Showing results by narrator "Jamie Parker" in All Categories

In the fighting pits of the Conqueror, Khârn and his fellow World Eaters compete in ever-bloodier contests of carnage and mayhem. As the Butcher's Nails dig ever deeper into their brains, the Legion have forsaken the Crimson Path. Now they walk a darker, more dangerous road: the Eightfold Path.

Isabel Aird is aghast when her husband is appointed doctor to an extraordinary waterworks being built miles from the city. But Isabel, denied the motherhood role that is expected of her by a succession of miscarriages, finds unexpected consolations in a place where she can feel the presence of her unborn children and begin to work out what her life in Victorian society is for.

Tom Brown's Schooldays is the story of an energetic, good-hearted boy and his adventures at public school. Based on the author's own childhood, the novel presents us with a snapshot of life at Victorian public school as we follow Tom's development from a boy to a young man. Tom must fend off his archenemy, the bully Flashman, and take a younger boy under his wing - through which he learns loyalty, courage, and brotherhood.

In this breathtaking collection of gothic horror and eerie tales, draw the curtains and pull the blankets close for two classic Victorian horror tales in new adaptations, Dracula and Frankenstein, a thrilling drama about the scandalous Mary Shelley and Lord Byron in Bloody Poetry, the sensational psycho-sexual thriller The Mysteries of Udolpho, four spine-chilling dramatised tales and two of Mary Shelley's finest short stories.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a fascinating portrait of 19th-century Europe - disillusioned and ravaged by the wars of the postrevolutionary and Napoleonic eras. Our protagonist, whose breathtaking journey eerily echoes Byron's own life story, forgoes his destiny back home for the exciting unknown - the nature of humanity and the transformative effects of travel burst through the pages in four powerful cantos of Spenserian stanzas. Here is the poem that set Byron on his meteoric rise to fame in London society.

Berlin is Europe’s most fascinating and exciting city. It is and always has been a city on the edge – geographically, culturally, politically and morally. The great movements that have shaken Europe, from the Reformation to Marxism have their origins in Berlin’s streets. The long-time capital of Prussia and of the Hohenzollern dynasty it has never, paradoxically, been a Prussian city. Instead it has always been a city of immigrants, a city that accepts everyone and turns them into Berliners. A typical Berliner, it is said, is someone who has just arrived at the railway station.

Jude Lyon of MI6 has narrowly foiled the traitor Fowle's plot to level London, but the public are demanding answers. Answers the government doesn't have. As the country reels, a new populist political figure carves a stratospheric trajectory—but is he all he seems? In Moscow the President is furious. The world now knows the destructive power of the programme his people had been developing, and as the Russians scramble to understand how it got into Fowle's hands, they start to worry that perhaps it could be used against them.

The plot centers on Anthony Beavis, a dilettante social theorist, a man inclined to recoil from life. The pleasures of the physical world disgust him and the universe of ideas is but a poor refuge. Having long lost the art of intimacy, he betrays friendships and toys with the affections of women. But as Beavis approaches middle age, his world of perfect detachment begins to lose its appeal. Finally realizing that his withdrawal from life has been motivated not by intellectual honesty but by moral cowardice, Beavis, devastated and at crisis point, meets the remarkable and redoubtable Dr Miller.

For a century Bram Stoker's Dracula has reigned supreme as the undisputed masterpiece of horror writing. We have all grown up under the shadow of the elegant Count, at once an attractive, brutal, and erotic creature of the night.

With superb skill and feeling, Graham Greene retraces the experiences and encounters of his extraordinary life. His restlessness is legendary; as if seeking out danger, Greene travelled to Haiti during the nightmare rule of Papa Doc, Vietnam in the last days of the French, Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion. With ironic delight he recalls his time in the British Secret Service in Africa and his brief involvement in Hollywood. He writes, as only he can, about people and places, faith, doubt, fear and not least, the trials and craft of writing.

Jamie Parker stars as the Prince of Denmark in this brand new BBC Radio 4 full-cast production. At the Castle of Elsinore in Denmark, the court is uneasy. The king of Denmark has recently died and the throne has been claimed by the king's brother, Claudius. Prince Hamlet, still in mourning for his father, distrusts Claudius and believes that what has happened at the court 'cannot come to good’. The ghost of his father has told him he was murdered by Claudius.

Robert Musil (1880-1942) is best known for his enduring masterpiece The Man Without Qualities, one of the great European works of the 20th century. It was with The Confusions of Young Master Törless first published in 1906, a challenging but very different work, that he signalled his extraordinary talent. As the nineteenth century draws to an end, young Torless is sent to a military boarding school for the sons of the nobility on the eastern outreaches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

With Glow, Ned Beauman has reinvented the international conspiracy thriller for a new generation. A hostage exchange outside a police station in Pakistan. A botched defection in an airport hotel in New Jersey. A test of loyalty at an abandoned resort in the Burmese jungle. A boy and a girl locking eyes at a rave in a South London laundrette... For the first time, Britain's most exciting young novelist turns his attention to the present day, as a conspiracy with global repercussions converges on one small flat above a dentist's office in Camberwell.

Soviet Union, 1956: Stalin is dead. With his passing, a violent regime is beginning to fracture—leaving behind a society where the police are the criminals, and the criminals are innocent. The catalyst comes when a secret manifesto composed by Stalin's successor Khrushchev is distributed to the entire nation. Its message: Stalin was a tyrant and a murderer. Its promise: The Soviet Union will transform. But there are forces at work that are unable to forgive or forget Stalin's tyranny so easily, that demand revenge of the most appalling nature.

Upon inheriting the Moonstone, a huge and priceless diamond, Rachel Verinder's delight turns to dismay when the gem suddenly disappears. But this is no ordinary theft. Sergeant Cuff of Scotland Yard is called in and immediately suspects an intricate plot. However, not even his powers of detection can penetrate fully the mysteries surrounding the diamond.

As war continues to ravage the galaxy, the new Age of Darkness sees whole systems simply lost and countless battles forgotten. Surely there can be no hope for peace, forgiveness or respite in such times, and all that will be left are the dying warp-echoes of supreme galactic ruin....

Someone is setting fire to Sheffield. It starts with small things – dustbins and abandoned sheds – so people don’t notice at first. But the calling card is there if you look for it. Soon the fires spread to offices, homes, people. The Firewatcher’s followers are growing and they have one particular blaze in mind – one that the police would do well to pay attention to. But D/S Adam Tyler is distracted by a case, one that he is unknowingly connected to. And if he can’t discover the link between the fires and himself, he will burn – along with the entire city.

When an anonymous tip lands on his desk, DS Adam Tyler is intrigued in spite of himself. A tantalizing new lead in a 24-year-old unsolved disappearance is something he just can’t ignore, even while juggling a new boss, a heavy caseload and the early days of a fledgling relationship. But the letter triggers more than just a fresh investigation, and a shocking chain of events soon leaves him fighting for his life.

When Compton Valance and his best friend Bryan Nylon discover the world's first time machine (aka a mouldy, thirteen-week-old-cheese-and-pickled-egg sandwich), they become the most powerful boys in the universe. But how will Compton and Bryan decide to use their incredible new time-travelling powers? Will they use them for good or evil? Or will they just focus their efforts on perfecting a formula for the world's first pair of custard trousers?

Though it is for the sparkling epic, Aeneid, that the Roman poet Virgil is best known, it was these two poems, The Eclogues and Georgics, which first established his reputation.