"Conscious that my servant stood amazed, I turned to him and said: ‘Derrick, could you believe I fancied I saw a—-‘ As I laid my hand upon his breast, he trembled violently, and said, ‘O Lord yes sir! A dead man beckoning!’"Who is the dead

Berenice

Oct 30th, 2020 26m 5s

"I had seen her not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream; not as a being of the earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such a being; not as a thing to admire, but to analyse; not as an object of love, but as

Tusitala and the Prince: a fable

Oct 23rd, 2020 24m 28s

"Once upon a time, in a land so far away that no one has ever been there in the whole history of story-telling, there lived a little boy. His name was Tusitala and he looked like every other poor boy you know from stories - not all of them tr

The Grand Slam

Oct 16th, 2020 22m 20s

"Everyone took the game very seriously. To them each hand and every card in that hand had its individuality and lived its own life. Hands were Iiked or disliked, lucky or unlucky. The cards always combined differently and these combinations w

In the Square

Oct 9th, 2020 22m 40s

"She was tired and her headache was getting worse. All she wanted to do was sit down somewhere in the shade and relax. She looked down to the end of the street; the square seemed far, far away."A hot day, a woman alone in a foreign city . .

From Now Until Eternity

Oct 2nd, 2020 29m 31s

"That is why I never went down on bended knee, never uttered the spell and opened the magic box to reveal the enchanted ring that would transform our lives forever. I was afraid of revealing the last part of myself, afraid of embarrassment ri

Ten Million Years

Sep 25th, 2020 25m 56s

"I have known and loved you for years, for centuries, for millenia. I have known and loved you since before knowledge and love, since before sight, before sound, before touch, before memory. I have known and loved you with every cell that has

The Necklace

Sep 18th, 2020 22m 5s

"Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb diamond necklace, and her heart began to beat with uncontrolled desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it around her neck, over her high-necked dress, and stood lost in

The Outsider

Aug 28th, 2020 18m 56s

"It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and desolation; the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation; the awful baring of that which the merciful earth should always hide."Who or what - and where - is the Outsider? This cl

Homophobia, Darling

Aug 21st, 2020 20m 16s

An out, proud gay man condemns homophobia in his workplace. WARNING: A sexually explicit story using very strong language and with subject matter that some listeners may find offensive.Martin Foreman's fiction ranges from real to fantastic

Smoke

Aug 14th, 2020 23m 58s

"This one has the scent of Araby, the sparkle of champagne, the mist of distant moors."At a time when people could still smoke in bars, a group of office workers meet for a drink. On a table sits an abandoned pack of cigarettes; there's no

The Lumber Room & The Mouse

Aug 7th, 2020 26m 6s

Is the Devil really speaking to young Nicholas from inside a rainwater barrel? And what would you do if a mouse were crawling around inside your clothes as you sat opposite an attractive stranger? Two humorous stories from H H Munro ('Saki' 1

A Terribly Strange Bed

Jul 31st, 2020 31m 34s

A young man wins a fortune in a disreputable gambling-house in Paris, gets drunk with an old soldier and then fears for his life. A short story from William Wilkie Collins, the author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone, originally publ

Death on the Lido

Jul 24th, 2020 35m 39s

A 14-year-old boy is troubled - or is he fascinated? - by an old man who never stops watching him.In Thomas Mann's 1912 novella Death in Venice (filmed in 1971 by Luchino Visconti) the ageing Gustav von Aschenbach becomes obsessed with the

The Slanderer & A Work of Art

Jul 17th, 2020 21m 2s

The Slanderer: who has been telling tales about Sergey Kapitonlch Akhineyev's activities in the kitchen?A Work of Art: what would you do with the gift of an erotic statuette?Two short stories revealing Russian writer Anton Chekhov's comic

Can it wait till morning?

Jul 10th, 2020 21m 30s

In the 1950s Peter Paterson-Brown became a general practitioner in a small town in the Scottish Borders. These three episodes are dramatised, by Oliver Cookson and Marilyn Imrie, from his diary of his experiences over the years. With Oliv

Now We Are Pope: Frederick Rolfe in Venice

Jul 3rd, 2020 37m 53s

26 October 1913 Alone in his room in a palazzo in Venice on the last day of his life, writer Frederick Rolfe ("Baron Corvo") reflects on the past, his thoughts spiritual and carnal, his memories caustic and unforgiving. A devout Catholic,

Sunset

Jun 26th, 2020 27m 5s

At the end of the day, a grandmother looks back at her life from marriage to the present day. A virgin on her wedding night who becomes a reluctant mother with a philandering husband, a stay-at-home wife who in middle-age discovers business s

Kitchen Table

Jun 19th, 2020 21m 22s

Kitchen Tablea short story by Martin Foreman (publd 2002)read by Gordon HoustonA sixteen-year-old, his girlfriend, first sex, fatherhood and a whirlwind of emotions. Story originally published in First and Fiftieth and other stories, av

Ben and Joe's

Jun 12th, 2020 26m 27s

Ben and Joe'sa short story by Martin Foreman (publd 2002)read by John VernonIn a bar in Los Angeles a group of middle-aged gay white men while away their afternoons until their lives are disrupted by the arrival of a young black man. St

Night Traffic

Jun 2nd, 2020 20m 4s

Night Traffic a short story by Martin Foreman (2002) read by Gordon Houston A motorway service station in the middle of the night. A young man and his lover on their way from Edinburgh to seek a new life in London. Trial podcast f

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