JANE AUSTEN – a graceful world

40 years ago Jane Austen had her ardent followers but to most people she was unknown. Nowadays, thanks to changing views on the role of women in our lives her sharp wit and wonderful portrayal of human character are much valued. Amazingly she spent the whole of her...

The English poet William Blake, born in London in 1757 was a most remarkable and talented man. HIs poetry was extensive and some of it much revered today but he was also a painter and a man of extremely strong views on things like religion and politics. His views flow throughout his work: he was ...

The three Brontë sisters Charlotte (b 1816) Emily (b 1818) and Anne (b 1820) were all born in the remote village of Thornton in Yorkshire, England. They spent most of their lives not far away at Haworth where their father was priest in the local protestant church of England. They were largely ed...

Poets usually come from a background used to the written word. Not Burns. His father was an illiterate ploughman and as a youngster he too tilled the land. But he also got an education, wrote poetry, got it published and became the toast of the educated society of his day - 18th century Scotland....

This film by Malcolm Hossick explores the life and work of the Chinese sage known to the west as Confucius. He did not found a religion and there is nothing about what he said which we have to believe. But the ideas about government and how humans should behave if they wish to live a frutiful lif...

Born in Florence, Italy and a writer whose major work is a vast poem called The Divine Comedy about a journey to the underworld, Dante might be thought a tall order for most people to digest 750 years later. However for sheer imaginative power Dante is hard to beat. This film by Malcolm Hossick u...

Daniel Foe was born in Cripplegate, London in 1660, the son of a tallow chandler. His father was a dissenter in religion with strong puritan views. Defoe was sent to a dissenters academy in Newington where he received a good education. But his religious views cut him off from the mainstream activ...

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, a naval town on the south coast of England where his father worked in the naval dockyard. The father was not much good at organising his affairs so they slowly slid from relative comfort into serious poverty. Dickens ended up aged 12 working in a factory ma...

The film by Malcolm Hossick follows the life and work of the American poet Emily Dickinson. She was born and lived in the little New England town of Amherst where her father was a prominent lawyer. She lived a very reclusive life in a community bound together by strong religious views and where t...

John Donne was born into a fascinating and creative period of human history. He got the best education on offer in the England of Queen Elizabeth and hardly out of his teens he was recognised as a poet of astonishing ability. In a period when the pace was set by no less a mortal than Shakespeare,...

George Eliot was born Mary Anne Evans in 1819 in a small English town. Her father ran the estate of the local landowner.    She had an excellent education in local schools    and took up journalism. In a world where women had few rights and chances of making much of their lives she began writing ...

Faulkner was one of the most significant American writers of the 20th century. He dealt fearlessly and imaginatively with the difficult world he found around him in the southern states where he grew up. No one can read his novels without being touched and involved and at the same time excited and...

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St Paul Minnesota into a fairly well-off family. He began his first novel while at Princeton University and very shortly after leaving it was accepted by Scribners and successfully published. He went on to be the prophet of the Jazz age of the twenties but his popu...

Goethe was born in Frankfurt on Main, Germany, into a well-to-do family. He made some attempts to become a lawyer but eventually began writing poetry and novels. He was immediately successful at a young age. He joined the court of the Duke of Weimar and from there became accepted as the greatest ...

Hardy was born near Dorchester in Dorset into a stable tradesman’s family, not the background most likely to produce a remarkable literary figure. His father was a stonemason. He was educated at local schools, trained as an architect and went to London to further his career. He wrote his first ...

Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804. He went to nearby Bowdoin College where he met other literary figures such as Longfellow, and determined to be a writer. His novels are mostly set in in New England, the land he knew best and they reflect his liberal view of life in contrast to...

Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, a wealthy suburb of Chicago. He became a reporter on the Kansas City Star at the age of 18, then went to Italy to serve for a few months in the war. His first novel was published in 1926 and he achieved tremendous popularity almost at once. His stories have ...

A film by Malcolm Hossick about the life and work of the celebrated French novelist Victor Hugo.
Hugo’s position in the world of literature has rarely been equalled. Born the son of a General under Napoleon Bonaparte, at an early age he began writing. His fearless stance for the rights of the com...

A film by Malcolm Hossick about the life and work of the American novelist Henry James.

