Showing results by narrator "David Rintoul" in All Categories

One of the finest German medieval epic poems, The Lay of the Nibelungs is perhaps best known now as one of the principal sources for Wagner’s four-part music drama The Ring of the Nibelung. It is easy to see how Wagner was enthralled by the story and the poetry for the power of the tale drives the narrative: intense love, loyalty, jealousy, murder, duty, honour and massacre are all interwoven into a classic.

Caroline, Fiona and Ruth are lifelong friends, who've grown up together, laughed and cried together, and stood by each other through thick and thin. They may not always see eye to eye, and they might drive each other crazy, but they can't do without each other. But life's got a lot more complicated since they were 22, when the only things they carried around were handbags. Now, in midlife, they've got more baggage than the average airport carousel.

Five long years have passed since the annihilation of three Roman legions in the wilds of Germania. Varus, the general who led the ill-fated army, is long dead, and the bones of his 15,000 legionaries moulder in the forests. But not all the Romans were slain in the ambush. Centurion Tullus, a seasoned veteran, survived, and now he lives for revenge upon the tribal chieftain Arminius, who masterminded the ambush. Tullus will stop at nothing to kill his bitterest enemy or to recover his legion's lost Eagle.

When Emily and Jess Volnik's family inherits a remote, crumbling Scottish castle, they also inherit the Boggart - an invisible, mischievous spirit who's been playing tricks on residents of Castle Keep for generations. Then the Boggart is trapped in a rolltop desk and inadvertently shipped to the Volniks' home in Toronto, where nothing will ever be the same - for the Volniks or the Boggart. In a world that doesn't believe in magic, the Boggart's pranks wreak havoc. And even the newfound joys of peanut butter and pizza and fudge sauce eventually wear thin for the Boggart. He wants to go home....

When human rights lawyer Philippe Sands received an invitation to deliver a lecture in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, he began to uncover a series of extraordinary historical coincidences. It set him on a quest that would take him halfway around the world in an exploration of the origins of international law and the pursuit of his own secret family history, beginning and ending with the last day of the Nuremberg Trials.

Here, in this second collection of Socratic Dialogues from Plato's Early Period, read by David Rintoul as Socrates with a full cast, are contrasting six works. Often, as with Gorgias, which opens the recording, Socrates combats the popular subjects of sophistry and rhetoric, in direct conversation with Gorgias (a leading sophist teacher), and with one of his pupils, Callicles.

Set over four days against the backdrop of the Munich Conference of September 1938, Munich follows the fortunes of two men who were friends at Oxford together in the 1920s. Hugh Legat is a rising star of the British diplomatic service, serving in 10 Downing Street as a private secretary to the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. Paul von Hartmann is on the staff of the German Foreign Office - and secretly a member of the anti-Hitler resistance. They have not been in contact for more than a decade.

In this dual collection of short stories, Alexander McCall Smith brings his trademark humor and warmth to inventive tales of spying and vengeance. In one story, a spy dropped deep into enemy territory manages to disguise himself—quite convincingly—as a nun. In another, an invitation to join the Vatican Secret Service sends a prospective operative down a rabbit hole of controversy and confusion. A third story finds an author, on the brink of public ruin, seeing the error of his ways after an act of kindness saves the day.

Eleven months after he was liberated from the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor E. Frankl held a series of public lectures in Vienna. The psychiatrist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience, and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity. Published here for the very first time in English, Frankl's words resonate as strongly today as they did in 1946. He offers an insightful exploration of the maxim "Live as if you were living for the second time".

The date is 15 AD. The German chieftain Arminius has been defeated, one of the lost Roman eagles recovered and thousands of German tribesmen slain. Yet these successes aren't nearly enough for senior centurion Lucius Tullus. Not until Arminius is dead, his old legion's eagle found and the enemy tribes completely vanquished will he rest. But Arminius - devious, fearless - is burning for revenge of his own.

The influence of Plato, his Dialogues and his ‘Academy', cast a long shadow. Around 35 Dialogues, almost all featuring Socrates as the principal figure, are generally ascribed to Plato and form one of the most important threads in Western philosophy. These four Dialogues may fall into the ‘Attributed Texts' category, but they are of sufficient interest to warrant study in our time and when set against the principal canon.

Rumer Godden is well known for her acclaimed novels for adults and children. She wrote over 60 works in her lifetime, nine of which were made into films. Included here are dramatisations of three of her classic tales, as well as a fascinating interview with the renowned author.

The life-and-death hunt for a notorious Nazi criminal unfolds against a background of international arms deals. As the story leads to its final dramatic confrontation on a bleak winter's hill-top, the question every reader asked at the end of The Day of the Jackal will inevitably be asked again: Can this be fiction?

In the hilarious new novel in the best-selling Detective Varg series, an eminent art historian is framed and the ace investigators of the department of sensitive crimes are on the case.

David Hume (1711-1776) is perhaps best known for his ideas about cause and effect and his criticisms of religion, but he is rarely thought of as a philosopher with practical wisdom to offer. Yet Hume's philosophy is grounded in an honest assessment of nature - human nature in particular. The Great Guide is an engaging and eye-opening account of how Hume's thought should serve as the basis for a complete approach to life. Julian Baggini masterfully interweaves biography with intellectual history and philosophy to give us a complete vision of Hume's guide to life.

For the first time we discover what really happened between his sister and the dastardly Wickham. How did he distract his friend Bingley from pining for his beloved Jane? Why did he propose to another young woman? Only to his diary does he tell his true story. At last we see Darcy as he really is; and, beneath his polite facade, we find a sensitive, private and passionate man.

To uncover the fate of the thousands being interred at a mysterious Nazi camp on the border of the Reich, a young Polish resistance fighter named Witold Pilecki volunteered for an audacious mission: intentionally get captured and transported to the new camp to report back on what was going on there. But gathering information was not his only task: he was to execute an attack from inside - where the Germans would least expect it. The name of the camp was Auschwitz.

Parerga means 'supplementary to a main work', and Paralipomena suggests a further supplement, but these two books were anything but a casual addition to his major opus, The World as Will and Idea. For a start, it was the publication of Parerga and Paralipomena in 1851 which brought Schopenhauer to the attention of the general public, decades after The World as Will and Idea first appeared.

In this Booker Prize-winning work, Barry Unsworth follows the failing fortunes of William Kemp, a merchant pinning his last chance to a slave ship; his son, who needs a fortune because he is in love with an upper-class woman; and his nephew, who sails on the ship as its doctor because he has lost all he has loved. The voyage meets its demise when disease spreads among the slaves and the captain's drastic response provokes a mutiny.

Here are three important but very different Dialogues from the Middle Period. Symposium, the most well-known in this collection, is concerned with the theme of love. In the house of Agathon, a group of friends - each very different in personality and background - meet to consider and discuss various kinds of love. Each one, Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes (the playwright) and Agathon (a prize-winning tragic poet), presents his particular view in a short discourse.