Showing results by narrator "Tim Pigott-Smith" in All Categories

The rich life Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) is featured here: His work as a doctor, his novels and journalistic writings, his support of Spiritualism and his defense of fairies. This is a unique set for the 150th anniversary of his birth. After his early years in medicine, the writing talents of Arthur Conan Doyle took over. Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger were among his successes.

Perfect for Janeites everywhere, this enticing collection brings together for the first time six special recordings that offer a glimpse behind the scenes at the life of the celebrated author. Taking us on a journey from her earliest teenage writings, to her love affair aged 20, to the scandalous arrest of her aunt which shook her family, these fascinating programmes offer a closer look at Jane Austen and those around her, as seen through her letters, writings and final home.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a titanic among the world's great authors, and The Brothers Karamazov is often hailed as his finest novel. A masterpiece on many levels, it transcends the boundaries of a gripping murder mystery to become a moving account of the battle between love and hate, faith and despair, compassion and cruelty, good and evil.

A thrilling BBC Radio full-cast spin-off from the Danish TV series, starring Tim Pigott-Smith. Hans Gammelgaard, Private Secretary in the Danish Ministry of the Environment, is seeking approval for the controlled use of genetically modified crops by Danish farmers. However, unseen enemies seem prepared to go to any lengths in pursuit of their own agenda.

The monarchy is one of Britain’s longest surviving institutions – as well as one of its most tumultuous and revered. In this masterful book, David Starkey looks at the monarchy as a whole, charting its history from Roman times, to the Wars of the Roses, the chaos of the Civil War, the fall of Charles I and Cromwell's emergence as Lord Protector – all the way up until the Victorian era when Britain’s monarchs came face-to-face with modernity.

Crossing from England to the Holy Lands and back again, Ivanhoe goes on a wild and dangerous journey, one full of sieges, jousting and chivalry, as he fights to defeat the king’s evil brother, John, and win the forbidden hand of Lady Rowena.

After the fall of France in May 1940, the British Expeditionary Force was miraculously evacuated from Dunkirk. Britain now stood alone to face Hitler’s inevitable invasion attempt. For the German Army to be landed across the Channel, Hitler needed mastery of the skies – the RAF would have to be broken – so every day, throughout the summer, German bombers pounded the RAF air bases in the southern counties.

In the summer of 1716, a Cornish cabin boy named Thomas Pellow and 52 of his comrades were captured at sea by the Barbary corsairs. Their captors, fanatical Islamic slave traders, had declared war on the whole of Christendom. Thousands of Europeans had been snatched from their homes and taken in chains to the great slave markets of Algiers, Tunis and Sale in Morocco to be sold to the highest bidder.

H. E. Bates is probably best known for his comic novel The Darling Buds of May, which introduced the lovable Larkins to the world and sparked three hugely popular TV adaptations. In his 68 years, Bates wrote over 20 further novels, more than 300 short stories, children’s books, poems, plays and non-fiction. This collection brings together three full-cast BBC Radio dramatisations and fourteen excellent readings, rounding off with extracts from H. E. Bates autobiographies.

Forced off course by the Mandragora Helix, the TARDIS lands in the province of San Martino in fifteenth-century Italy. Here, the court astrologer, Hieronymous, has been taken over by the Mandragora energy-form - Hieronymous and the other members of his star-worshipping black magic cult will be used as a bridgehead, enabling the Mandragora Helix to conquer the Earth and rule it through their chosen servants.

Max Skinner is a man at the heart of London's financial universe until his employers embark on a little asset-stripping of their own. Himself. Amid the grey London drizzle, there is one potential ray of sunshine: Max's Uncle Harry has left him his estate in his will, an eighteenth-century chateau and vineyard an hour's drive from Avignon.

Tim Piggot-Smith reads J. Meade Falkner's exciting tale of a boy who gets caught up in a dangerous adventure with smugglers and treasure. Orphaned John Trenchard is just 15 when his adventures begin... Growing up by the sea in the village of Moonfleet, John is captivated by the local legend of the ghostly Blackbeard, who rises on winter nights to search for his lost treasure.

The Hook, one of seven 'unmade movies' available on audio, is set in New York's docks in 1951, where hundreds of longshoremen queue up at dawn hoping to be given a counter and a place in the day's gang. It's hard, dangerous work, but in a world ruled by corrupt union bosses on the take, they have no choice but to accept it. Then a tragedy occurs, and one man, Marty Ferrara, decides to fight back....

When his village is sacked by French raiders, Thomas escapes from his father’s ambition to become a wild youth who delights in the opportunities which war offers - for fighting, for revenge and for friendship. But Thomas is hounded by his conscience. He has made a promise to God to retrieve a relic stolen in the raid from Hookton’s church. The search for the relic leads him into a world where lovers become enemies; enemies become friends; and always, somewhere beyond the horizon, a terrible enemy awaits him.

Orley Farm, described as a “[B]rilliantly choreographed legal thriller” ( Mail on Sunday), centres on the pathos of the main character, Lady Mason. Youthful marriage choices, middle-aged marital crisis, love and loss revolve around the legal action and the complex portrayal of Lady Mason, who is both sympathetic and wily.

A British whaler has been captured in the Friendly Isles, and Captain Jack Aubrey is dispatched with the Surprise to restore order. But a female convict who escaped from the penal colony in New South Wales has stowed away in the cable-tier. To the officers, Clarissa Harvill is an object of awkward courtliness and dangerous jealousies...

San Piedro Island in Puget Sound is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese-American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than one man’s guilt. For on San Piedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries - memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and a Japanese girl....

This is a story from the Canterbury Tales III: Modern Verse Translation collection.

The events of 1950-1999 are described by the people who saw them happen, from the Festival of Britain in 1951 through to the dawn of a new millennium at the end of 1999. In between are the eras of the Angry Young Men, the Teddy Boys and the Punk Rockers; the arrival of rock and roll and the permissive society; the advent of industrial strife in England and sectarian unrest in Northern Ireland; the rise to power of Margaret Thatcher; the miners' strike, three-day week and Winter of Discontent; the Queen's Silver Jubilee....

India, 1857 - the year of the Great Mutiny, when Muslim soldiers turned in bloody rebellion on their British overlords. This time of convulsion is the subject of The Siege of Krishnapur, widely considered to the one of the finest British novels of the last 50 years. A witty and individual take on the many traditions and follies of Empire, it is also a gripping account of survival under siege, illuminating how extreme conditions can influence and affect people's behaviour and the human spirit.