Showing results by narrator "Joan Walker" in All Categories

Julius Caesar was one of the most ambitious and successful politicians of the late Roman Republic and his short but bloody conquest of the Celtic tribes led to the establishment of the Roman province of Gaul (modern France). Caesar's commentaries on his Gallic Wars provide us with the most detailed surviving eyewitness account of a campaign from antiquity. In this book, respected Roman military historian Kate Gilliver makes use of this account and other surviving evidence to consider the importance of the Gallic Wars.

In "The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse", a woodmouse finds it a challenge to keep a tidy house under a hedge that is visited by an assortment of insects. In this story, a beetle leaves dirty footprints and a spider leaves cobwebs in his wake after visits to Mrs. Tittlemouse's underground tunnel-house.

A frightened girl running barefoot on a knife edge - that's how 18-year-old Sephy feels as she gazes down at her newborn daughter, Callie Rose. Whilst Sephy is a Cross, the baby's father, Callum, was a nought, giving Callie Rose dual heritage in a society where the ruling Crosses treat the pale-skinned noughts (blankers) as second-class citizens.

Beautifully performed poetry enhanced with music. Detailed commentary and analysis from experts. A fantastic introduction to classic poetry, allowing listeners to begin to appreciate and criticise form and content themselves.

Full-cast performance with comprehensive commentary and analysis for any student to fully understand and appreciate the novel. Dickens' tale of Pip, a young man "removed from his present sphere of life" and cast into a Victorian nightmare, is a powerful audio drama to be enjoyed and appreciated as an important piece of social criticism.

Discover the genius of William Shakespeare in this entertaining and educational full-cast drama, designed to whet the appetite and introduce you to the man, the life, the legacy. Includes key scenes from the major plays.

The dashing gentleman and the determined lady both pursue the secrets of the Black Rose Society. But what they discover is forbidden passion and a dangerous desire.

The Colosseum was Imperial Rome's monument to warfare. Like a cathedral of death it towered over the city and invited its citizens, 50,000 at a time, to watch murderous gladiatorial games. It is now visited by two million visitors a year (Hitler was among them). Award-winning classicist Mary Beard, with Keith Hopkins, tells the story of Rome's greatest arena: how it was built; the gladiatorial and other games that were held there; the training of the gladiators; the audiences who revelled in the games, the emperors who staged them and the critics.

The ruined silhouette of the Parthenon on its hill above Athens is one of the world's most famous images. Its 'looted' Elgin Marbles are a global cause celebre. But what actually are they? In a revised and updated edition, Mary Beard, award winning writer, reviewer and leading Cambridge classicist, tells the history and explains the significance of the Parthenon, the temple of the virgin goddess Athena, the divine patroness of ancient Athens.

By age 50, Elin Boals has created for herself a perfect life: Her wildly successful business as Manhattan’s preeminent fashion photographer is flourishing. Her handsome, patient husband is devoted to her; her teenaged daughter, Alice, has been accepted to the ballet academy of her dreams. But then Elin receives an innocuous-looking envelope. Folded inside is a star-chart, with an address written by a familiar hand.

In The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, a little girl named Lucie has lost three pocket handkerchiefs and a pinafore. Setting out to find them, she spots some fresh clean white cloth on the hillside. As she approaches the clean linens on the hill Lucie spies a door built into the side of the hill and hears someone singing a song about laundry behind it. Could the missing hankies be inside?

An unnamed Visitor travels to Berlin with a camera looking for reckonings of her own. The city itself is a character - vibrant and post-apocalyptic, flat and featureless except for its rivers, its lakes, its legions of bicyclists. Here in Berlin, she encounters a people's history: the Cuban teen taken as a POW on a German submarine only to return home to a family who doesn't believe him, the young Jewish scholar hidden in a sarcophagus until safe passage to England is found, the female lawyer haunted by a childhood of deprivation, and more.

Full-cast performance with comprehensive commentary and analysis for any student to fully understand and appreciate the novel. This timeless classic of gossip and matchmaking is presented as exquisite drama that questions and analyses the values and beliefs of Austen's own times, to understand the "blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd" world of the text.

The Museum of Broken Promises is a beautiful, evocative love story and heartbreaking journey in to a long-buried past. Paris, today. The Museum of Broken Promises is a place of wonder and sadness, hope and loss. Every object in the museum has been donated - a cake tin, a wedding veil, a baby's shoe. And each represent a moment of grief or terrible betrayal. The museum is a place where people come to speak to the ghosts of the past and, sometimes, to lay them to rest.

Dawn Elisabeth Brightside has been running from her past for 22 years and two months, precisely. So when she is offered a bed in St Jude’s Hostel for the Homeless, it means so much more than just a roof over her head. But with St Jude’s threatened with closure, Dawn worries that everything is about to crumble around her all over again. Perhaps, with a little help from her new friends, she can find a way to save this light in the darkness? And maybe, just maybe, Dawn will finally have a place to call home....

Laura Horsley, in a moment of uncharacteristic recklessness, finds herself agreeing to help organise a literary festival in the English countryside. But her initial excitement is rapidly followed by a mounting sense of panic when reality sinks in and she realises just how much work is involved - especially when an innocent mistake leads the festival committee to mistakenly believe that Laura is a personal friend of the author at the top of their wish-list. Determined to rise to the challenge, she sets off to meet her literary hero.

'Every animal needs its own territory, and humans are no exception. My plans were clear at an early age. I intended to live somewhere wild and supremely beautiful.... I imagined searching the whole world for a place, high and remote as a sheep stell, quiet as a monastery, challenging and virginal, untouched and unknown.' Over 20 years ago, well before the current trend for nature writing, Janet White wrote The Sheep Stell, a beautiful and evocative memoir about her life as a shepherdess.

The fourth action-packed quest in an exciting new six book character-led series for 7+ girls who love fantasy, adventure, and high-kicking heroines! On her tenth birthday, tomboy Sophie learns she is the Guardian of a magic gateway between our world and the Shadow Woods. She must keep the human world safe from mischievous goblins, sprites and elves. Each book sees Sophie having to outwit weird and terrifying creatures from the Shadow Woods, starting with the gruesome Goblins!

Very few people ever enter the Shadow Woods, for these woods are like no others. Hidden deep within them is the Gateway to the Shadow Realm - a dark and chaotic world where all kinds of gruesome creatures live.... On her 10th birthday, tomboy Sophie learns she is the Guardian of the magical gateway and that her destiny is to protect the human world from the goblins, trolls and evil sprites that inhabit the Shadow Woods.

Full-cast, unabridged performance with comprehensive commentary and analysis for any student to fully understand and appreciate the play. When characters have to ask "Are all the people mad?" you need a guide! Explore this topsy-turvy world to understand, enjoy, and analyse the language, imagery, and themes of Shakespeare's dark comedy.