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After Henry: The Complete BBC Radio Series 1-4
After Henry: The Complete BBC Radio Series 1-4
Dec 21, 2025 10:41 AM

Author:Simon Brett,Prunella Scales,Full Cast,Joan Sanderson,Gerry Cowper,Benjamin Whitrow

After Henry: The Complete BBC Radio Series 1-4

All four series of the hugely popular BBC radio sitcom – plus two Christmas specials

After the death of her GP husband, widow Sarah is battling to bring up her strong-willed 18-year-old daughter Clare, hindered by her meddling mother Eleanor. Living on the middle floor of the family home, with Clare downstairs and Eleanor upstairs, Sarah finds herself besieged from above and below as she tries to cope with the demands of both her mum and her daughter. Luckily, she finds solace at work, where her best friend and boss at Bygone Books, Russell, provides a sympathetic ear.

In these four series, Sarah dips a tentative toe into the dating scene, daughter Clare has boyfriend troubles, and Eleanor takes a keen interest in both their love lives – sharing all the gossip with her pensioner friends, the ‘geriatric Mafia’. Holidays, house tidiness and hospital visits all cause problems for Sarah, and there are disagreements over everything from hiring a builder to the correct way to prepare Sunday lunch...

Also included are two special seasonal episodes, in which the three women bicker over the festive planning and Eleanor’s strict Christmas Day timetable.

Created by award-winning detective novelist and sitcom writer Simon Brett, this much-loved generation gap comedy ran for four years on radio between 1985 and 1989. It was adapted for ITV by Thames Television and was extremely successful, attracting 14 million viewers. Prunella Scales stars as Sarah, with Joan Sanderson as Eleanor and Gerry Cowper as Clare.

Cast

Sarah – Prunella Scales

Eleanor – Joan Sanderson

Clare – Gerry Cowper

Russell – Benjamin Whitrow

Nick – James Griffiths

Janie – Marion Bailey

Terry – Leo Dolan

Clifford –Richard Davies

Gwen – Ellen McIntosh

Vicar – John Nettleton

David – Nigel Williams

Chris – Mark Kingston

Alison – Mary Maddox

Miles – David Quilter

Quizmaster – Graham Blockey

Customer –Alan Thompson

Aubrey – Lockwood West

Delivery boy – David Learner

Doctor – Peter Howell

Sister – Deborah Findlay

Policeman – Michael Hadley

Percy Bradshaw/The television – Simon Brett

James – Edward de Souza

Valuer – Nicholas Le Provost

Neville –Ian Thompson

Julian – Jasper Jacob

The doctor – Julie Berry

Tom Wilkinson –Peter

Rod – Paul Sirr

Lady Newby – Fabia Drake

Vernon – Frederick Treves

Gary – Ian Michie

Auntie Lilian – Jean Anderson

Production credits

Written by Simon Brett

Produced by Pete Atkin

Reviews

'Wood's lively translations grasp the irrepressible sense of freedom which is the poet's hallmark ... Pushkin is lucky in Antony Wood. Pleasure is to be found on every page of this book'

—— The Times Literary Supplement

This Selected Poetry by Antony Wood supersedes all previous translations ... Wood's 'The Bronze Horseman' gives us Pushkin at his most tragic. 'Count Nulin' shows him at his most light-hearted. 'The Tale of Tsar Saltan' bounces along with delightful vitality. Even with the delicately musical short lyrics - still harder to translate - Wood's success rate is remarkable ... The result is a more rounded picture of Pushkin - in many ways the most universal of poets

—— Robert Chandler , The Financial Times

This Selected Poetry deserves a wealth of praise . . . a truly valuable edition both for its scrupulous and often magnificent versions of individual poems and as a worthy general introduction to this poet, who is such a treasure for Russia and for the world

—— Los Angeles Review of Books

Everybody knows how difficult Pushkin's poems are to translate. Antony Wood has succeeded, within the limits of the possible

—— John Bayley

Re-creating Pushkin requires skills approaching magic. Antony Wood is one of the two or three best translators of Russia's greatest poet in the Anglophone world, because his Pushkin moves: you watch him dance as well as hear him sing

—— Caryl Emerson

Antony Wood's translations show an unusual grace and a deep knowledge of Pushkin's poetry

—— Elaine Feinstein

Pushkin's poetry is lyrical, beautifully simple, vivid, and endlessly emotive. It can be enjoyed by all readers, regardless of their background in poetry. And there is now one definitive book of Alexander Pushkin's poetry, the one book you need to read in order to fully appreciate Alexander Pushkin's poems: Alexander Pushkin Selected Poetry, translated with complete command and majesty by Antony Wood

—— Books and Bao

A volume to keep within easy reach at most times

—— East-West Review

Anthony Wood is to be congratulated on this suburb collection, which renders Pushkin in all his matchless grace, wit and musicality

—— The Tablet

A masterpiece. This book haunts me more than any other novel I've read in recent years.

