Showing results by narrator "Tim Smith" in All Categories

Thomas of Hookton is a seasoned veteran of King Edward's army and a natural leader in what will be remembered as the Hundred Years' War. Accompanied by a small but able band of soldiers, Thomas is sent to Gascony to capture the castle of Astarac. But he has ulterior motives for accepting the charge: Gascony is the home of the black knight, Guy de Vexille, who brutally slaughtered his father. It is also reputed to be the place where the Grail was last seen.

In Broken Bridle, Wyoming, Jeremiah Purdy, the town's tinhorn sheriff is a college kid who wants to become governor some day. But outlaw Darius Pike couldn't care less about anyone else's ambitions. With Pike holding Broken Bridle in a bloody grip of terror, Purdy sends a desperate cry for help - to Shawn O'Brien, town tamer. Shawn's mission: ride to Wyoming and pry Broken Bridle loose from Pike's reign of fear.

In 1347 the English capture Calais and the war with France is suspended by a truce. But for Thomas of Hookton, the hero of Harlequin and Vagabond, there is no end to the fighting. He is pursuing the grail, the most sacred of Christendom's relics, and is sent to his ancestral homeland, Gascony, to engineer a confrontation with his deadliest enemy, Guy Vexille.

On 1 July 1916, Douglas Haig's army launched the "Big Push" that was supposed finally to bring an end to the stalemate on the Western Front. What happened next was a human catastrophe: scrambling over the top into the face of the German machine guns and artillery fire, 19,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers were killed, the greatest loss in a single day ever sustained by the British Army. The battle did not stop there, however.

From the rumblings of provincial England in Silas Marner and Cranford to a wild and dangerous journey across the Holy Lands in Ivanhoe, these classic novels of the Georgian and Victorian period are as relevant and important today as they ever have been.

The 5 shortlisted titles for the BBC National Short Story Award 2011 administered in partnership with Booktrust, containing: Rag Love by M. J. Hyland, read by Mike Sengelow; The Heart of Denis Noble by Alison MacLeod, read by Tim Pigott-Smith; Wires by Jon McGregor, read by Lydia Wilson; The Human Circadian Pacemaker by K. J. Orr, read by Indira Varma; The Dead Roads by D. W. Wilson, read by Trevor White.

Once upon a time, there was a struggling writer named Woodhouse Carton, who tried to make his name as an author while simultaneously running his own creative writing class. Over 12 episodes, we follow the frustrated scribe's fruitless search for fame and fortune as, supported by his long-suffering wife, Gila, and feckless sidekick Seamus, he tries to write the definitive biography of philosophical novelist Wolf Heinrich Graubart - or compose the hit song that will set him up for life.

This is the first of three volumes, which, taken together under the over-arching title of Monarchy, will form a new, ground-breaking history of England as told through the lives of its Kings and Queens.

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.

Songwriter, broadcaster and award-winning entertainer Sir Richard Stilgoe goes out, about and around Britain in this amusing musical revue, which finds him taking a wry look at the pastimes and professions of our wayward island. In the company of a troupe of star guests including Sandi Toksvig, Emma Thompson, Kathryn Tickell, Pam Ayres and John Hegley, he visits locations ranging from the Boat Show to the City of London to perform a unique themed comedy show full of fun and laughter.

A gentleman with a taste for gambling accepts a bet that he cannot make it around the globe in 80 days. Part travelogue, part high-stakes thriller, Phileas Fogg and his French manservant race to win this fantastical wager. Tim Piggott-Smith narrates the journey which has come to inspire generations of adventurers.

Uther, the High King of Britain, has died, leaving the infant Mordred as his only heir. His uncle, the loyal and gifted warlord Arthur, now rules as caretaker for a country that has fallen into chaos - threats emerge from within the British kingdoms while vicious Saxon armies stand ready to invade. As he struggles to unite Britain and hold back the Saxon enemy, Arthur is embroiled in a doomed romance with beautiful Guinevere.

Intrigue, espionage and anarchy abound in what is still considered Conrad’s finest novel. Adolf Verloc, a Russian spy working for the police, is embroiled in a plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. When the attack goes awry, Verloc must face the consequences. Beloved star of the screen and stage Tim Pigott-Smith provides a thrilling narration of this strikingly relevant tale.

When Kiowa war chief, Santana, boasted that he had led a war party against a wagon train of freighters, he set the stage for his arrest. The war party had robbed, tortured and mutilated members of the wagon train, and now the Kiowa chiefs were to be tried in a Texas court. The case seemed open and shut, but attorney Joe Woolfolk made it clear that the U.S. would have to prove its charge without using Santanas boastful self-incrimination.

For 17 years, Ty Mattson never knew if his father survived the Mexican War. But when he receives news that his father is alive - and he's joined the Confederate forces of General John Morgan - Ty leaves home to enlist with Morgan's Raiders. Owen Mattson turns out to be everything Ty imagined he would be: a good man, a true mentor, a great soldier. But a Confederate assassin's bullets nearly divide father and son yet again.

'We Churchills die at forty,' said Winston in 1908, 'and I want to put something more on the slate before then.' By the time he died in 1965, the slate was full. From his earliest days Churchill was an ambitious character, eager for action. He achieved fame and popularity through his dispatches from the Boer War, and in 1900 was elected MP for Oldham. Until the outbreak of war in 1939 Churchill was loved and loathed in equal measure.

Welcome to ancient Rome, where the steps of the Forum are peopled by nubile slave girls and a range of outrageous characters including Lurcio’s owner, Ludicrus Sextus the senator, his wife, Ammonia, his son, Nausius, and his daughter, Erotica. Lurcio attempts to deliver his prologue and begin proceedings before he’s quickly caught up in the myriad of sexual liaisons in all quarters of his master’s house.

In the lawless frontier town of Brownsville, Texas, a boy and his parents ride a carriage down a crowded street - when a kill crazy band of kidnappers strike suddenly. Now, to rescue his family, veteran rancher Charley Sunday cobbles together a ragtag posse that starts with an outlaw and an Indian - and picks up recruits, weapons, and a lot of trouble all the way down into Mexico. 

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation....

On the West Texas border, a behemoth is bellowing smoke, fire, and death. This monster is the infamous Abaddon Cannon Foundry, whose weapons of war have spread death and destruction around the world — and made a few men in Big Buck, Texas incredibly rich. Now, a Mexican-born teenager has disappeared into this fortress factory, where men work and sweat as slaves. This boy’s sister wants to learn her brother’s fate, and she just happens to know a man named Shawn O’Brien, the town tamer.