Daphne Du Maurier

Here is a BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Daphne du Maurier's classic tale of horror. The idea for this famous story came to du Maurier one day when she was walking across to a farm from her house. She saw a farmer busily ploughing a field while above him the seagulls were diving and wheeling. She developed an idea about the birds becoming hostile and attacking him.In her story, the birds become hostile after a harsh winter with little food.

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Rachel, a woman of exquisite beauty, descends on the great Cornwall estate of Philip Ashley. Despite his aroused suspicions, she soon enchants him. In this tale of good and evil, Philip must decide whether the glorious Rachel, the recent mysterious widow of his beloved cousin, is out to destroy him or is the innocent victim of devious man with a tremendous longing to be loved. His fate and his future lie in the answer to this deadly question.

A strange, psychic bond of love and understanding unites four generations of a Cornish family of shipbuilders.

"Once his secretary, Colleen is now pregnant with Michael's baby. When he brings her to his opulent estate, Ravenwood, she is abruptly thrust into a life of luxury she's never known. But Colleen finds the immense house suffused with the memory of Michael's beautiful wife, Joanna, who left months ago and who haunts her imagination. It quickly becomes apparent that there is little room for a new mistress of this house: The staff greets her with hostility,...

Stories include Don't look now and The birds.

The second Mrs. de Winter recalls the events that led her to the isolated gray stone manse on the the windswept Cornish coast. With a husband she barely knew, the young bride arrived at this immense estate, only to be inexorably drawn into the life of the first Mrs. de Winter, the beautiful Rebecca, dead, but never forgotten; and as an eerie presentiment of evil tightened around her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter began her search for the real fate...