Tantalizingly few recordings survive of the great writers of the first half of the 20th century. This 70-minute CD brings together many historic items from the British Library Sound Archive to provide a survey of the earliest generation of English-language writers whose voices have survived. Among the rarities are an extract from one of P.G. Wodehouse's wartime broadcasts from Berlin and a private recording of Vita Sackville-West reading an unpublished passage from her personal manuscript copy of Virginia Woolf's "Orlando". From radio broadcasts come an extract from the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf herself, and rare recordings of Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, G.K. Chesterton, John Buchan and Agatha Christie. All the writers represented were born before 1900. The other voices include Arthur Conan Doyle, Max Beerbohm, E.M. Forster, James Joyce, Compton Mackenzie; J.R.R. Tolkien, Aldous Huxley and J.B. Priestley.