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The Woman in White
The Woman in White
Nov 11, 2025 2:49 AM

Author:Wilkie Collins,Toby Stephens,Juliet Aubrey,Full Cast

The Woman in White

Toby Stephens and Juliet Aubrey star in a BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Wilkie Collins’ chilling Gothic drama

A lonely stretch of road on Hampstead Heath is the venue for Walter Hartright’s midnight first encounter with a mysteriously distressed figure in white. As he helps the woman to escape from unnamed pursuers, he has little understanding of the way she will affect his future.

At Limmeridge House, in Cumberland, Walter meets and falls in love with Laura, who strangely resembles the woman in white. She, however, is soon to marry the financially embarrassed Sir Percival Glyde. Events at Limmeridge take a surprising turn when Anne Catherick arrives, and Walter recognises her as the mystery figure.

It appears that Anne’s recent incarceration in a mental asylum was at the behest of Sir Percival, who is all too aware of the secret she holds. More than one life will be lost before Walter’s mystery of the woman in white can be fully explained.

A strong cast brings Wilkie Collins’ tale to life in this BBC Radio 4 production, recorded on location at Beacon Hill, London in 2001

Reviews

Unputdownable . . . [The End of the Story] freed me from the preconceptions I had then about the way novels were supposed to work . . . it deals with the heat and the thirst of infatuation, the desperation to find an end to the torment when a desired object won't reciprocate

—— Olivia Sudjic , Observer, 'Summer Reads 2023'

Can't and Won't is the most revolutionary collection of stories by an American in twenty-five years

—— John Freeman , Boston Globe

Lydia Davis's short stories are perfected economies, witty devices, precision-made, primed to release intelligence, philosophy, hilarity. They celebrate the thinking universe while they redefine the possibilities of the form. There is no other writer quite like her

—— Ali Smith

Davis is a high priestess of the startling, telling detail. . . one of the best writers in America

—— Colm Tóibín , Daily Telegraph

Her work is exquisite, finely wrought and devastating. . . Read her now!

—— A. M. Homes

Extraordinary

—— Newsday

Breathtakingly elegant

—— Details

Brilliant

—— New Yorker

A gripping novel of forbidden passion and intrigue

—— Woman & Home

A thoughtful read

—— HNR

A well-researched page-turner

—— Guardian

Delightfully written with pathos, intrigue and mystery on every page

—— Northern Life Magazine

I devoured it in one sitting and absolutely adored it

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Unforgettable . . . I almost cried because all the feelings it made me feel

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—— PopGoesTheReader

Goldsworthy’s mischievous debut updates that constant trope about gaining the world and losing your soul in a contemporary London setting that is two parts Bulgakov to one part Richard Curtis’s Notting Hill

—— Michael Conaghan , Belfast Telegraph Morning

Albert has made a novel that approaches depression and maternal anxiety with candid honesty, transforming writing on motherhood forever

—— Aaron Calvin , AskMen UK

A hilarious, honest, and eye-opening book, this is a must have for any new mum or mum-to-be

—— Mummy Pages

Funny and heartfelt

—— i (The paper for today)

Ms. Moran['s] ... funny and cheerfully dirty coming-of-age novel has a hard kernel of class awareness ... sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways.

—— Dwight Garner , New York Times

there’s so much real feeling too. Johanna’s vulnerability and bravado, as she moves out of her world and falls in love is beautifully done’ or ‘ and running through it all, with a visceral power that most writers should envy, is the shame and grinding anxiety of being poor

—— Sunday Times

Moran also writes brilliantly about music, and especially about what music can do. She carries Johanna through this novel with incredible verve, extravagant candour, and a lot of heart. Johanna is … a wonderful heroine. A heroine who cares, who bravely sallies forth and makes things happen, who gives of herself, who is refreshingly unashamed. She’s so confident, it’s glorious

—— The Independent on Sunday

an entertaining read, with Moran in fine voice – hilarious, wild, imaginative and highly valuable…Moran is in danger of becoming to female masturbation what Keats was to Nightingales…

—— Barbara Ellen , The Observer

rude, big-hearted, wise-cracking novel…so filthy she’ll make you blush

—— Christina Patterson , The Sunday Times

This is going to be a bestseller…A sharp, hilarious and controversial read

—— The Bookseller

Ali Smith is a master of language. Vigorous, vivid writing that is Ali Smith incarnate

—— Alice Thompson , Herald

Ingeniously conceived, gloriously inventive

—— NPR

Dizzyingly ambitious . . . endlessly artful, creating work that feels infinite in its scope and intimate at the same time. [A] swirling panoramic

—— Atlantic

Brilliant . . . the sort of death-defying storytelling acrobatics that don't seem entirely possible

—— Washington Post

Having read this now twice, in both directions so to speak, I've decided - and I do not write this flippantly - that Ali Smith is a genius

—— Susan McCallum , LA Review of Books

Approaches the world as only a novel can. The book moves not so much in a straight line as in a twisting helix pattern . . . delivers the heat of life and the return of beauty in the face of loss

—— Kenneth Miller , Everyday Ebook

A unique conversation between past and present

—— Milwaukee Journal

Wildly inventive . . . lyrical, fresh

—— Bustle Magazine
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