Showing results by narrator "John Humphrys" in All Categories

Columnist, critic and award-winning author Craig Brown is well known for his Private Eye parodies lampooning politicians and celebrities. He has written for numerous newspapers, both under his own name and as his alter egos Wallace Arnold and Bel Littlejohn. Collected here are Brown's four fantastic radio series, plus two bonus programmes in which he discusses his life and work.

It was a moment of mad impulse when John Humphrys decided to buy a semi-derelict cottage and a building site on a plot of land overlooking the Aegean. A few minutes gazing out over the most glorious bay he had ever seen was all it took to persuade him. After all, his son Christopher was already raising his family there so he would help build the beautiful villa that would soon take shape. What could possibly go wrong? Everything....

Elizabeth Warwick, the daughter of a famous archaeologist, travels to Egypt's Valley of the Kings to explore the mysterious tomb her father discovered before his death. Following in his footsteps, she hopes to find out what secrets lurk within. Is it an empty shell, or the final resting place of a Pharaoh? But her investigations lead her further and further into danger. Sir Richard Warwick had enemies, and now they are pursuing her. Embroiled in intrigue and unsure who to trust, she embarks on a quest that will take her from the Temple of Luxor to Cairo's City of the Dead.

Throughout the ages believers have been persecuted: usually for believing in the "wrong" God. So have non-believers who have denied the existence of God as superstitious rubbish. Today it is the agnostics who are given a hard time. They are scorned by believers for their failure to find faith and by atheists for being hopelessly wishy-washy and weak-minded. But John Humphrys is proud to count himself among their ranks. In this audiobook he takes us along the spiritual road he himself has travelled.

From the huge response to Lost for Words, it's clear that many of us share John's strong feelings about the use and misuse of the English language. Not because we want to split hairs (or infinitives), but because how we use words reveals so much about the way we see the world. Here John takes a sharp look at phrases and expressions in current use to expose the often hidden attitudes that lie behind them - from the schoolroom to the boardroom, from Westminster to the weather forecast.

A Day Like Today charts John’s journey from the poverty of his post-war childhood in Cardiff, leaving school at 15, to the summits of broadcasting. Humphrys was the BBC’s youngest foreign correspondent, the first reporter at the catastrophe of Aberfan, an experience that marked him for ever; he was in the White House when Richard Nixon became the first American president to resign, in South Africa during the dying years of apartheid, and in war zones around the globe throughout his career. John was also the first journalist to present the Nine O’Clock News on television.