Showing results by narrator "Simon Shepherd"

On the 50th anniversary of Churchill's death, Boris Johnson celebrates the singular brilliance of one of the most important leaders of the 20th century. Taking on the myths and misconceptions along with the outsized reality, he portrays - with characteristic wit and passion - a man of contagious bravery, breathtaking eloquence, matchless strategizing, and deep humanity.

Late one evening investigative journalist Bastian Obermayer receives an anonymous message offering him access to secret data. Through encrypted channels he then receives documents showing a mysterious bank transfer for $500 million in gold. This is just the beginning. Obermayer and fellow Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist Frederik Obermaier find themselves immersed in a secret world where complex networks of shell companies help to hide people who don't want to be found.

Frank Tallis recounts the extraordinary stories of patients who are, quite literally, madly in love: A woman becomes utterly convinced that her dentist is secretly infatuated with her and drives him to leave the country; a man destroys his massive fortune through trysts with more than 3,000 prostitutes - because his ego requires they fall in love with him; a beautiful woman's pathological jealousy destroys the men who love her. Along the way, we learn a great deal about the history of psychiatry and the role of neuroscience in addressing disordered love. 

The thrilling history of the turning point of the Second World War, when Hitler's armies were halted on the Eastern Front. At the moment of crisis in 1941 on the Eastern Font, with the forces of Hitler massing on the outskirts of Moscow, the miraculous occurred: Moscow was saved. Yet this turning point was followed by a long retreat, in which Russian forces, inspired by old beliefs in the sacred motherland, pushed back German forces steeled by the vision of the ubermensch, the iron-willed fighter. 

The powerful story of the Red Army's battle of liberation against the Nazi invader - from Stalingrad all the way to Berlin. In February 1943, German forces surrendered to the Red Army at Stalingrad, and the tide of war turned. By May 1945 Soviet soldiers had stormed Berlin and brought down Hitler's regime. Total War follows the fortunes of these fighters as they liberated Russia and the Ukraine from the Nazi invader and fought their way into the heart of the Reich. It reveals the horrors they experienced - the Holocaust, genocide and the mass murder of Soviet POWs - and shows the Red Army, brutalised by war, taking its terrible revenge on the German civilian population.

In an age unhealthily obsessed with substance, this is a book on the importance of pure style, from the best-selling author of The Etymologicon and The Horologicon. From classic poetry to pop lyrics and from the King James Bible to advertising slogans, Mark Forsyth explains the secrets that make a phrase - such as 'Tiger, Tiger, burning bright', or 'To be or not to be' - memorable. In his inimitably entertaining and witty style he takes apart famous lines and shows how you, too, can write like Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde.

The point of The Churchill Factor is that one man can make all the difference. On the eve of the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill's death, Boris Johnson explores what makes up the 'Churchill Factor' - the singular brilliance of one of the most important leaders of the 20th century.

From Plato to Plutarch, Shakespeare to Churchill, Machiavelli to Melville, Jane Austen to Carl Jung, Pericles to Peter Drucker and many more - here are the best leadership ideas of the past 25 centuries. You don't need a big title or a business degree in order to lead with impact. What you need is practical wisdom: the insight, judgment and strength of character that all great leaders have but that most business schools and corporate workshops don't teach.

3 PARA was the first unit into Helmand in 2006. Sent on a peace mission, it became engaged in a level of combat that had not been experienced by the British Army since the end of the Korean War. Undermanned and suffering from equipment shortages, 3 PARA fought doggedly to win the break in battle. Numerous gallantry decorations were awarded, but they were not without cost. This is a dramatic, and often moving, insight into the leadership of soldiers at the sharp end of war.

For 170 years Edward Fairfax Rochester has stood as one of literature's most romantic, most complex, and most mysterious heroes. Sometimes haughty, sometimes tender - professing his love for Jane Eyre in one breath and denying it in the next - Mr. Rochester has for generations mesmerized, beguiled, and, yes, baffled fans of Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece. But his own story has never been told.

We all have two lives - the life we live and the life of our fantasies. But it is the life unlived - the person we have failed to be - that can trouble and even haunt us. In Missing Out acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips delves into the gap between who we are and who we are not, to discover whether not getting what we want may be the unlikely key to the fully lived life. Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst and the author of several previous books, all widely acclaimed.

Spanning events over thirty years, Volume I of The Papers of Sherlock Holmes relates narratives of Holmes and Watson's days in Baker Street, as well as particulars of Holmes's supposed retirement. Follow along as The Master and his Boswell travel from the streets of London to the Kent countryside, to Oxford and Sussex. Written in traditional canonical style, these stories provide fresh details of Holmes's world. Join us as we climb the seventeen steps to the Baker Street sitting room, where Holmes and Watson prepare to begin their next adventure. The game is afoot!

Maps fascinate us. They chart our understanding of the world and they log our progress, but above all they tell our stories. From the early sketches of philosophers and explorers through to Google Maps and beyond, Simon Garfield examines how maps both relate and realign our history. His compelling narratives range from the quest to create the perfect globe to the challenges of mapping Africa and Antarctica, from spellbinding treasure maps to the naming of America, from Ordnance Survey to the mapping of Monopoly and Skyrim and from rare map dealers to cartographic frauds.

In 1941 Hitler's armies blocked the last roads leading into Leningrad. What followed was one of the most horrific sieges in history. When the German High Command encircled Leningrad it was a deliberate policy to eradicate the city's civilian population by starving them to death. As winter set in and food supplies dwindled, starvation and panic set in. 

Ray Mears is a household name through his television series Tracks, World of Survival, Bushcraft Survival, The Real Heroes of Telemark, and many more.

He is a private individual who shuns publicity whenever possible and would prefer to let his many skills tell their own tale - until now. In My Outdoor Life, Ray tells of his childhood and the formative years when he first developed a passion for both bushcraft and the martial arts skills that are central to his life.

Enter the dark and scary world of Horowitz Horror, and expect the unexpected! It's a world where everything might seem pretty normal. But the weird, the surprising and the truly terrifying are lurking just out of sight. Like a hitchhiker who isn't quite all he seems, a spooky cottage with a grisly secret and a mobile phone that lets you contact the dead! Each story has a shocking sting in the tale... Warning: Not for the nervous or frail!

Sarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams so vivid she mistakes them for real events; Robert has his life changed forever by the misunderstandings arising from her condition; Terry, the insomniac, spends his wakeful nights fuelling his obsession with movies; and the increasingly unstable Dr Gregory Dudden sees sleep as a life-shortening disease which must be eradicated...A group of students sharing a house. They fall in and out of love, they drift apart.

Love is a great leveller. Everyone wants love, everyone falls in love, everyone loses love, and everyone knows something of love's madness. But the experience of obsessive love is no trivial matter. In the course of his career, psychologist Dr Frank Tallis has treated many unusual patients, whose stories have lessons for all of us.

A quirky, entertaining and thought-provoking tour of the unexpected connections between words, read by Simon Shepherd. What is the actual connection between disgruntled and gruntled? What links church organs to organised crime, California to the Caliphate, or brackets to codpieces? The Etymologicon springs from Mark Forsyth's Inky Fool blog on the strange connections between words.

The codebreakers at Bletchley Park have been immortalised in films such as The Imitation Game and Enigma, but the Germans were also breaking Allied ciphers. The Third Reich Is Listening is the comprehensive account of the successes, failures and science of Germany's codebreaking and signals intelligence operations from 1935 to 1945. This fast-moving blend of modern history and popular science is told through colourful personal accounts of the Germans at the heart of the story.