—— Garth Greenwell

A highly unusual novel in which a writer confronts one of life's deepest sorrows in losing her child. . . Funny, touching and profoundly moving

—— Chigozie Obioma

‘Getting inside a living person’s head sounds like a colossally bad idea, but Sittenfeld makes it convincing here, just as she did with a character based on First Lady Laura Bush in her 2008 novel, AMERICAN WIFE’

—— BBC CULTURE

Deviously clever . . . Sittenfeld’s Hillary is both a player in the Game of Thrones and a romance novel heroine. She’s a brilliant badass who has found her voice and knows how to use it. She’s whoever she wants to be

—— THE OPRAH MAGAZINE

As Hillary finds her groove, so the momentum and entertainment builds, as does your admiration for how ingeniously and plausibly Sittenfeld has re-written the script

—— DAILY MAIL

A counterfactual novel ... throbs with energy

—— TLS

A fascinating glimpse into an alternative future

—— DAILY MIRROR

Pacy... plenty of sex and gossip - and a cameo from a certain yellow-haired, orange-faced president-to-be... ripe for TV adaptation

—— SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

A brilliantly smart re-imagining

—— WOMAN AND HOME

Sittenfeld's writing is so fine, her characters so vivid, her empathy so profound that she manages to absorb the reader on a level that transcends partisanship. In 2020, that was a remarkable achievement and an enormous gift to her readers

—— THE NEW YORKER

It ends up being a love letter to a type: the female intellectual, who is given none of the licence of her less talented male peers. At the end, i found myself saying Oh My God

—— OBSERVER

A triumphant feminist reinvention. Sittenfeld is the bard of presidential female adjacents

—— VOGUE

RODHAM is wide- ranging political anthropology, concerned not so much with what makes Hillary tick as it is with the culture around her and how she might have shaped events, and been shaped by them, if the pieces of reality's jigsaw were rearranged just so. It's stippled with clever mischief

—— NEW YORK TIMES

A smartly structured character study and a stay- up- all- night plot . . . A captivating and durable story containing rooms within rooms. RODHAM turns into a high- speed bildungsroman about a woman of formidable intellect and self- insight.

—— THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

It's the genius of Sittenfeld's prose that we come to understand this ambivalence,as well as the deep conflicts in this complicated character. In the longing and loneliness, the anger as well as ambition, this Hillary makes RODHAM a compelling portrait of a future that might have been.

—— THE BOSTON GLOBE

Tantalizing . . . part thought experiment, part wish- fulfillment fantasy . . . delectably discussable, a book tailor- made for book clubs.

—— USA TODAY

Wildly compelling . . . What RODHAM is interested in is examining what feminine ambition looks like when it is untethered from a man. . . . Sittenfeld is free to invent, and the reality she builds is deliciously dishy.

—— VOX

Thought-provoking and compelling

—— SUNDAY EXPRESS

A moving feat of feminist and novelistic imagination

—— THE TABLET

From this memorable novel's eerie first paragraph to its enigmatic ending, Laura van den Berg has invented something beautiful indeed

—— LA Times

This is one of my favorite novels of 2015, and we’re not even IN 2015 yet . . .The language is beautiful, spare, and carefully crafted, and the characters are fully realized and unforgettable. There is tension and redemption and insight and even humor in these pages, and they make for a really incredible read

—— Bookriot

Surreal adventures blend with a reflective and sad sensibility in van den Berg’s lyrical debut novel

—— Library Journal

Both novels offer precision of language and metaphor and scene even as what is being constructed feels messy, chaotic, sad, hopeless... Both orphaned and alone in the world, both so completely real, both telling a story that feels important and exciting to read. I feel lucky to have stumbled upon these books this year, and challenged by them to be better

—— The Millions

This debut novel by acclaimed short story writer van den Berg tends to lean much closer to the realms of literary fiction with its complex psychology. . . Van den Berg's writing is curiously beautiful

—— Kirkus

a strange beauty in this apocalyptic tale

—— Psychologies
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