Showing results by narrator "Michael Maloney" in All Categories

Set in the 19th century against a backdrop of island life and the vast surrounding seas, A High Wind in Jamaica is the gripping story of the Bas-Thornton children, whose parents send them back to England following a hurricane in the postcolonial Caribbean they call home. Having set sail, the children quickly fall into the hands of pirates. As their voyage continues, things take an awful turn

Sent down from Oxford after a wild, drunken party, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly surprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at a boys' private school in Wales. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, rascals and fools, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. A descendant of judge John Hathorne, who oversaw the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, he wrote several works inspired by Puritan New England, with themes of guilt, sin and retribution. This collection contains his classic novel, The Scarlet Letter, as well as four other stories.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys is perhaps the most well known collection of reminiscences. He maintained it, in secrecy, from 1660, the year of the Restoration, until 1669 when fear of blindness prevented his daily labours. Though it covers less than a decade, it offers a lively and detailed insight into a period and a personality, for he noted events in both public and private life. Famous passages include descriptions of The Plague and the Great Fire of London.

Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think. When the novel opens in the 1970s, he is a university student, having survived a "traditional" school. A man devoid of scruple or self-pity, Engleby provides a disarmingly frank account of English education. Yet beneath the disturbing surface of his observations lies an unfolding mystery of gripping power.

It is the long, oppressive summer of 1912. Four months ago the RMS Titanic was lost to the Atlantic. In Europe the drumbeats of war grow louder. These things have yet to touch Mr. Sherlock Holmes who, estranged from Dr. Watson, lives in reclusive retirement on the South Downs. The world’s foremost criminal investigator has turned his back on the past, hiding from the world and thinking himself immune to its excesses.

Michael Maloney reads this original adventure by Dan Abnett, featuring the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory. For centuries the Maintainers have worked. With no help from other worlds, they subsist on the food they can grow and that’s little enough. But their purpose, their whole life, is to maintain the machines that will one day make their world as habitable as old Earth. Life used to be hard. Now as crops fail, livestock sicken, and the temperature drops, it’s becoming impossible.

Here are the extraordinary writings of a generation who fought through a war of unprecedented destructive power, and who had to find new voices to express the horror of what they discovered. The great names - Owen, Sassoon - are fully represented, but there are also many poems by lesser-known or unexpected figures, ranging from serving soldiers like Isaac Rosenberg and Richard Aldington to women such as Edith Nesbit and Vera Brittain.

At the age of 30, Robin is an Earl at last - but not the Earl of Waringham, the ancestral title that he still hopes to win back one day from the evil Mortimer. England has seen other changes too: Edward III is dead and his successor, the boy king Richard II, is at odds with his uncle, the Duke of Lancaster. The introduction of a hated new poll tax brings about one of the most dangerous episodes in English history and Robin finds himself embroiled in the Peasants’ Revolt.

Michael Maloney, Josette Simon and Anne-Marie Duff star in this fast and funny production of Shakespeare's most sparkling and optimistic comedy, when all the world is turned on its head and authority is usurped, when by civil misrule girls become boys and women lust after women.

Novelist, journalist and literature’s greatest whistleblower, Émile Zola was one of the 19th century’s pre-eminent authors. He is renowned for his philosophy of naturalism, which informed his 20-volume Rougon-Macquart cycle, an epic family saga set during France’s Second Empire, and for his controversial intervention in the Dreyfus affair through his infamous protest letter, J’Accuse.

This is the tale of Tarka the Otter's growth to adulthood in the country of the Two Rivers. It is also the story of his life in the wild and how he is hunted by his enemy, the great hound Deadlock.

Frankenstein is a dark and brooding dramatisation of Mary Shelley's famous novel, and stars Michael Maloney as the scientist who makes a creature in his own name.

Denied a female counterpart, the creature turns on his creator, then murders Frankenstein's brother. In an attempt to destroy his creation, the scientist tracks him to the Arctic.

This classic Shakespearean comedy is presented here in a colorful full-cast dramatization, drawn from the complete text and starring Warren Mitchell, Michael Maloney, and Sarah Woodward.

Winner of the 2010 COSTA Biography Award. A total of 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment of his Great Uncle Iggie. Later, when Edmund inherited the ‘netsuke’, they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined.…

Alexander of Macedon was one of history’s greatest ever military commanders. By the time of his death, aged just 32, he had conquered the entire Persian Empire and was ruler of a vast territory stretching from Greece to the borders of India. These six episodes tell his extraordinary life story, as reimagined by acclaimed dramatist David Wade.

Media mogul Lord Malan is the billionaire owner of The Blue Touch Paper, an old-fashioned, hard-right weekly magazine with traditional Conservative values. But the paper is so true blue, it’s losing its touch. Sales are falling and circulation is down – mainly because its core readers are either on the brink of death or foam-flecked with rage. It’s time for a new editor, and political commentator Anna is sure she’s a shoo-in for the position. Much to her disappointment, however, Malan picks a different candidate: Keith, the Guardian’s token Tory, who champions compassionate Conservatism.

For 32 days, they were chased across the mountains as they headed for the coast and a rendezvous with a Royal Navy launch waiting to spirit the general to Cairo. Rick Stroud, whose Phantom Army of Alamein won plaudits for its meticulous research and its lightness of touch in the telling, brings these same gifts to bear in this new project.

Charlotte Pollard's adventures are over. She escaped death aboard the R101 and travelled in time and space - but now in the service of the monolithic, unknowable Viyrans, their unending mission is stifling her. An encounter with would-be adventurer Robert Buchan near the mysterious Ever-and-Ever-Prolixity provides the opportunity Charley needs for escape.... So the adventuress is abroad once more, meeting a lost expedition in uncharted forests, solving enigmas and hoping beyond hope to see the people she misses most: her family.

Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think. When the story opens in the 1970s, he is a university student, having survived a "traditional" school. A man devoid of scruple or self-pity, Engleby provides a disarmingly frank account of English education. Yet, beneath the disturbing surface of his observations lies an unfolding mystery of gripping power.