Showing results by narrator "John Sackville" in All Categories

Listen to the definitive narrative history of the people, politics, and events of the Second World War - the conflict that shaped the modern world. From the build-up to the fighting, through to the reverberations still felt in the aftermath, this is a compelling, accessible, and immediate history of the war, perhaps the most complex, frightening, and destructive event in world history.

As remarkable as Columbus and the conquistador expeditions, the history of Portuguese exploration is now almost forgotten. But Portugal's navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, launched the expedition of Vasco da Gama to India and beat the Spanish to the spice kingdoms of the East - then set about creating the first long-range maritime empire.

Ten years have passed, but everyone remembers The Angel Killer. Sebastian Croll was just eleven years old when accused of murdering his playmate. Criminal attorney Daniel Hunter helped prove Sebastian's innocence in a trial that gripped the nation—and now the past is being unearthed when he gets a call from his old client. Sebastian's university professor has been brutally murdered—and everyone who knew her is in the frame of suspicion. As Daniel steps in to represent Sebastian for a second time, news about the boy's past spreads like wildfire, branding Sebastian as guilty.

In this compelling book, highly acclaimed author and broadcaster Laurence Rees tells the definitive history of the most notorious Nazi institution of them all. We discover how Auschwitz evolved from a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners into the site of the largest mass murder in history - part death camp, part concentration camp, where around a million Jews were killed.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain pins all Britain’s hopes for peace on a face-to-face meeting with Adolf Hitler in Munich, but behind their civilized discussions, Germany amasses armaments and moves its plans forward for its invasion of Czechoslovakia. Gerhardt von Kessler continues to operate his deadly rogue operations in Britain, and he is always one step ahead of MI5.

A landmark book that completely transforms our understanding of the crisis of liberalism, from two preeminent intellectuals. Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance? In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West.

From its earliest incarnations 7,000 years ago to the megalopolises of today, the story of the city is the story of civilisation. Although cities have only ever been inhabited by a tiny minority of humanity, the heat they generate has sparked most of our political, social, commercial, scientific and artistic revolutions. It is these world-changing, epoch-defining moments that are the focus of Ben Wilson's book, as he takes us on a thrilling global tour of the key metropolises of history.

At the dawn of the Enlightenment, James Dyer is born unable to feel pain. A source of wonder and scientific curiosity as a child, he rises through the ranks of Georgian society to become a brilliant surgeon. Yet as a human being he fails, for he can no more feel love and compassion than pain. Until, en route to St Petersburg to inoculate the Empress Catherine against smallpox, he meets his nemesis and saviour.

The Call of the Heart is a book that opens like a Royal Gateway, inviting you to step into other spheres where Just Cosmic Laws rule. Those who have managed to ascend the steps of Transfiguration and become truly Godlike already live in this world! The currents of Immortality are embedded in each line of the Teaching of the Heart, in every book, all of which are united by an invisible Fiery thread.

Generations of Truthseekers have been searching for this mysterious manuscript of untold antiquity that conceals the entire wisdom of the world, yet only a chosen few have ever gained access to it. But now, for the first time ever, Zinovya Dushkova, Ph.D., who is named as one of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People by Watkins Mind Body Spirit, has been permitted to cast more light on the Book of Dzyan.

When we talk about human history, we focus on great leaders, mass migration and decisive wars. But how has the Earth itself determined our destiny? How has our planet made us? As a species we are shaped by our environment. Geological forces drove our evolution in East Africa; mountainous terrain led to the development of democracy in Greece; and today voting behaviour in the United States follows the bed of an ancient sea. The human story is the story of these forces, from plate tectonics and climate change, to atmospheric circulation and ocean currents.

Fifty thousand years ago, we were not the only species of human in the world. There were at least four others, including the Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonesis and the Denisovans. At the forefront of the latter's ground-breaking discovery was Oxford Professor Tom Higham. In The World Before Us, he explains the scientific and technological advancements.

A writer takes residence in the illustrious but decaying Grand Hotel Europa, to think about where things went wrong with Clio, with whom he fell in love in Genoa and moved to Venice. He reconstructs a compelling story of love in times of mass tourism, about their trips to Malta, Palmaria, Portovenere and the Cinque Terre and their thrilling search for the last painting of Caravaggio. Meanwhile, he becomes fascinated by the mysteries of Grand Hotel Europe and gets more and more involved with the memorable characters who inhabit it, and who seem to come from a more elegant time.

Most diets fail because they rely on willpower alone. In this book surgeon and expert on metabolism Dr Andrew Jenkinson shows you how to unlock the secret to lasting weight loss through a better understanding of your brain, body and environment, allowing you to eat well and lose weight, forever. Using a combination of cutting-edge metabolic science, together with strategies like aversion, habit creation and mental reprogramming, expert in the science of appetite Dr Andrew Jenkinson will show you how your body and brain work when it comes to what you eat.

In this enlightening series, world-renowned spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh shares the essential foundations of mindful practice and meditation.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Charles I: An Abbreviated Life by Mark Kishlansky, read by John Sackville. The tragedy of Charles I dominates one of the most strange and painful periods in British history as the whole island tore itself apart over a deadly, entangled series of religious and political disputes. In Mark Kishlansky's brilliant account it is never in doubt that Charles created his own catastrophe, but he was nonetheless opposed by men with far fewer scruples and less consistency who for often quite contradictory reasons conspired to destroy him.

Your house should be the safest place in the world. But imagine you rent out a room, and the unthinkable happens…someone is murdered in it. This is the nightmare Alfie Watson is plunged into. He can’t go to the police, because he knows he’ll be in danger too. But he can’t just do nothing. Then Alfie receives a blackmail note – the killer is after him. And unless Alfie plays his cards right, he may not live to tell the tale…

The complex in the simple and the simple in the complex go hand in hand throughout human life. We are all called to understand ourselves in order to comprehend our neighbors. Parables, which contain the great Laws of Being, enforced on the way to finding our vital--simple but wiser--daily decisions, favor this.

"Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse is a captivating and introspective novel that delves into the psyche of its protagonist, Harry Haller. Set in post-World War I Germany, the story unfolds as Haller grapples with the complexities of modern urban life and his own inner turmoil. The term "Steppenwolf" refers to Haller's perception of himself as a lone wolf, an outsider caught between the worlds of bourgeois society and the untamed wilderness.

Set entirely on a London bus travelling from Hoxton to Highbury and taking place over just 36 minutes, the events of The 392 unfold through a cast of charismatic characters coming from very different worlds. On the 392 are all the familiar faces you might expect to see on any bus ride through inner-city London in the grip of gentrification; delinquent school kids, the high-flyers, the weird, the wonderful and the homeless. These Londoners share two things: a bus journey and a threat. A threat which is ready to blow apart everything they know.