Aldous Huxley: A BBC Radio Collection

A BBC Radio Collection adapts Aldous Huxley works into full-cast dramas and readings, totaling over nine hours of audio. The selection highlights Huxley’s range, from satire and dark comedy to dystopian fiction and biographical commentary. Stories included span multiple decades and genres: Mike Harris’s radio adaptation of Antic Hay, a BBC dramatisation of the West End adaptation The Gioconda Smile, and a Radio 4 adaptation of Brave New World. Brave New World presents Soma as a freely available drug within a future totalitarian dystopia, tying Huxley’s speculative worldbuilding to questions of control and pleasure. The collection also features The Devils of Loudun in a radio version focused on mass hysteria and alleged demonic possession, The Dwarves based on Crome Yellow, and readings of several 1920s short stories. A concluding biographical documentary, All Those Vile Bodies, frames Huxley’s contradictions as satirist of 1920s life and prescient critic of 20th-century progress.