Home
/
Fiction
/
His Dark Materials: The Complete BBC Radio Collection
His Dark Materials: The Complete BBC Radio Collection
Nov 8, 2025 8:34 PM

Author:Philip Pullman,Emma Fielding,Ray Fearon,Terence Stamp,Full Cast

His Dark Materials: The Complete BBC Radio Collection

All three BBC radio dramatisations of the bestselling fantasy trilogy – plus bonus material

A breathtaking epic spanning multiple worlds, His Dark Materials follows the adventures of Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, two children catapulted into a life-or-death struggle to save the future of the Cosmos.

In Northern Lights, 11-year-old Lyra discovers dark forces at work involving kidnapped children and a mysterious substance called ‘Dust’. With her shape-shifting daemon, Pantalaimon, she leaves her Oxford college home and embarks on a dangerous journey to the frozen North, aided by armoured bears, Gyptians and a witch-queen…

The Subtle Knife sees 12-year-old Will finding an opening into the haunted world of Cittàgazze, where daemon-destroying Spectres roam. There he meets Lyra, and together they acquire the most powerful weapon in all the universes – an object many would kill to possess.

In The Amber Spyglass, a colossal war is brewing in Heaven, and Lyra and Will have been separated. They must find each other and journey onward – even into the World of the Dead…

These thrilling dramatisations feature an all-star cast, including Lulu Popplewell, Terence Stamp, Bill Paterson, Kenneth Cranham and Adrian Scarborough.

Also included is a bonus documentary, World Book Club, in which Philip Pullman answers readers’ questions about Northern Lights.

Reviews

These short, punchy sketches are wickedly funny, oddly affecting and completely life-affirming.

—— Deirdre O'Brien , Sunday Mirror

Very funny... The kind of book that you read in public at your own risk

—— Herald Scotland

The Librarian will wring the heart of anyone who fell in love with books as a child. It is a hymn to the power of literature...delightful

—— The Times on 'The Librarian'

A nostalgic treat...involving and hopeful

—— Mail on Sunday on 'The Librarian'

Miss Tyler never loses her control. She writes with virtuosity and perfect confidence, insight and compassion

—— The Times

The book’s interest comes almost entirely from its strangeness – its world continues to be charmingly, earnestly weird.

—— Roger Bellin , Literary Review

He is a proven master with an increasingly wilful streak, always a writer to excite, while for a reader with a fondness for backing a good horse, here it is. While it is always dangerous to push an as yet unpublished work, but in the case of Coetzee, this could be a book of the year, never mind an expected contender.

—— Eileen Battersby , Irish Times

[It is] surprisingly involving...richly suggestive.

—— Stephanie Cross , Daily Mail

Freed from literary convention, Mr Coetzee writes not to provide answers, but to ask great questions.

—— The Economist

[A] tenaciously absorbing sequel.

—— Duncan White , Sunday Telegraph

It’s a subtly different project from the strenuous fictions that won Coetzee his Nobel and two Man Booker prizes: still intense but, by his standards, a bit rambling yet oddly focused. Perhaps what we’re seeing is Coetzee having fun. There are certainly times in the novel...when I pictured the ghost of a smile behind the page.

—— Christopher Taylor , Financial Times

[A] captivating tale.

—— Amy Hunt , Woman & Home

It will keep you philosophically and morally on the edge of your seat throughout.

—— Maggie Gee , Guardian

[It] is pleasingly baffling, suggesting hidden depths and multiple layers without ever quite revealing them.

—— Alex Preston , Observer, Book of the Year

What stands out, and stays with you, is the fable-like aura which makes this feel like a children’s book for adults.

—— Theo Hobson , Tablet, Book of the Year

Coetzee doesn’t want to be understood, or explained. He wants, merely, to be read. The Schooldays of Jesus is, indeed, very readable.

—— John Sutherland , The Times

The prose is limpid, the plot simple, the style hypnotic, but what it all means I wouldn’t like to say.

—— Simon Shaw , Mail on Sunday

The best poetry out since Warsan Shire.

—— Symeon Brown

A fast-paces, dense, poetic, original and bewitching story by an important new writer. That Reminds Me will long be remembered by readers.

—— Alain Mabanckou

Deserves the same recognition that greeted Max Porter's similarly constructed fictionalised memoir Grief is the Thing With Feathers... uses its broken-up style to explore experiences that defy easy comprehension. There is nothing indulgent about this quietly observed account of a black man Owusu gives the name of K... There is a physicality to his writing, the impression of incoherent feelings being wrestled into shape, that lends his book heft. K's future is, in the end, ambiguous, but Owusu's surely gleams bright.

—— Claire Allfree , Metro

A bold prose poem written in novella form, That Reminds Me is one of the most powerful pieces of writing to be published in 2019.

—— Foyles

The latest release from Stormzy's increasingly impressive #Merky imprint, this is a stylistically ambitious memoir of a precarious Tottenham upbringing. Owusu writes with a poet's gift for seemingly incidental observation in a potent story that's left deliberately, troublingly fragmented.

—— Metro

A virtuosic debut by a raw new talent. An honest and timely evaluation of a black man's struggle to belong and later come to terms with failing mental health. Utterly convincing and deeply sad, Owusu's storytelling will bring readers to tears.

—— Scarlett Sangster , The Irish News

Derek Owusu is not just a brilliant writer, he’s a deep thinker. Anything he does is relevant, and meaningful. It would be easy to say that he is mainly concerned with the condition of young black men, but in truth he speaks truth to all of us.

—— Benjamin Zephaniah

A magnificent achievement.

—— Paul Gilroy

Written with candour and verve, and full of moments of heart-stopping anguish and beauty.

—— Stephen Kelman
Comments
Welcome to zzdbook comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.zzdbook.com All Rights Reserved