China Towns: Based on the Five Towns Novels: BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations Audiobook (Free)

Neil Dudgeon and Tim McInnerny celebrity in this epic story of money, interest and defiance, inspired with the ‘Five Cities’ novels of Arnold Bennett

In this radical reinterpretation of Arnold Bennett’s classic novels set in the Staffordshire potteries, it is the 19th Century and the Industrial Revolution reaches full throttle. Only the ruthless thrive with this uncompromising globe – and Ephraim Tellwright and Darius Clayhanger are both driven to succeed.

From humble beginnings, both of these self-made men about China Towns: Predicated on the Five Towns Books: BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations have risen to become wealthy and powerful. Right now, they hold the fate from the Five Cities within their hands, moving judgement on those who put the success and reputation of their community at risk…

Over 11 hours and nearly 40 years, we follow them, their descendants and the inhabitants of Bursley and the Five Towns, as individuals rise, fall, flourish, age and start to see the world around them become unrecognisable, transformed by new technology. Fortunes are lost, hearts broken, empires constructed and compromises made.

These tales of aspiration and passion, damage and danger are told with Bennett’s forensic eye for human being psychology and a astonishing amount of witty comedy, and show a star cast including Emma Cunniffe, Kate O’Flynn, Don Gilet and Rebekah Staton.