検索キーワード： 制作 "Soundings" 文学・フィクション

1938: As Hitler sets his sights on the Sudetenland, not everyone in Britain is willing to appease him. Convinced that the fürher’s land hunger is insatiable, the head of the SIS recruits Cal Jardine to help him prove that Czechoslovakia is threatened with invasion. Before heading undercover to Prague, however, Jardine must first extricate himself from France, where his attempts to smuggle guns to Spain have been held up by a group of fanatical fascists. Finally arriving in Czechoslovakia, working undercover for the SIS proves no less dangerous.

Summer, 1939. The de Lacey family believe they are ready for the changes the war will bring. Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, is due to return home from her grandparents’ farm in France and is expected to marry Captain Max Coburn. But when Grandpère suffers a stroke, her future is changed. Instead of returning home, Elizabeth chooses to stay and help her grandparents. Max is also stationed in France – but will the war threaten to separate them for ever? Meanwhile, in the village of Nayton, Lucy Storey dutifully cares for her father the stationmaster.

The Tsar's Dragons series follows the epic tale of 19th-century industrialist John Hughes, who founded a city on the Russian steppe. For people like Hughes' right-hand man, Glyn Edwards, who has found love in a new country, and Anna Parry, a Welsh orphan who has found fulfilment working in Hughesovka's hospital, the city is a chance to build a new life, but fresh arrivals from their hometown threaten the peace and stability of that new existence. Meanwhile, for ambitious Russians like Alexei Beletsky, the city offers a chance to change their homeland for the better.

Madeleine Ingleton has just come home from the Swiss finishing school where she has spent the last two years. She returns to a whirl of social engagements and parties...and to Hamilton Bramwell, the young man her parents are determined she marry. Hamilton is wealthy and agreeable, but he isn’t the man of Madeleine’s dreams, and she longs to choose her own husband rather than bow to her parents’ wishes. Innocent Madeleine’s eye is caught by a young milkman, and she succumbs to new and overwhelming feelings - feelings which lead to disaster.

Matilda is the granddaughter of William the Conqueror but also descended, through her mother, from the ancient line of Anglo-Saxon kings. Betrothed to Emperor Henry of Germany at the age of eight, she is married at 12 and crowned Empress. By her early 20s she is a widow, and the only surviving legitimate heir to her father, Henry I of England. Forced into a second marriage to a boy 10 years younger, she gives birth to three sons, the male heirs her father longs for.

“The end of the old world”, people said about the long, hot summer of 1914. That summer Aunt Tilly comes to stay with her brother, the Rector, and his four lively daughters in the sleepy Sussex village of Ashden. Aunt Tilly’s visit sparks off a chain of events which threatens to split Ashden apart. Agnes Pilbeam, the Rectory palourmaid, and her sweetheart, Jamie, find themselves bewilderingly caught up. Then, in August, the lamps go out all over Europe, and war bursts open the straitjacket of rural village life.

In 1939, Cathy lives happily with her family in Australia, oblivious of the onset of WWII in Europe. In England, young Tom, devastated when his mother leaves the family home in Leeds, is determined to enlist as soon as he is of age. He joins the Royal Navy and is sent to the Far East, arriving in Sydney. Tom meets dance teacher Cathy at a ballroom, and it soon becomes obvious they are destined to be together. But what are their chances of keeping their romance alive when it is inevitable that, once the war is over, Tom must sail back to England?

Castroux, France, 1939. In a bare farmhouse above the village, Oriane lives in desperate poverty. When the Germans invade, her simple world crumbles. Passions erupt, moral boundaries break down , and rebellion is soon in the air. Castroux, France, 2000. In an idyllic gîte overlooking the river, Claudia sunbathes on the terrace. She’s pregnant, trapped, and terrified of the future. She confides only in a reclusive neighbour, Oriane, and discovers that she too carried a shameful secret.

The first fatality in a bizarre series of killings is a Captain of the Second Life Guards, found in the River Thames with a war medal wedged between his teeth. Then a dead Egyptologist is discovered with a scarab clamped between his molars. When a young soldier is found dead in the saddle (this time a locket is the dying mouthful), Sholto Lestrade is forced to impersonate a barrack-room lawyer.

