The Secret Commonwealth

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The Secret Commonwealth: Episode 2

Episode 2

BBC Radio 4 - The Secret Commonwealth, Episode 2

Lyra reads the dead man’s mysterious journals. Book at Bedtime.

Lyra and Pantalaimon investigate the murdered man’s belongings. However the Magisterium’s agents are already in Oxford. A Book at Bedtime read by Simon Russell Beale.

Simon Russell Beale reads the second volume of Philip Pullman’s acclaimed The Book of Dust trilogy.  A specially commissioned abridged reading for BBC Radio 4's  Book at Bedtime.

It is twenty years since the events of La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One unfolded and saw the baby Lyra Belacqua begin her life-changing journey.

It is seven years since readers left Lyra and the love of her young life, Will Parry, on a park bench in Oxford’s Botanic Gardens at the end of the ground-breaking, bestselling His Dark Materials sequence.

Now, in The Secret Commonwealth, we meet Lyra Silvertongue. And she is no longer a child...

The second volume of Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her dæmon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed. They must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford, across Europe and into Asia, in search for what is lost – a city haunted by dæmons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust.

Reader, Simon Russell Beale
Writer, Philip Pullman
Abridger, Doreen Estall
Producer, Michael Shannon

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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Drama: SciFi & Fantasy

Simon Russell Beale reads the second volume of Philip Pullman's Book of Dust trilogy.

Simon Russell Beale reads the second volume of Philip Pullman's acclaimed The Book of Dust trilogy.

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