Johnson is not the usual literary figure with a bundle of novels to his name but he can claim to be an important force in developing literature all the same. He was born in the small country town of Lichfield in middle England. His father was a bookseller whose business was gradually failing. Joh...

James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882 at a time when the Catholic church dominated society. He was sent first to a Jesuit school but had to leave after three years because his father could no longer afford the fees. He went to another Jesuit school in Dublin and then to University College there....

A film by Malcolm Hossick about the life and work of the unusual Czeck writer Franz Kafka.

A film by Malcolm Hossick about the life and work of the English poet John Keats.

Lawrence is a remarkable example of of someone from a limited background making good. Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. His father was a coalminer and his mother a schoolteacher. His considerable talents got him into nearby Nottingham University College. After a turbulent but ultim...

This film by Malcolm Hossick is about the 19th century American novelist Heman Melville, best known for the tale of Moby Dick about the astonishing struggle between the captain of a whaling ship and a whale. Melville was in many ways ahead of his times for his insights into human behaviour and al...

Montaigne was a French aristocrat born in the midde of the 16th century a while before Shakespeare. He wrote essays about his views on life and in particular about himself. They are wise and amusing, honest and quite unique and just as pertinent today as they were in this own times. This film by...

Many folk would rate Orwell as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He went to Eton, the top school for the elite of English society and he served for a time as a police officer in Burma. So to end up as a novelist writing some of the most socially disturbing works ever penned...

Poe’s name is well known in the US and elsewhere. His stories have chilled the hearts of many and inspired film makers to great heights. But his life and the struggles he had to achieve his goals were such that most of us would have given up very early on. This film by Malcolm Hossick goes some ...

Proust was born the son of a wealthy Parisian doctor and had an easy entry into the higher echelons of French society. His knowledge of this world was the background to his astonishing series of novels called A La Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past). He did not have an early suc...

The Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott was the first real literary super star. Already an established poet and much valued by the readers of his day when he began to write novels his career took off and he is now recognised as one of the great pioneers of the hstorical novel, valued by readers acro...

The film takes the form of a 2-part documentary by Malcolm Hossick. It's not too much to claim that the English playwright Shakespeare is the best known figure in world literature.    His works have been translated into every known written language on earth. English for various reasons has become...

Part two looks at four of the plays in detail, the words, the images, the dramatic techniques he used. (Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, The Tempest.) It's no use pretending that it is easy to get to grips with – the verse, the brilliant use of language and ideas - they are compli...

The irish writer George Bernard Shaw lived and worked well into his nineties so it’s not surprising to discover that he wrote lots of plays and lots of prose. He was also an irrepressible character so he was as well known for his loudly voiced opinions as he was for his art. Few of those who have...

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas California in 1902. He studied literature at Stanford University and developed an unremitting commitment to novel writing. Few who knew him would argue that he was also a very difficult person to get along with, having decided views on things and confident in hi...

 Few writers gain the popularity and high regard enjoyed by the American writer Mark Twain. Over a long writing life he achieved immense success with a wide range of novels and essays on every topic under the sun. His characters Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have become almost legendary for rea...

The French writer Voltaire was born the son of a prominent lawyer and from his earliest days showed a precocious literary talent. He wrote plays and novels and historical and philosophical works and his outspokeness constantly landed him in trouble with the authorities. He spent much of his enorm...

A taste for writing poetry was not something easily digested in the rough and ready and very manly (as the majority saw it) United States of the middle of the 19th century. But Walt Whitman was a resolute and tenacious person who in spite of prevailing prejudices published his most famous book o...

Oscar Wilde was one of the most brilliant writers in English at the end of the 19th century. His plays made the world laugh or cry and his novels and stories charmed children or stirred their elders. The tale of his tragic downfall however – ending in a prison sentence, caused by the society of h...

Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882. Her father was Leslie Stephen, a writer and literary editor. She was educated privately and in an age when women hardly counted in the educated world she grew up surrounded and accepted as an equal by her brothers and their University friends living in t...

You might say Wordsworth was born to be a poet as everything in his life seemed to point in the direction of serenity and peace. He grew up in a beautiful part of England, was very well educated and returned to spend most of his life peacefully on home ground. He became almost a symbol of the rom...

