can hope to unlock the truth."

Tarquin Hall (Author), Sam Dastor (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Sam Dastor