Showing results by narrator "Barnaby Edwards" in All Categories

I hate every wave of the ocean', the seasick Charles Darwin wrote to his family during his five-year voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle. It was this world-wide journey, however, that launched the scientists career.

The Last Man is Mary Shelley's apocalyptic fantasy of the end of human civilisation. Set in the late twenty-first century, the novel unfolds a sombre and pessimistic vision of mankind confronting inevitable destruction. Interwoven with her futuristic theme, Mary Shelley incorporates idealised portraits of Shelley and Byron, yet rejects Romanticism and its faith in art and nature.

This wide ranging collection of essays allows the contemporary reader to grasp the extraordinary variety and depth of the statesman's mature thoughts on questions, both grave and gay, facing modern man. Churchill begins by asking what it would be like to live your life over again and ends by describing his love affair with painting. In between he touches on subjects as diverse as spies, cartoons, submarines, elections, flying, and the future.

A CAPTIVATING JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD FROM THE CREATOR OF JAMES BOND Ian Fleming’s world travels and interests, as well as his journalism and wartime experiences, lent authority to everything he wrote. In 1959, the Sunday Times commissioned Fleming to write a series of dispatches from the...

1890. Lieutenant Gabriel Stokes of the British Army left behind the horrors of war in Afghanistan for a role in the Metropolitan Police. Though he rose quickly through the ranks, the squalid violence of London’s East End proved just as dark and oppressive as the battlefield. With his life falling apart, and longing for peace and meaning, Gabriel leaves the grime of London behind and heads for the wilderness and wide open spaces of the American West.

THE TRUE STORY OF AN INTERNATIONAL CRIME RING AND ITS DOWNFALL In 1957, as the Cold War raged, Ian Fleming took a respite from writing James Bond to craft a work of nonfiction every bit as tense as a Bond adventure. Aided by an ex-MI5 agent and International Diamond Security Organization...

Graham Hancock, an expert in ancient civilisations and author of the nine million selling Fingerprints of the Gods, and expert too, on the use of hallucinogens to achieve higher states of consciousness, brings these two interests together in the second volume of the War God trilogy. The conquistador Hernán Cortés is dreaming of Tenochtitlan, the golden city of Aztecs.

In 1933, Robert Byron set off from Venice with his friend Christopher Sykes to explore the architecture of the Middle East. Their long and arduous journey took them from Cyprus and Jerusalem to Syria, Iraq, Persia, Afghanistan, and finally, Oxiana, a tiny country around the river Oxus, which snakes down from Russia into Afghanistan. They travel by any means necessary (truck, camel, horses, and foot), and encounter several setbacks, but their risks are rewarded as they encounter some of the greatest examples of Eastern art and architecture, many of which have now vanished forever.

Captain Marryat's The Children of the New Forest is a wonderful tale in narrative, historically rich and quite fascinating. This story of adventure, treachery, and love takes place during the English Civil War, when fellow countrymen are found enemies, and are set against each other, Roundhead and Cavalier, Parliament and the King. Many hoped for the same thing: justice. But, for a long time, neither could find it. In the midst of all were the Beverlies, the family of a faithful Cavalier, who died in service of the king.

Narrated through the eyes of the intimates of Suleyman the Magnificent, the sixteenth-century sultan of the Ottoman Empire, The Lion House animates with stunning immediacy the fears and stratagems of those around him: the Greek slave who becomes his Grand Vizier, the Venetian jewel dealer who acts as his go-between, the Russian consort who becomes his wife. Christopher de Bellaigue tells not just the story of rival superpowers, nor of one of the most consequential lives in human history, but of what it means to live in a time when a few men get to decide the fate of the world.

It's a conflicted time in Kurald Galain, the realm of Darkness, where Mother Dark reigns. But this ancient land was once home to many a power...and even death is not quite eternal. The commoners' great hero, Vatha Urusander, is being promoted by his followers to take Mother Dark's hand in marriage, but her Consort, Lord Draconus, stands in the way of such ambitions. The impending clash sends fissures throughout the realm.