William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland. His father was a successful artist and from an early age Yeats determined to be and was soon accepted as a poet. On the London literary scene he became a leading light and in Dublin was instrumental in setting up an Irish Theatre. He became the re...

Bach is now recognised as one of the key pillars of the new world of music created in the Renaissance. But it was not always so. He was born in Germany into a talented musical family. His astonishing musical gifts showed at an early age and by his late teens he was organist at the local church an...

It is hard to over-estimate the contribution Beethoven made to the development of music. He was born into a musical family in Bonn, was well taught and generally well educated. When his astounding musical talent began to emerge with the support of his local ruler he went to Vienna to further his ...

Brahms was born in Hamburg into a poor but musical family. Fortunately his talent was early recognised and he received devoted and first class tuition from local musicians in Hamburg a sophisticated and musical city. Brahms settled in Vienna where he came to be recognised as one of the great musi...

The 19th century Polish composer Frederic Chopin is unique in that he composed almost exclusively for his own instrument, the piano. As a pianist his technique was quite original and his teachers wisely let it be. He had an astonishing talent for improvisation. As a composer he was a perfectionis...

Poor boy makes good to an astonishing degree is the story of Joseph Haydn. He was born into a simple rural community where his father worked for the local landowner. Joseph's musical talents developed in local church choirs and his fine voice took him to the choir of St Stephen's in the heart of ...

Mahler was born into a poor jewish family in a small town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His astonishing musical talent carried him from there to the heights of music in his day as a conductor and composer. His vast musical landscapes have made him into one of the most admired composers in the m...

Super stars in any field are rare. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was certainly one. He was born into a musical family in 18th century Austria and his  extraordinary musical talent was evident at an early age. As a child prodigy he travelled to all the capitals of Europe and developed into one of the  g...

Born in the beautiful old Tuscan city of Lucca in 1858 you could argue Puccini was destined to be a composer. For generations his family had been at the centre of musical life in the city and showing early promise in music making perhaps it was inevitable that he should follow suit.. But few coul...

Schubert was born the son of a modest schoolmaster in a suburb of Vienna. He became a singer in the choir of the court chapel. His precarious life struggling to survive from his compositions was enlivened by the group of friends among whom he lived and who supported him and valued his work. He ac...

Sibelius was born in Finland. He learned to play the violin and after studying music for a while set out to be a composer. He developed a unique style and was steeped in the literature and natural beauty of his native land which inspired his music. These nordic roots have not stopped him becoming...

The lifetime of Richard Strauss straddled the two terrible wars of the first half of the 20th century. That such glorious music came out it is little short of a miracle. Strauss was born in Munich into a very musical family. He showed talent for composition at an early age and had his first symph...

Igor Stravinsky was born in 1882 into a musical family in the little town of Lermontov near St Petersburg. His father was principal bass singer at the opera there, so music was part of his life. He studied at the St Petersburg conservatioire under Rimsky Korsakov and was soon making an impression...

Tchaikovsky was born into a modest family on the bottom rank of the Russian aristocracy. His father was a mining engineer and after an early education from a French governess Tchaikovsky was sent to the School of Jurisprudence in St Petersburg. A Music Conservatory opened there shortly afterwards...

Verdi was born in the tiny and remote village of Roncole near Busetto a town in the then principality of Parma, Italy. His musical talent was discovered by his local priest and with the help of a local businessman he was given a good general education and under the local organist a fine training ...

Wagner was born in Leipzig into the family of a government official. However his father died only a year or two later and his mother remarried. His stepfather was an actor in the theatre at Dresden giving Wagner an exceptionally vivid experience of the theatre which was to be the basis of his gre...

A fascinating account  of the life and times of the philosopher and scientist Aristotle; probably the most influential man who ever lived. Unlike prophets and philosophers of later years Aristotle did not preach and tell us what to do. He simply worked on various ways of finding out things and de...

This film, shot in 1972 on 16mm film by Malcolm Hossick is a historic item in it's own right. The film traces the development of Bangkok and the Chakri dynasty of kings from their beginnings in the mid 18th century up to that time, now almost fifty years ago. At that time the wave of tourism whic...

CHINA: In the Shadow of Mr Kong. 5 X 50 mins The general introduction is followed by the Unit breakdown then details of Part 1 (each part has chapter points to locate sections.):

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Mr Kong, known as Kong Fu to the Chinese and as Confucius to the outside world, was a sort of ph...

CHINA: In the Shadow of Mr Kong. 5 X 50 mins The general introduction is followed by the Unit breakdown then details of Part 1 (each part has chapter points to locate sections.):

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Mr Kong, known as Kong Fu to the Chinese and as Confucius to the outside world, was a sort of ph...

CHINA: In the Shadow of Mr Kong. 5 X 50 mins The general introduction is followed by the Unit breakdown then details of Part 1 (each part has chapter points to locate sections.):

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Mr Kong, known as Kong Fu to the Chinese and as Confucius to the outside world, was a sort of ph...

CHINA: In the Shadow of Mr Kong. 5 X 50 mins The general introduction is followed by the Unit breakdown then details of Part 1 (each part has chapter points to locate sections.):

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Mr Kong, known as Kong Fu to the Chinese and as Confucius to the outside world, was a sort of ph...

CHINA: In the Shadow of Mr Kong. 5 X 50 mins The general introduction is followed by the Unit breakdown then details of Part 1 (each part has chapter points to locate sections.):

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Mr Kong, known as Kong Fu to the Chinese and as Confucius to the outside world, was a sort of ph...

Democracy and the discovery of individual worth: a film by Malcolm Hossick.
Democracy is the hottest topic on earth you might say. Nations which adopt it far oustrip any others in human development and success. But hereditary rulers are not democratic. Familiy structures are not democratic. Most...

Enlightenment - and what it means to us: a film by Malcolm Hossick about the development of democratic ideas in France leading up to the revolution in 1789 and how these ideas have advanced up to our own times.Anyone with the slightest knowledge of politics in the UK and the US today knows that t...

The Janus Effect: Janus was the Roman God who looked both ways and embodies the idea of someone who appears to hold different and contradictory ideas at the same time. Film maker Malcolm Hossick explores how this affected the lives of three remarkable men - Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson and Charle...

This half hour film considers how the novel came into being and why it is so important for humanity. In most modern societies the novel is ubiquitous but it is a relatively recent development in human affairs and in the view of film-maker Malcolm Hossick, as a means of opening up the individual t...

The Renaissance has long been seen as a period in Art History where we look and rightly wonder at the work of such artists as Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo. However understanding how such remarkable artists came into being and what they were actually reflecting in the history of mankind is th...

Botticelli was one of a remarkable clutch of painters working in Florence, Italy, around the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century. Anyone who is at all interested in painting can hardly resist Botticelli. He doesn't easily fit any category. You can't say he just promotes religion or ...

Leonardo is famous all over the world as the man who painted the Mona Lisa. But he was a very unusual painter. He did not complete many paintings and his interests ranged over a wide variety of subjects. He was very unorthodox in an age which was just opening up to the new renaissance ideas on sc...

Munch - suspecting the truth. a film by Malcolm Hossick. Edvard Munch was born in 1863 not long after Darwin's celebrated work on the Origin of Spieces. If ever there was a painter reflecting a massive change in how human beings view the world about them it was surely Munch. In spite of virulent ...

The film traces how humans beings have made 'art' from the earliest recorded times. Until the fundamental changes in the way human societies viewed themselves we know as the Renaissance, artists were the servants of the rulers. This is true of all human groups throughout the world. Now in the age...

Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 the 5th child of a respected Dutch Protestant priest. Largely self taught he only settled on becoming an artist in his late twenties. He was very practical and knew the difficulties of what he wanted to do. He suffered from depression but in a working career of a...

The Songs of Innocence and Experience by the 18th century english poet William Blake are unusual on two counts: the poems themselves deal with very down to earth human topics in a clear and straightforward way and as Blake was also a painter and engraver he illustrated them and block printed them...

Poetry has always had a secure place in China and these two poets Li t’ai Bo and Wu fu lie at its heart. Translated in the early 20th century by an Englishwoman Florence Ayescough and worked over by the Americn poet Amy Lowell they bring to non Chinese speakers a distinctive flavour of China at i...

The Inferno part 1 (Cantos 1 – 11) 1/9 – Hell, is the first of the three parts of Dante's poem and in it he begins his visit to the underworld.. At first he finds a group of people who lived before Christ, the founder of Christianity. They are in a place called Limbo. It's not hell, but it's not ...

Inferno part 2(Cantos 12 – 22)The grizzly experience of Hell continues. It's dramatic and terrifying, with horrible creatures flying around and people suffering dreadful agonies, again and again, perpetually. Dante doesn't mince words. All the concupiscence, calumny and treachery of humanity is l...

Inferno part 3 (Cantos 23 – 34) 3/9 In Canto 31 they meet the giants, wonderfully drawn by Botticelli. From a distance at first they seem like the towers of a castle. One of these is Nimrod who used his strength unwisely to build the tower of Babel. This resulted in the many languages humans spea...

Purgatory part 1 (Cantos 1 – 11) 4/9 Purgatory was a clever invention of the Church around the 11th century. In Purgatory - a sort of halfway house to Heaven the dead who have not been so bad in life suffer, but not so much and after a bit perhaps can be allowed to enter Heaven. Back home folks c...

Purgatory part 2 (Cantos 12 – 22) 5/9 In canto 13 they meet people who were envious. Their eyelids are sewn open with wires. It's not clear how long they suffer this before going up to heaven. Around them Dante and Virgil begin to hear, instead of the winds and torrents of hell, sounds of celesti...

Purgatory part 3 (Cantos 23 – 33) 6/9 Progressing through Purgatory the poets meet a woman called Matilda (Canto 28)who begins to introduce them to the ideas behind the goal of everyone which is to enter heaven, where she explains lies a serene contemplative life; it is no longer a world of actio...

Paradise part 1 (Cantos 1 – 11) 7/9 Everyone has his or her own idea of Paradise. By this time anyone who is following the poem has become so drawn into the intensity of Dante's experience that it is no surprise to find that everything about Heaven and the ideas it represents, Dante is perfectly ...

Paradise part 2 (Cantos 12 - 22) 8/9In Canto 19 Dante, with his usual honesty, presents the idea that people who have never heard of Christ can be closer to him in their way of living than many who profess to adore him. Sadly however, as they do not 'know' Christ, convention does not allow them t...

Paradise part 3 (Cantos 23 – 33) 9/9 In Canto 23 the triumph of Christ is visible. It is what we have been leading up to and it is what Dante's audience would expect. It all falls out as Beatrice predicts. Between canto 25 and 26 Dante meets St John and is dazzled to the point of blindness. Howe...

A short collection of poems in the Screenbook format by Thomas Hardy and read by Malcolm Hossick. Hardy's poetry is clear and direct and here he laments the death of his first wife in subtle and moving terms. Some things just can't be said except perhaps through poetry and here it happens in exe...

A selection of 25 sonnets from the 154 which Shakepeare wrote read by Malcolm Hossick. The sonnet form of 14 lines in a regular pattern is brilliantly exploited in these poems about love, it's transcience and frailty. Audiobooks as a source are one thing but here in Screenbooks where the printed ...

Gitanjali - a collection of Poems by the Indian/Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore in an Englsh version made by the poet himself and read in Ascreenbook format by Malcolm Hossick.

A collection of poems by the Irish poet W B Yeats in the Screenbook format, read by Malcolm Hossick. Yeats had a unique talent for poetry and found his voice early in life. In the rising tide of Irish nationalism he was seen as a great Irish voice but his poetry has magic of its own which resonat...

Mrs Alving, a modern woman is a well off widow in late 19th century Norway. She is intending to build an orphanage as a memorial to her late husband. Her son has been educated away from home and is now an artist in Paris. He returns home it seems in time for the opening of the orphanage. Mrs Alvi...

This film explores the lives and times of the ancient Greek Dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and why they matter in the modern world. It explains how these writers operated in the theatres of their day and how they have effected the work of all playwrights since then. Examples of the...

Henrik Ibsen was born in the small unpretentious coastal town of Skien in Norway about as far from the cultural heart of Europe at the time as could be. His family were middle class burghers and he worked as an apprentice to an apothecary before going to Oslo to study. He began writing plays whic...