Daniel Defoe

Three lively retellings of Daniel Defoe's classic novels plus two bonus programmes about his extraordinary life and far-reaching influence.

Defoes's fictionalised account of one man's experiences of the year 1665, in which the Great Plague hit the city of London, striking down a hundred thousand, no less than one in five citizens. Actually written sixty years after the epidemic, Defoe brings the city to life in all of its hardship and fear, with a wealth of detail and stories of isolation and horror.

Moll Flanders is born in Newgate prison to a petty thief and is soon left at the mercy of whoever will take her in. From this unfavorable beginning, the lusty, resourceful Moll loves and bargains her way from rags to riches, from prostitution in the streets of London to prosperity on a Virginia plantation.

The fictional autobiography of a castaway who spends 28 years on a tropical island and meets Native Americans, captives and mutineers during the course of his time there.

After surviving a terrible shipwreck, Robinson Crusoe discovers he is the only human on an island far from any shipping routes or rescue. At first he is devastated, but slowly, with patience and imagination, he transforms his island into a tropical paradise. For twenty-four years he lives with no human companionship - until one fateful day, when he discovers he is not alone...