Showing results by narrator "Paul English" in All Categories

The Prince is an arresting portrait of faith, loyalty and ambition, set against a backdrop of terrible suffering and an ancient institution in turmoil. The leading Catholic in the nation and spiritual adviser to Tony Abbott, Cardinal George Pell has played a key role in the greatest challenge to face his church for centuries: the scandal of child sex abuse by priests. In The Prince, David Marr investigates the man and his career: how did he rise through the ranks? What does he stand for? How does he wield his authority?

Simon Nye's TV series, The Durrells, is based loosely on Gerald Durrell's Corfu Trilogy and in particular his much-loved best seller, My Family and Other Animals. These books in turn are based somewhat loosely on actual events. The real-life Durrells went to Corfu at the urging of Lawrence Durrell, who was already living on the island with his wife, Nancy Myers. Their intent was to keep the family together as his mother, Louisa, was drinking heavily and recovering from a breakdown.

On the afternoon of 8 April 1802, in the remote southern ocean, two explorers had a remarkable chance encounter. Englishman Matthew Flinders and Frenchman Nicolas Baudin had been sent by their governments on the same quest: to explore the uncharted coast of the great south land and find out whether the west and east coasts, four thousand kilometres apart, were part of the same island. And so began the race to compile the definitive map of Australia.

For three different people brought together by their love for birds, life on the Queensland coast in 1914 is the timeless and idyllic world of sandpipers, ibises and kingfishers. In another hemisphere civilisation rushes headlong into a brutal conflict. Life there is lived from moment to moment. Inevitably, the two young men - sanctuary owner and employee - are drawn to the war, and into the mud and horror of the trenches of Armentieres. Alone on the beach, their friend Imogen, the middle-aged wildlife photographer, must acknowledge for all three of them that the past cannot be held.

A fast-paced, witty and gripping historical crime series from Tom Keneally and his eldest daughter, Meg. In the Port Macquarie penal settlement for second offenders, at the edge of the known world, gentleman convict Hugh Monsarrat hungers for freedom. Originally transported for forging documents passing himself off as a lawyer, he is now the trusted clerk of the settlement's commandant.

Reflecting on time, religion, painting, dancing and even grandchildren, Dessaix takes us on an enlivening journey across the landscape of growing older. Riffing on writers and thinkers from Plato to Eva Hoffman, he homes in on the crucial importance of a rich inner life.

On remote Rollrock Island, the sea-witch Misskaella discovers she can draw a girl from the heart of a seal. So, for a price, any man might buy himself a bride; an irresistibly enchanting sea-wife. But what cost will be borne by the people of Rollrock? The men, the women, the children? Once Misskaella sets her heart on doing such a thing?Margo Lanagan weaves an extraordinary tale of desire and revenge, of loyalty, heartache and human weakness, and of the unforeseen consequences of all-consuming love.

The biggest threat facing modern business is the sheer complexity of an uncertain future. That, and the fact that everyone is busy. Too busy for progress. Workplace cultures have become cursed with efficiency. And so when it comes to developing strategy, we default to our defaults. We favor quick fixes, easy templates, and familiar approaches, developing 'robust plans' that do little to mitigate strategic risk or generate new value. The result? The future comes, and businesses die.

For most of human history, mental illness has been largely untreatable. Sufferers lived their lives - if they survived - in and out of asylums, accumulating life's wreckage around them. In 1948, all that changed when an Australian doctor and recently returned prisoner of war, working alone in a disused kitchen, set about an experimental treatment for one of the scourges of mankind - manic depression, or bipolar disorder. That doctor was John Cade and in that small kitchen he stirred up a miracle.

In the warm alkaline waters of the public bath a headstrong young engineer accidentally collides with a beautiful actress. From this innocent collision of flesh begins a passion that takes them from the Wiltshire Downs to the most elemental choices of life and death in the Australian desert. Their intense romance is but part of the daring story that unfolds.

