Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Historical

'Today, Gordon’s words are simple and heartfelt. He promises, as his own school motto said, "to do his utmost". I know that the same will go for me, too. We turn to the door, greeting the policeman on duty. It is time to play our part in contributing to what happens next in government and a new life behind the black door.' In this personal memoir about life at 10 Downing Street, Sarah Brown shares the secrets of living behind the most famous front door in the world.

Brothers in War is the immensely powerful story of eight Beechey brothers, and how they paid the ultimate price for King and country in the Great War. Some were keen to enlist from the start, others were conscripted and some dead against. Eventually, all eight would be swept up into its devastating path as, despite astonishing displays of courage and strength of character, they met their fates on the battlefields of France, Flanders, East Africa, and Gallipoli.

Bertie Ahern, three times Irish Taoiseach, is often described as an enigma. The Old IRA man's son who delivered peace in Northern Ireland. A working class boy responsible for the Celtic Tiger. An ardent nationalist admired by European leaders. Now in this frank and revealing autobiography, Ahern gives his own account of a remarkable political life and the personal story that accompanies it.

When they met at a motorcycle club in 1912, Elsie Knocker was a 30-year-old motorcycling divorcee dressed in bottle-green Dunhill leathers, and Mairi Chisholm was a brilliant 18-year old mechanic, living at home and borrowing tools from her brother. Little did they know that theirs was to become one of the most extraordinary stories of the First World War.

The Beecheys were a close-knit family, eight brothers and five sisters under the loving eye of their widowed mother, Amy. As the First World War raged across Europe and beyond, the brothers were one-by-one swept up into its devastating path.

A Life Lost. A Love Cut Short. 'From the moment I set eyes on him I adored him. The connection between us was so strong it went beyond everything else. His job, my job, his lifestyle, my lifestyle. All that fell away...'Christina and Oz had their whole lives ahead of them. Oz was one of only a handful of bomb disposal experts serving in the British Army, but to Christina he was a loving and devoted husband and father - the one person she could never live without.

Exploding pressure cookers, a thwarted wife's deadly revenge, and transvestites in distress - manning an ambulance in the '70s kept you on your toes. Having survived the rites of passage as a probationer, Les Pringle now has to face up to the reality of life as an ambulance man in Thatcher's Britain. He does this with humour and fortitude - two qualities which are essential if he is to cope with cases ranging from the absurd to the heartrending. From attending murder scenes to delivering babies...it's quite a life for Les and one that he and his shift mates tread with warmth and humour in equal measure.

In an extraordinary series of private interviews, conducted over 16 years with the stipulation that they not be released until after Gerald Ford's death, the 38th president of the United States reveals a profoundly different side of himself: funny, reflective, gossipy, strikingly candid, and the stuff of headlines.

A parable for the new age of inequality: part family history, part detective story, part history of a vanishing class, and a vividly compelling exploration of the degree to which an inheritance - financial, cultural, genetic - conspired in one person's self-destruction.

From being transported by the sound of 'True Love' by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly on the radio as a small child living in condemned housing in ungentrified West London in the late 1950s to going out to work as a postman humming 'Watching the Detectives' by Elvis Costello in 1977, Alan Johnson's life has always had a musical soundtrack. In fact music hasn't just accompanied his life, it's been an integral part of it.

Berlin, September 1944. Ulrich von Hassell, former ambassador to Italy and a key member of the German Resistance, is executed for his part in an assassination plot against Hitler. In response to the attack, Himmler, leader of the SS, orders the arrest of all the families of the plotters. In a remote castle in Italy, von Hassell's beloved daughter, Fey, is discovered just when she thought she had escaped the Nazi net. She is arrested, and her two sons, ages three and two, are seized by the SS.