Hancock’s Half Hour: Complete Series One & Two

Mar 10, 2026 8:24 PM

Author:Ray Galton,Alan Simpson,Tony Hancock,Sid James,Full Cast

Tony Hancock stars with Sid James and Kenneth Williams in the legendary BBC Radio comedy series.

Created by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson in 1954, Hancock’s Half Hour was the radio vehicle that made Tony Hancock a household name. Each week listeners would be admitted to the sometimes fantastical, sometimes mundane life of “the lad ‘imself”. Aided and abetted by Sid James, Andrée Melly, Bill Kerr and Kenneth Williams, Hancock would enter into the spirit of each episode with characteristic dolefulness.

This collection of 15 episodes represents the surviving archive from the first two radio series. The episodes included are The First Night Party; The Idol; The Boxing Champion; The New Car; Cinderella Hancock; A Trip to France; The Monte Carlo Rally; A House on the Cliff; The Sheikh; The End of the Series; The Holiday Camp; The Chef That Died of Shame; The Rail Strike; The Television Set and The Marrow Contest.

Reviews

Toni Morrison makes me believe in God. She makes me believe in a divine being, because luck and genetics don’t seem to come close to explaining her

—— Guardian

The poetry of the language. The vernacular and the rhythms of speech... It's eavesdropping on a slice of life. You care for every character. You love them, you bleed for them. It's a masterclass in narrative fiction. It's a book that not only makes me want to be a better writer, but a better person as well

—— Sarah Winman , Good Housekeeping

Stunningly beautiful... Full of magnificent people... They are still haunting my house. I suspect they will be with me forever

—— Anne Tyler , Washington Post

Song of Solomon…profoundly changed my life

—— Marlon James , Guardian

A rhapsodic work... Intricate and inventive

—— New Yorker

A complex, wonderfully alive and imaginative story...glittering

—— Daily Telegraph

Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon grips as a novel of extraordinary truth, wisdom and humour

—— Auberon Waugh , Evening Standard

The language of Morrison's third novel astounds from its first pages to its triumphant conclusion... an epic of the African-American experience

—— Abdulrazak Gurnah , Week

Toni Morrison has written a brilliant prose tale that surveys nearly a century of American history as it impinges on a single family

—— New York Times Book Review

Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon grips as a novel of extraordinary truth, wisdom and humour

—— Sunday Telegraph

A stunning novel that's steeped in black history

—— Marc Chacksfield , ShortList

A mind-blowing political statement, an anguished cry of despair . . . a bomshell

—— The Weekly Review

The definitive African book of the twentieth century.

—— Moses Isegawa, author of Abyssinian Chronicles and Snakepit

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