Recent Dramatisations for BBC Radio
Comet in Moominland by Tove Jansson Dec 2023
The Venice Conundrum from the works of Jan Morris. July 2023
The Age of Anxiety by W H Auden, Nov 2022
Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson Dec 2021
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, April 2021
The Beautiful and Damned , F.Scott Fitzgerald, February 2021 (BBC Scotland)
The Garrick Year by Margaret Drabble, April 2020
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn, June 2019 (Brill Productions)
The Christchurch Murder by Angela Carter, September 2018
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark, January 2018 (BBC Scotland)
Ten Days that Shook the World by John Reed, October 2017 (BBC Wales)
The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch, August 2015
For Audible
Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Recent Original Dramas for BBC Radio
Elizabeth and Essex February 2020
4/4 (with Sarah Wooley) 2018 BBC Scotland
Byzantium, March 2018
The Present Experiment, September 2016
Remorse, or the Sorrows of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Iris Murdoch: Dream Girl starring Helen McCrory,
‘Appiness (with Jon Canter) 2014
Drama Documentary
The Talking Mongoose June 2020
Theatre
No Sex in Southwold Southwold Arts Centre
Oct 23rd - 26th 2023
Ulysses by James Joyce
Jermyn Street Theatre (rehearsed reading)
Oct 1st 2023
Death in Southwold Southwold Arts Centre Sept 2021
Britten’s Got Talent for New Wolsey Theatre Studio 2013
Down with Skool for Frinton Summer Theatre 2013
Other work for Radio 4
Lanark by Alisdair Grey
August 1914 by Solzhenitsyn,
The Antiquary by Walter Scott,
Rob Roy by Walter Scott
The Red Gauntlet by Walter Scott
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General (with Simon Butteriss)
My Cousin Rachel, by Daphne Du Maurier
Basil by Wilkie Collins
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Decameron by Boccaccio
I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves
Poodle Springs by Raymond Chandler
Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
Director
Come Unto These Yellow Sands by Angela Carter (director) September 2018 R3
First Love by Turgenev, (abridger and director) Radio 4
The Dark Tower by Louis MacNeice (director) Radio 3
Elizabeth and Essex (with Fiona McAlpine) Radio 3
Abridgements
Robin has abridged over eighty Book of the Weeks and Book at Bedtimes for BBC Radio 4.
Titles Include:
Rabbit Redux by John Updike, Candide by Voltaire, Transcription by Kate Atkinson, Hello World by Hannah Fry, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor, First Love by Turgenev, Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8 by Naomi Higashida, Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig, Dark Corners by Ruth Rendell.
Previous work directed by Fiona McAlpine with Allegra productions and Pacificus Productions includes five afternoon plays Duce’s Bonce (Allegra), A Warning to the Furious (Allegra), Love and Friendship (Pacificus) A Quick Change (Pacificus) and The Smallest Man in Christendom (Pacificus). Jill by Philip Larkin, for Allegra Productions
In 2012 he dramatised James Joyce’s Ulysses for BBC Radio 4 which was broadcast throughout the day on Bloomsday.
Robin Brooks is one of the most prolific and commissioned writers of Radio Drama, working with the BBC and other independent companies, as well as for his own company, Allegra Productions
Robin was born in in Sheffield and brought up in Leeds and Manchester. He went to Macclesfield Grammar School and Christchurch College, Oxford. He started writing scripts for Empty Space Theatre company in 1989. His first critical success was an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which was performed all over the world from 1990 to 1997.
Robin began writing drama for BBC Radio 4 in 1992, and is now one of our most experienced audio dramatists, with many original dramas and adaptations to his name, including a day-long adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Over the last few years he has been working with musicians, in collaborations with Snape Maltings, the Doric Quartet, and the BBC Concert Orchestra. His most recent foray in this world was a play based on Strachey’s book Elizabeth and Essex, starring Sir Simon Russell Beale as Lytton. It was performed in front of an audience at the Alexandra Palace, with music played live by the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Robert Ziegler.
At the moment he is working on adaptations of Tove Jansson’s Moominland Midwinter, and Byron’s Don Juan.
He is a keen gardener.
In 2011 Robin wrote a highly acclaimed six part adaptation of I Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves
Also in 2011, for the Classic Chandler season, Robin adapted the following novels by Raymond Chandler for the Saturday Play: The Big Sleep, The High Window, Poodle Springs, Farewell My Lovely.