1840: Miranda Jarvis would do anything to protect her sister - so when Lucy comes down with a fever, she thinks nothing of stealing a loaf of bread from a local landowner. After all, things can't get much worse. Miranda doesn't count on being nearly brained by the cook's rolling pin...but nor does she count on the house's owner himself. The respectable shipowner Sir James, known for his philanthropy, takes a keen interest in Miranda and her sister.

Who can Flavius Belisarius call an enemy? The Goths he must fight to take Italy back for the Byzantium. Or is it the intrigues of the Empress Theodora, who fears his ambitions. There is his own wife, betraying him in more than one way and Justinian, the unreliable emperor he helped to the throne. Sixth-century Byzantium, a hotbed of intrigue; Italy and Persia where he must combat some of his fellow generals.

Max Persault loves his seafaring life. When his cousin Alistair, the newly elevated Duke of Haslingfield, appeals for his help, he finds himself masquerading as the duke and on his way to Cromer while Alistair sets off undercover to France. Max's talents do not lend themselves to acting, however, and before even arriving at his destination, he has aroused the suspicions of Miss Constance Church. At first dismissing him, Constance soon begins to suspect that there may be more to him than meets the eye.

The Hundred Years’ War is over and newly-knighted Sir John Hawkwood is headed for France to make his fortune as a freebooter. Violence and extortion are rife, and the freebooters will stop at nothing to capture the Papal City of Avignon. This is only the beginning. Italy beckons, and with it, yet more battles against rival mercenaries, powerful cities and the Papal State.

As Christmas 1938 approaches, the staff at the Nightingale Hospital have their own wishes for the festive season. Ward sister Frannie Wallace is hoping she won't have to live through another war like the one that claimed her fiance. Staff Nurse Helen Dawson wants to find happiness again after the death of her husband Charlie. But is she looking for love in the wrong place? Matron Kathleen Fox struggles to keep up morale.

It's the late 1950s and change is in the air. For the Napier family, up at the big house, the old ways are shifting. Hilary must discover if reaching out for a chance of happiness must mean breaking away from the life expected of her, while Patsy, their young housekeeper's help, is facing motherhood without her own family around her. Down the hill from the Napiers, villagers young and old are setting out on adventures.

Edinburgh, 1937. Attractive, dark-eyed Jinny Hendrie is happy enough in her job in the accounts office of a large bakery - until handsome Viennese cake expert Viktor Linden walks into her life. Although her father and her kindhearted boss, Ross MacBain, warn against it, Jinny is determined to marry Viktor, but when war is declared, all her plans are in ruins. Austria has joined forces with Hitler; Viktor has become an enemy and must return home to fight.

The year is 1947. Kindly, unassuming widow Dorrie Resterick continually finds herself confidante to others' troubles. She would prefer to keep in the background, but life throws her many a mystery, and once she even found a scrap of evidence in a dreadful local crime - the double murder of two villagers. While the police decided the scrap of paper Dorrie brought to them solved the case, Dorrie was never sure - and when new tenants arrive at the creepy cottage of Merrivale their actions plunge the whole village into danger.

Steal a glimpse at the past lives and loves of your favourite villagers in this captivating Burracombe short story. Autumn 1918 has brought young Alice Whiddon to the Tozer's farm to work as a maid. Alice soon falls in love with the little village and with life on the farm. But that's not all she's falling for. Youngest son, Ted Tozer is half promised to young Ivy Prowse, daughter of a neighbouring farmer, yet Alice and Ted feel a powerful bond forming.

A seemingly sleepy Devonshire village, Burracombe is in fact full of intrigue and drama. Family secrets, budding romance, cruel twists of fate and amazing friendships all play out against the backdrop of the beautiful countryside. It's autumn 1953. The village is delighted when Joe Tozer – who left Burracombe as a young man in 1919 – returns to visit his family.

A new generation of the Maxwell family are farming at Wester Rullion during the 1980s. Young Paul Maxwell and his cousin, Ryan, are determined to work together to restore the farm’s prosperity. How will they achieve their ambitious aims - only with the support of their grandparents? Can they overcome the hurdles of new farming regulations? Will Ryan get his heart’s desire and marry Molly Nairne, daughter of a prosperous local farmer?