These are abridged books, usually in five 15-minute episodes (1.25 hours), although sometimes in ten parts.
For unabridged audiobooks, you may be able to get them on loan from your library, usually through the monopoly KKR OverDrive Libby app.
To find BBC Radio audiobooks that you can listen to outside the UK, go to
BBC - Programmes - Categories: Audiobooks - Available now
and then look for only the books that say "BBC Radio" after them. Books that say "BBC Sounds" are not available outside the UK.
This doesn't cover all of the things you may consider to be audiobooks, as BBC categorizes many of them as "Drama". The BBC website doesn't provide any way to filter out just drama based on books. It also doesn't have any way to filter just drama presented on BBC Radio 4 Extra (which is mostly books).
Rather unexpectedly, BBC Radio 4 Extra has usefully collected many murder mysteries (a beloved comfort listen for the British) under "Whodunnits", possibly as a Christmas 2023 feature.
Even more unexpectedly, all episodes listed are still available, although they differ a bit in how they're grouped. In any case see e.g.
- Miss Marple - They Do It With Mirrors, Episode 1 of 5 (2 days left to listen)
- Hercule Poirot - The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, in a single combined show (4 days left to listen)
Dramas are also not consistently named. Sometimes it's by author. Sometimes it's by author and book title. Sometimes it's by character name. e.g.
- BBC Radio 4 Extra: Dick Francis (author) - "Adaptations of the popular thrillers by the British steeplechase jockey turned crime writer."
- BBC Radio 4 Extra: Jack London - The Sea Wolf (author and title)
- BBC Radio 4 Extra: Miss Marple (character) - "June Whitfield stars as the iconic sleuth created by the queen of the whodunit, Agatha Christie."
- BBC Radio 4 Extra: Sherlock Holmes (character)
UPDATE 2024-01-21: The Book of the Week and Book at Bedtime pages are no longer being maintained. So even though a book may be a "Book of the Week", it won't show up on the pages below.
- No longer maintained: Book of the Week – BBC Radio 4 – audiobooks, usually in 5 or 10 episodes
- Note books are only available for a limited time; only books with a speaker icon are actually available online
- No longer maintained: Book at Bedtime – BBC Radio 4 – audiobooks, usually in 5 or 10 episodes
END UPDATE
Omnibus-eses
BBC Radio will -- sometimes -- publish an "omnibus" edition of a book, combining 5 days worth of episodes into a single continuous show. Inexplicably, they almost never actually link the omnibus to the main page for the book. The omnibus sometimes shows up on BBC Radio 4 Extra, and now these days sometimes shows up as e.g. "Episodes 1-5" on BBC Radio 4 itself. There is no consistent pattern or linking.
UPDATE 2023-05-26: For a while BBC Radio 4 audiobooks weren't showing up on BBC Radio 4 Extra as combined omnibus episodes at the end of the week, but now it looks like that is happening again, although maybe mostly for older books being presented again. END UPDATE
SIDEBAR: Don't use the very similar BBC Sounds - Category - Audiobooks page as it doesn't show which books are BBC Radio and which ones are BBC Sounds. END SIDEBAR
See also:
January 21, 2024 finding France Culture radio audiobooks
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