Geraldine McCaughrean has won many awards for her brilliant versions of classic texts. Here she retells the ten Shakespeare plays children are most likely to come across: Romeo and Juliet, Henry the Fifth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and The Tempest. Written in stirring, colourful prose, this book makes a terrific introduction to Shakespeare and makes complex plots easy to follow. The text is punctuated with well-known quotations that give a taste of the real thing, and each play opens with a cast list explaining just who the characters are. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Reader

James Wilby was born in Rangoon, Burma to a corporate executive father. He was educated at Sedbergh School in Cumbria, and from there went on to study for a degree at Grey College, University of Durham, and then at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art

He is married to Shana Louise and has four children: Barnaby John Loxley, Florence Hannah Mary, Nathaniel Jerome and Jesse Jack.

A well-known actor on the stage and screen in the United Kingdom, Wilby's first appearance on screen was in the Oxford Film Company 1982 production Privileged alongside Hugh Grant . Wilby is best known to an international audience for roles in Maurice (1987), for which he received Venice Film Festival's Best Actor award with co-star Hugh Grant. Then he starred in A Handful of Dust (1988), Howards End (1992) and Gosford Park (2001) and Alain Robbe-Grillet's C'est Gradiva qui vous appelle (2006) co-starring Arielle Dombasle which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

On stage, he starred in the 1995 revival of John Osborne's A Patriot for Me by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Theatre.