Showing results by narrator "Michael Fenner" in All Categories

The ultra-secret 'Berlin Tunnel' was dug in the mid-1950s from the American sector in southwest Berlin and ran nearly a quarter mile into the Soviet sector, allowing the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) to tap in to critical KGB and Soviet military underground telecommunication lines. George Blake, a trusted officer working in a highly sensitive job with SIS, was privy to every aspect of the plan.

Vitaly Stepanov worked for the Russian anti-doping squad, committed to his job; Yuliya Rusanova was one of the country's most promising 800m athletes. When they met, he fell in love with her; she revealed she was taking performance-enhancing drugs. It could have been the end of their relationship, but instead they decided they would reveal the scale and the scope of the corruption in Russian athletics - the bribes, the drugs, the abuse.

During a time of political disruption and rising antinuclear sentiment, MI5 discovers that an extremist fringe group, Action Against Austerity, appears to have links to an established political party while planning sabotage using something or someone called Deep Blue. Banned from investigating British political parties, the head of MI5 seeks advice from Charles Thoroughgood, his opposite number in MI6.

The soldiers of one of the world's most famous fighting forces, the Paras, tell the gripping story of the regiment in their own words. Published to coincide with 75th anniversary of its formation, this is the definitive history of the iconic Parachute Regiment, told through the voices of more than 200 of the soldiers themselves.

1941: almost four million Nazi troops marched on Moscow, with a brutal scorched-earth tactic that saw millions of Soviet citizens massacred. A level of brutality only paralleled after the Soviet's triumphed at Stalingrad and took mindless revenge as they marched back into Berlin. Beginning with Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, to the appalling circumstances of the Fall of Berlin in April 1945 and told from the perspective of the people of Russia and Eastern Europe, Barbarossa is a heartrending story of tragedy, suffering and heroism.

London, 2013, and the city is battling an epidemic of serial killings - even with the widespread government use of DNA detection, brain-imaging, and the 'punitive coma'. Detective Isadora 'Jake' Jacowicz is hunting a murderer, code-named 'Wittgenstein', who has taken it upon himself to eliminate anyone who has tested positive for a tendency towards violent behaviour - even if they've never committed a crime. His intellectual brilliance is matched only by his homicidal madness.

In Wonders in the Deep Mensun Bound, the renowned archaeologist who was the Director of Exploration on the team that discovered Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance, argues that the history of the world is as much about maritime exploration and trade as it is about what happens on land. Using the many treasures Bound has discovered at the bottom of the sea and working with journalist Mark Frary, he sets out to write a maritime history of the world from 3000 BC to the present.

1914. Sherlock Holmes has been murdered. Nobody knows who did it, but Wiggins, former Baker Street Irregular and Holmes' protégée, suspects a German spy. However, Europe is descending into the chaos of the First World War. Captain Kell of Military Intelligence has limited resources, and more pressing matters on his mind. Wiggins is on his own. Almost. He pursues Holmes' killer across the continent, but as grief and rage close in it's not just the killer that eludes his grasp.

Since the 19th century, England has been sending its cricket teams around the world to take on their rivals. Initially, these trips were undertaken by boat, meaning players could be away for many months, often in alien conditions. With air travel reducing journey time and facilities much improved, the challenges still remain: homesickness, isolation, hostile crowds. For some, the experience can be too much, while others thrive in the heat and dust of battle. The Tour looks at all aspects of the history of England's cricketers abroad.

Despite the many films and television programmes over the decades since the end of the Second World War that portrays our allied heroes as grown-up men and women, the Battle of Britain was in the main actually fought and won by teenagers. The average age of an RAF fighter pilot was just 20 years old. Many of the men and women who designed and built their planes were even younger.

Thirty-five years after the publication of A Very British Coup, former Labour MP Chris Mullin has written a compelling and timely sequel. In a near-future, post-Brexit Britain, the fault lines forged in the white heat of the referendum have become entrenched features of British political life. Britain's standing in the world has steadily diminished as its problems have grown. Into the maelstrom steps Fred Thompson, former aide to left-wing Prime Minister Harry Perkins and his successor as MP for Sheffield Parkside.

In 1969, John Julius Norwich, the legendary popular historian, gathered together the favourite things he'd come across in the last 365 days into one short charming pamphlet. Initially just a treat for his friends, it rapidly turned into a huge word-of-mouth success. And soon the arrival of John Julius Norwich's latest 'Christmas Cracker' became as essential a part of the English Christmas experience as holly and mistletoe. Norwich had a brilliant eye for a story and telling detail, and his Crackers are full of jokes, warmth and wit.

Franz Beckenbauer is Germany's greatest-ever football player and one of the game's biggest icons of all time, a World Cup winner as player and manager. The Three Lives of the Kaiser is the first English-language account of a truly remarkable existence. Known everywhere as 'the Kaiser', Beckenbauer's compatriots even referred to him as 'the Shining Light'. Not anymore, though. Because what is often described as a blessed life has really been an emotional roller-coaster ride with stunning highs and bitter lows.

Um sich die Ferien im Sommercamp leisten zu können, nimmt Biggi einen Job im Eiscafé an. Doch als ihr großer Schwarm Steve zufällig eine Rolle als Stuntman beim Film bekommt, ändert sich alles. Er besorgt Biggi und Jessica eine gut bezahlte Statistenrolle. Der Filmproduzent hat allerdings sehr bald andere Pläne mit Biggi.

Das Motto eines Schreibwettbewerbs der Schülerzeitung heißt: Romantic Love. Biggi möchte auch teilnehmen und kommt auf ungewöhnliche Weise zu einer unwahrscheinlichen Story. Dolly ist eifersüchtig auf Biggis Erfolg und schickt ein riesiges Überraschungspaket.

A spookily prescient espionage thriller from one of the masters of the genre, first published in 1980. What if the Soviet Union gained control over the US presidency? SIS agent James Mackay fears that this may already be happening when he realises the newly elected president's press secretary is a former Communist radical with links to the KGB.

Sir David Frost, who died suddenly in August 2013, was the only person to have met and interviewed every British Prime Minister since Harold Wilson as well as seven Presidents of the United States. Other world leaders he interviewed included Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Putin, Henry Kissinger, Benazir Bhutto, Shimon Peres, Yasser Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Einfühlsame, lustige, politische, satirische, zum Nachdenken anregende, traurige Lyrik. Gedichte zu vielen Themen des Lebens.

The Abduction has begun…. The teenage daughter of a US soldier disappeared in Venice last night. Now clues are appearing on anonymous website Carnivia.com - and the police are always one step behind. Kat Tapo of the Venice Carabinieri and US intelligence analyst Holly Boland are working together to find the girl, but the race to save her will uncover a conspiracy that powerful men will kill to keep hidden.

9th November 1989, East Berlin, the day the Berlin Wall will fall: Bernd Zeiger, a Stasi agent, is now in the fading twilight of his career. Twenty five years earlier: a physicist, Johannes Held, had been sent by the East Germans to infiltrate a US military operation in the American desert. Held had unknowingly fathered a child there, a fact Zeiger was aware of, and when he returned and refused to divulge what he had learned despite being tortured, Zeiger strangely became a sort of friend. But he would still betray him, a treachery that haunts him to this day.