BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture English Culture Book and Movie Recommendations

Hi all,
This forum has been a bit...dare I say it?...dead lately. So in the interest of getting some conversation going again, I would like to ask you what books and/or movies about English culture that you would recommend. It's possible I may have already read it or seen it, but I might get some new ideas, and some other people may benefit from your recommendations as well.

Not books and films as such however, do you ever listen to the BBC over the internet? There are often serialisations of literature and a wealth of other programmes which are available on demand or listen live via bbc.com. Radio 4 is news, drama and comedy and radio 7 offers reruns of previously heard programmes. These are all free to access over the internet.

Next week radio 7 are starting a rerun of some Sherlock Holmes dramas and these are fantastic and well worth a listen - yes, I am a bbc addict!

Kate

Has anyone read the Lucia series? I have Lucia Victrix and Lucia Rising - they were gifts from a friend in Yorkshire. I confess I haven't read them yet, but they are supposed to be hilarious.

Speaking of Yorkshire... remember the James Herriot "All Creatures Great and Small" and those books? His descriptions of the Yorkshire countryside were dead on. It all looked exactly as I pictured it from reading his books.

Actually, I have a friend in Birmingham who will send me a message if there's something on the BBC that he thinks I would like to hear. So I have listened to the radio shows before. They are nice.

I haven't read the Lucia series. Worth checking out, I suppose, if they are funny.

I tried to read All Creatures Great and Small and just could not get into it. I ended up putting down after about 100 pages or so. It's a shame too, because that's such a well loved and classic book.

Hi all

Books and shows I have loved:

Pride and Prejudice (BBC version) and the book
Wuthering Heights (wild Yorkshire, and very unchanged today)
Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett TV)
All Creatures (TV)
Four Weddings and a Funeral (wacky eccentric Brits)

Evelyn Waugh- Brideshead Revisited and other novels.
Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novels- for descriptions of Oxford.

Just a few off the top of my head.

My forum at British Telly is dead as a dodo right now. Drop over sometime !

Cheers

It's been ages since I've read Wuthering Heights! Maybe I should pick it up again. I think I read it in middle school and don't remember that much about it. And since I went through Yorkshire last summer, I would be able to get a mental image of the scenery.

Oooh, Wuthering Heights...great book. Romance, ghosts it has it all...

Very North Yorkshire though...I remember walking the area and being told by my English teacher which spots had been Emily's inspiration. What wild and wonderful countryside.

Haworth itself is a very resonant place. I found the parsonage where they lived very spooky...all the little books they wrote as kids, and necklaces made from braided hair. Such a tragic family

Happy reading !

I love the James Herriot "All Creatures Great and Small" books and TV shows as well. Coincidentally, I've been re-reading the books (for about the 10th time) and I have series 2 on DVD I've been rewatching as well.

ITV has been showing all kinds of great British mini-series recently. In the last year, they've shown:

- Brideshead Revisited
- The Jewel in the Crown
- Robin of Sherwood
- Horatio Hornblower
- Forever Green
- Upstairs Downstairs

It was so great to get re-aquainted with all of these shows, some of which I haven't seen for 20 years.