Showing results by narrator "Roy McMillan" in All Categories

The Pax Britannica trilogy is Jan Morris’s magnificent history of the British Empire from 1837 to 1965. Huge in scope and ambition, it is always personal and immediate, bringing the story vividly to life. Pax Britannica, the second volume, is a snapshot of the Empire at the Diamond Jubilee of 1897. It looks at what made up the Empire —from adventurers and politicians to communications and infrastructure, as well as anomalies and eccentricities.

Oliver Ryan is a handsome and charismatic success story. He lives in the suburbs with his wife, Alice, who illustrates his award-winning children's books and gives him her unstinting devotion. Their life together is one of enviable privilege and ease - enviable until, one evening after supper, Oliver attacks Alice and beats her into a coma. In the aftermath, as everyone tries to make sense of his astonishing act of savagery, Oliver tells his story. So do those whose paths he has crossed over five decades. What unfolds is a story of shame, envy, breathtaking deception and masterful manipulation.

In early 1461, a teenage boy won a battle on a freezing morning in the Welsh marches and claimed the crown of England. He was Edward IV, first king of the usurping house of York. The country, crippled by economic crisis, insurgency, and a corrupt and bankrupt government, was in need of a new hero. Charismatic, able and ruthlessly ambitious, Edward and his two younger brothers, George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, became the figureheads of a spectacular ruling dynasty which laid the foundations for a renewal of English royal power.

Roger Deakin set out in 1996 to swim through the British Isles. The result a uniquely personal view of an island race and a people with a deep affinity for water. From the sea, from rock pools, from rivers and streams, tarns, lakes, lochs, ponds, lidos, swimming pools and spas, from fens, dykes, moats, aqueducts, waterfalls, flooded quarries, even canals, Deakin gains a fascinating perspective on modern Britain.

Midnight. A callout to an isolated farm outside Oxford. A body, shot at point blank range in the kitchen. It looks like a burglary gone wrong, but DC Adam Fawley suspects there's something more to it. Who exactly was the aggressor here? When the police discover a connection to a high-profile case from years ago, involving a child's murder and an alleged miscarriage of justice, the press go wild. Suddenly Fawley's team are under more scrutiny than ever before. And when you dig up the past, you're sure to find a few skeletons....

This is a story from the The Body Snatcher and Other Stories collection.

George and his best friend, Annie, haven't had any space adventures for a while, and they're missing the excitement. But not for long.... Seriously strange things start happening. Banks are handing out free money; supermarkets can't charge for their produce, so people are getting free food; and aircraft are refusing to fly. It looks like the world's biggest and best computers have all been hacked. George and Annie will travel further into space than ever before in order to find out who is behind it.

On a sunny Saturday morning in May 1956, a fifteen-year-old, then called Harry Webb, was mooching down Waltham Cross High Street, with two mates. They heard some music blaring out of a parked car. It stopped them in their tracks. The song was 'Heartbreak Hotel' by Elvis Presley. It sounded like nothing they had ever heard before. In that instant, the schoolboy who was destined to take the hit parade by storm as Cliff Richard fell in love with rock and roll. It gave him the thrill, the purpose and the mission that has shaped his life ever since.

Movement is medicine. Letting your mind wander as you take a long walk, a slow jog, or a brisk run can give you a powerful, uplifting feeling. Some call it a runner's high, others attribute it to endorphins. In this interactive audiobook, psychotherapist William Pullen teaches you how to channel that exhilarating energy and use it to make positive change in your life. This radical new approach to obtaining the benefits of mindfulness originates in the body itself.

Calming, thought-provoking, poetic and honest, Notes from Walnut Tree Farm is a collection of writing and musing by documentary-maker, environmentalist and author of Waterlog Roger Deakin. For the last six years of his life, Roger Deakin kept notebooks. In them, he wrote his daily thoughts, feelings and observations about and around his Suffolk home, Walnut Tree Farm. Collected here are the very best of these writings, capturing his extraordinary, restless curiosity about nature as well as his impressions of our changing world.

Five people: four are living, three are strangers, two are sisters, one is dead. In her highly acclaimed and most ambitious book to date, the brilliant young Scottish Writer Ali Smith brings alive five unforgettable characters and traces their intersecting lives. This is a short novel with big themes (time, chance, money, death) but an eye for tiny detail: the taste of dust, the weight of a few coins in the hand, the pleasurable pain of a stone in one's shoe.

1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote English village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artefacts—coins, fragments of glass, human bones—which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to his death?

The pitch is the absolute essence of modern business. Ideas are the most valuable commodity in the modern economy, and it is human skill which develops them. However, the skills of the pitch are not only relevant to the world of business; rather, they apply to just about every significant personal transaction in your life....

This is a story from the The Body Snatcher and Other Stories collection.

József Debreczeni, a prolific Hungarian language journalist and poet, arrived in Auschwitz in 1944; had he been selected to go 'left', his life expectancy would have been approximately forty-five minutes. One of the 'lucky' ones, he was sent to the 'right', which led to twelve horrifying months of incarceration and slave labour in a series of camps, ending in the 'Cold Crematorium' - the so-called hospital of the forced labour camp Dörnhau, where prisoners too weak to work were left to die. Debreczeni beat the odds and survived.

Prepare to be terrified with C. J. Tudor's first collection of short stories, featuring eleven twisted tales of the macabre, including: The Lion at the Gate in which a strange piece of graffiti leads to a terrifying encounter for four school friends; Butterfly Island which tells the story of a group of survivors who wash up on a deserted island and make a horrifying discovery; Gloria where a cold-hearted killer encounters a strange young girl at a motorway service station with unexpected consequences.

René Descartes is one of the formative figures in Western philosophy, logic and mathematics. His famous statement: "I think, therefore I am," has become perhaps the most famous phrase in all of philosophy. Descartes’s ground-breaking writings attempted to establish unshakeable foundations of knowledge, and set a trend for subsequent Western philosophy, which has endlessly critiqued and expanded upon his ideas.

When an Oxford student accuses one of the university's professors of sexual assault, DI Adam Fawley's team think they've heard it all before. But they couldn't be more wrong. Because this time, the predator is a woman and the shining star of the department, and the student, a six-foot male rugby player. Soon DI Fawley and his team are up against the clock to figure out the truth. What they don't realise is that someone is watching.

Includes the entire, unabridged audio narration of The Great Gatsby, as well as in-depth analysis on the text, covering the key areas of: characters, themes, structure and form, historical context and popular criticism - as well as detailed chapter summaries and key quotations for your exam.

When the Falkland Islands were invaded by Argentina in April 1982, Britain’s immediate response was to send a task force. But behind the pomp and bravado of its departure, a sober reality lurked. A mere 20 Sea Harriers operating from two aircraft carriers would take on the might of the Argentine air force, some 200 planes strong. The MOD estimated that within four days and against such formidable air power, half the harriers would likely be lost. To reinforce that meagre force, and in just three weeks, the Navy formed, trained and equipped a brand new squadron from scratch.