Classic Chandler

In 2011 BBC Radio 4 presented dramatisations of all Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels, with Toby Stephens playing Philip Marlowe throughout. These were supplemented by other items relating to Chandler’s life, both broadcast and on Radio 4’s web-sites.

I have tried to gather them all together and make them available through this torrent. It contains the dramatisations, sequentially numbered, broadcast on the Saturday Play, viz:

1. The Big Sleep
2. The Lady in the Lake
3. Farewell My Lovely
4. Playback
5. The Long Goodbye
6. The High Window
7. The Little Sister
8. Poodle Springs

The last of these, Poodle Springs, was unfinished at the time of Chandler’s death in 1959, but was completed by crime writer Robert B. Parker to mark the centenary of Chandler's birth in 1988.

There are also two Afternoon Plays by Stephen Wyatt. Double Jeopardy is a play starring Patrick Stewart as Raymond Chandler about Chandler’s “famously difficult collaboration” with Billy Wilder on a screen adaptation of James M Cain's novel Double Indemnity, while Strangers on a Film dramatises another problematic collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock on a screenplay based on Patricia Highsmith's novel Strangers on a Train.

In addition to this, there is a feature upon Chandler’s life, A Coat, a Hat and a Gun, a recording of Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming’s conversation in 1958, and the soundtrack of a short video in which Toby Stephens talks about playing Philip Marlowe.

Documents relating to the plays are also included.

The mp3 files are, apart from the Fleming conversation, in 16 Bit stereo, and are coded to a relatively low bitrate, 64kbps, because this produces much smaller file sizes and in my opinion, following tests, does not impair quality discernibly in these speech recordings. Frequency is 22,050 Hz.


Enjoy and Seed!!