Showing results by narrator "Richard Attlee" in All Categories

A masterful mix of horror and absurdity, Metamorphosis tells the story of travelling salesman Samsa, who wakes up one day to find out he has turned into a giant insect. Samsa has been a model of virtue for years, single-handedly supporting his parents and young sister. Suddenly he finds himself outcast in his own home, facing a world in which he no longer has a place.

1940 finds Adam Southey in a mood of bitter resentment: he cannot join up because he is lame. But at the school where he is teaching, the headmaster, Sam Cooke, is a brilliant scientist. And Adam suddenly finds that the battleground is not the only place to fight a war — for Dr. Cooke has developed a deadly secret weapon and enemy agents are after the plans. Adam and the doctor move to an engineering works in Scotland to build a working model of the weapon.

When Colin discovers his son is on a murder charge in France, he trails his small boat, The Dragonfly, across the Channel to help. There he meets his granddaughter - the irrepressible Delphine - for the first time. They embark on a boat journey through the picturesque French canals, heading south through Burgundy, 'until the butter melts'. Along the way, they catch up with Tyler, a spirited American, and land big fish, cultivate new loves and uncover a burning secret. But can Colin help his son get off the hook?

Anne Armstrong shares a squalid room in Dublin with her sister. Then a hasty marriage to John Watson, a former cleric and newly appointed teacher, transports her to a life of almost equal hardship and frustration in South London. There she receives no attention, no love, for Watson dedicates it all to his books.

An imposing castle looms over a village and no one seems to be allowed inside...not even K., the Land Surveyor whose livelihood depends on getting inside. Though never completed due to Kafka's untimely death, The Castle paints a striking image of absurdity and the nature of existence itself.

On 17 April 1984, as demonstrators gathered outside the Libyan embassy in London, two gunmen lay in wait inside. At 10.18 a.m. automatic gunfire rained down on the protestors and WPC Yvonne Fletcher fell, mortally wounded. As his friend lay dying, PC John Murray made her a promise that he would not rest until those responsible had been brought to justice. Thirty-seven years would pass before he was able to fulfil that undertaking.

In this compelling investigation, Michael Smith explores the critical moment in a spy's life: that split-second decision to embrace a double life.

After five years' silence, a British intelligence asset has made contact from Moscow. Claiming to possess explosive information, he wishes to defect to the West. But the operation goes catastrophically wrong; the would-be defector betrayed by a rogue element at the highest level of US government. As a result, MI6's Margo Lane is ordered to deliver a message the White House won't forget. Margo's mission will take her to the violent heart of contemporary Russia, the edge of the civil war in Syria - and to a terrifying decision she had hoped she would never have to make.

June 1604. When the emaciated body of a vagrant is found on the edge of the moor, physician Gabriel Taverner's verdict is death from natural causes. But is all as it seems? Who was the dead man, and why had he come to the small West Country village of Tavy St Luke's to die cold, sick and alone? Then a discovery found buried in a nearby field throws a strange new light on the case...and as they search for answers, Gabriel Taverner and Coroner Theophilus Davey unearth a series of shocking secrets stretching back more than 14 years.

Everything will be fine. That is what Mary and John promise when they tell their two children that they are getting a divorce. But while the end of their marriage offers them both freedom from their dissatisfaction, it brings to the fore the pain and resentments that have always percolated in their relationship and throws into stark relief their shortcomings as partners and as parents.