The 15th century saw the evolution of a distinct and powerfully influential European artistic culture. But what does the familiar phrase “Renaissance Art” actually refer to? Through engaging discussion of timeless works by artists such as Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, Tom Nichols offers a masterpiece of his own as he explores the truly original and diverse character of the art of the Renaissance.

In the spirit of The Daughters of Mars, Tom Keneally's new novel brilliantly explores the intimacies of ordinary lives being played out against momentous world events. In Gawell, New South Wales, a prisoner-of-war camp to house European, Korean and Japanese captives is built close to a farming community. Alice is a young woman living a dull life with her father-in-law on his farm while her new husband first fights, then is taken prisoner, in Greece.

Henry Hallward, editor of the Sydney Chronicle, is a thorn in the side of the colonial administration. Hallward has been imprisoned several times for criminal libel and continues to edit his newspaper while incarcerated. This time, he’s in jail awaiting trial for suggesting that there have been some criminal financial dealings involving the CEO of the Australian Agricultural Company, a consortium of British landowners, some resident in the colony, some not, to whom the British government was giving a million acres of Australian land to develop.

In this audiobook you'll find what it takes to have an underlying sense of calm and equilibrium you can rely on the whole of your life. This is much more than feeling. It's a way of squeezing the most out of the up times, coping with the down times, and bouncing right back when things go completely off the rails. And best of all it requires no special skills and no effort. Calm: No Matter What shows you how to do this with one simple technique.

Not all murder victims are mourned, but the perpetrator must always be punished.... For Robert Church, superintendent of the Parramatta Female Factory, the most enjoyable part of his job is access to young convict women. Inmate Grace O'Leary has made it her mission to protect the women from his nocturnal visits, and when Church is murdered with an awl thrust through his right eye, she becomes the chief suspect.

Failed Shakespearean actor and would-be private detective William Power returns to Melbourne in this wry sequel that re-creates the tension and fear of wartime Australia. Bloodied and broken but somehow unbowed, he arrives in a town struggling under war-rationing and full of cocky American soldiers and lands squarely in the bosom of his childhood home in Carlton, now dominated by his sister-in-law, the odious Darlene.

George Pell: leader of the Catholic Church in Australia, confessor to Tony Abbott. David Marr: the nation's leading biographer and investigative journalist. Cardinal George Pell is the most prominent Catholic leader in Australia at a time when the Church's handling of sexual abuse is being closely investigated. He is also the confessor of prime-minister-in-waiting Tony Abbott.

A tale of longing, loss and growing love under the bright Australian sun. It's 1921, and the Great War has left in its wake untold tragedy, not only in lives lost but in the guilt of survivors, the deep-set scars of old wounds and the sting of redoubled bigotries. In the tiny hamlet of Sunshine, on the far-flung desert's edge, three very different ex-servicemen - Jack Bell, an Aboriginal horseman; Snow McGlynn, a laconic, curmudgeonly farmer and Art Lovelee, an eccentric engineer - find themselves sharing a finger of farmland along the Darling River, and not much else.

Being the skipper of the cutter that carries all supplies and communications between Tasmania and Maria Island is a powerful position - and a deadly one. Monsarrat and Mrs Mulrooney are sent to Maria Island in January of 1826, the very early days of the penal settlement there, to solve the murder of Harefield - the man who sailed the government cutter between mainland Tasmania and Maria Island, bringing all supplies and correspondence and directives - all of which he made sure to read.

Western Australia, the wheatbelt. Lew McLeod has been travelling and working with Painter Hayes since he was a boy. Shearing, charcoal burning - whatever comes. Painter made him his first pair of shoes. It’s a hard and uncertain life, but it’s the only one he knows. But Lew’s a grown man now. And with this latest job, shearing for John Drysdale and his daughter Clara, everything will change. Stephen Daisley writes in lucid, rippling prose of how things work, and why.