The Last Great Mountain tells the story of the first ascent of Kangchenjunga the third highest but reputedly the hardest mountain in the world. It was an astonishing achievement for a British team led by Everest veteran Charles Evans. Drawing on interviews, diaries and unpublished accounts, Mick Conefrey begins his story in 1905 with the disastrous first attempt on the mountain by a team led by Aleister Crowley, explores the three dramatic German expeditions of the the late 1920s and brings it all to a climax 50 years later with the first ascent by Joe Brown and George Band.

Beobrand is besieged in the action-packed instalment in the Bernicia Chronicles set in AD 647 Anglo-Saxon Britain. War hangs heavy in the hot summer air as Penda of Mercia and his allies march into the north. Caught unawares, the Bernician forces are besieged within the great fortress of Bebbanburg. It falls to Beobrand to mount the defence of the stronghold, but even while the battle rages, old and powerful enemies have mobilised against him, seeking vengeance for past events.

The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Adapted by Richard Dinnick. Young Dr. Mortimer ventures from Devonshire to Baker Street with news of the death of his friend, Sir Charles Baskerville. Can it really be that the grisly legend of the hound of the Baskervilles might have something to do with the case? Holmes will have none of it, but even he must accept that dark forces are at work. Dark forces that, it seems, Dr. Watson must face alone...afoot!

The Classic Crime Collection is a collection of 18 classic detective novels, read by esteemed cast of award-winning narrators. Included here are stories by some of the most iconic crime writers in history, including Dorothy L. Sayers; Arthur Conan Doyle; Agatha Christie; Dashiell Hammett; Wilkie Collins; Josephine Tey; and more.

Warlords battle across Britain to become the first king of the English. After a stunning victory against the native Waelisc, Beobrand returns a hero. His valour is rewarded with wealth and land by Oswald, king of Northumbria. He retires to his new estate with his bride only to find himself surrounded by enemies old and new. With treachery and death on all sides, Beobrand fears he will lose all he holds dear. On a quest for revenge and redemption, he accepts the mantle of lord, leading his men into the darkest of nights and the bloodiest of battles.

Terror stalks the hills, moors and marshes of Bernicia. Livestock and men have been found ripped asunder, their bones gnawed, flesh gorged upon. People cower in their halls in fear of the monster that prowls the night. King Edwin sends his champions, Bassus, Octa and band of trusted thegns, to rid his people of this evil. Bassus leads the warriors into the chill wastes of the Northern winter, and they soon question whether they are the hunters or the prey.

AD 797, Cyprus. Warrior-monk Hunlaf and his crew are on a voyage to acquire an important Christian relic before it falls into the hands of the Byzantines and their scheming Empress Eirene. Hunlaf’s crew receive unexpected help as they seek their treasure, but soon find themselves betrayed. About to leave for home empty-handed, the adventurers instead sail further east: to Jerusalem, the Holy Land, abundant in relics. And dangerous intrigues.

Lindisfarne, AD 793. There had been portents - famine, whirlwinds, lightning from clear skies, serpents seen flying through the air. But when the raiders came, no one was prepared. They came from the North, their dragon-prowed longships gliding out of the dawn mist as they descended on the kingdom's most sacred site. It is 8th June AD 793, and with the pillage of the monastery on Lindisfarne, the Viking Age has begun. While his fellow monks flee before the Norse onslaught, one young novice stands his ground.

Alan Mathison Turing. Mathematician, philosopher, codebreaker, a founder of computer science, and the father of Artificial Intelligence, Turing was one of the most original thinkers of the last century - and the man whose work helped create the computer-driven world we now inhabit. But he was also an enigmatic figure, deeply reticent yet also strikingly naive. Turing's openness about his homosexuality at a time when it was an imprisonable offense ultimately led to his untimely death at the age of only 41.