Showing results by narrator "Simon Shepherd" in All Categories

It started with a cash drop by an English spy in occupied Paris in 1944. Reserved for Resistance groups during the war, the money reached Émilien Amaury, an advertising executive, who was tasked to help France return to a free press once liberated. He soon launched a newspaper empire that—unbeknown to him—would own the rights to run what would become one of the greatest sporting events in history.

This compilation, comprising a Baker's (Street) Dozen of his adventures, re-creates the gas-lit, fog-enshrouded world of Victorian London as once more Sherlock Holmes urges, 'Come, Watson, the game is afoot!'

The powerful story of the Red Army's battle of liberation against the Nazi invader - from Stalingrad all the way to Berlin. In February 1943, German forces surrendered to the Red Army at Stalingrad, and the tide of war turned. By May 1945 Soviet soldiers had stormed Berlin and brought down Hitler's regime. Total War follows the fortunes of these fighters as they liberated Russia and the Ukraine from the Nazi invader and fought their way into the heart of the Reich. It reveals the horrors they experienced.

When Iranians overthrew their monarchy, rejecting a pro-Western shah in favor of an Islamic regime, many observers predicted that revolutionary turmoil would paralyze the country for decades to come. Yet 40 years after the 1978-79 revolution, Iran has emerged as a critical player in the Middle East and the wider world, as demonstrated in part by the 2015 international nuclear agreement. In Iran Rising, renowned Iran specialist Amin Saikal describes how the country has managed to survive despite ongoing domestic struggles, Western sanctions, and other serious challenges.

Spanning events over thirty years, Volume I of The Papers of Sherlock Holmes relates narratives of Holmes and Watson's days in Baker Street, as well as particulars of Holmes's supposed retirement. Follow along as The Master and his Boswell travel from the streets of London to the Kent countryside, to Oxford and Sussex. