At 2.30pm tomorrow, Saturday 21st February, tune into BBC Radio 4 to hear Toby Jones and Samantha Bond in Paul Mendelson's radio dramatisation of CS Forester's classic World War I novel THE AFRICAN QUEEN, set in German Central Africa. Click here to stream it live, or to find it on iPlayer catchup.

“It’s a brave team who will have a go at surpassing the 1951 John Huston film of CS Forester’s story but here’s Toby Jones in the Humphrey Bogart role and Samantha Bond in the Katherine Hepburn one... Paul Mendelson’s script is deft, the acting superb, the production a delight.” - Gillian Reynolds, The Telegraph

THE STORY:

Rose Sayer’s work as a missionary comes to an abrupt end when the village she lives in with her brother, Reverend Samuel Sayer, is invaded by the German army. Samuel dies of fever and Rose blames the ungodly Germans for having ground him down and frightened off the entire village.

Patriotically but naively, Rose conceives of blowing up a German warship, thus helping the war effort. She convinces cowardly Cockney Charlie Allnut to lend his rickety steam-powered boat, The African Queen, to the cause. He has offered to give Rose a lift in his boat to get away from the village and the Germans, so reluctantly goes along with her plan. If they manage to survive German attacks, rapids, malaria and mechanical mishaps, will they be able to survive each other?

The novel was the basis for the highly popular Hollywood movie of the same name. Paul Mendelson's dramatisation goes back to the novel, reinstating Forester's original ending and giving Charlie his Cockney identity back.

With Samantha Bond as Rose; Toby Jones as Charlie; Stephen Critchlow as Samuel Sayer; Mark Edel-Hunt as German Sailor; and David Acton as German Sea Captain.

Music composed and played by Gary C Newman
Producer/Director: David Ian Neville
Written by Paul Mendelson

The classic twenties crime trilogy. Dramatised for the first time ever. Starting this Saturday...

CS Forester's

LONDON NOIR

Dramatised by Paul Mendelson

Directed by David Ian Neville.

with Sophie Thompson, Richard Lumsden, Tessa Peake Jones, Sam Dale, Rebecca Lacey, Brian Dicks... and Greg Wise as CS Forester

Pick of the Day: Sunday Times 'Perfect' ...Mail on Sunday 'Heinous' ... Radio Times 'Gripping'

Saturdays April 5th, 12th and 19th, 2.30pm on BBC Radio 4.

Anything can happen behind closed doors

Most famous for his Hornblower series, C.S. Forester wrote three seminal psychological thrillers at the start of his career that took crime writing in a new direction, portraying ordinary, desperate people committing monstrous acts, and showing events spiralling terribly, chillingly, out of control.

In Payment Deferred set in 1926, William Marble, a bank clerk living in south London with his wife Annie and their two children, is desperately worried about money and is in grave danger of losing his house and job. An unexpected visit by a young relative with an inheritance tempts William to commit a heinous crime.

Plain Murder takes us into a 1930s London advertising agency. Morris, Oldroyd and Reddy, have been caught taking bribes. One of their colleagues threatens to blow the whistle on them. Instant dismissal will inevitably be the result, and at a time of severe unemployment, their future prospects are bleak. Morris, a menacing bully, offers them a road out of their dilemma - a perfect murder, cleverly disguised as a tragic accident. But is there such a thing as the perfect murder?

The Pursued is a dark tale of retribution.

When Marjorie finds Dorothy, her pretty young sister, lying dead with her head in the oven the obvious assumption is suicide. But the girl’s mother, Mrs Clair, a tough-minded woman, is not convinced. She believes that Dorothy was murdered by Marjorie’s cheating husband Ted. Unable to prove her theory, Mrs Clair begins to cook up a secret, terrible revenge.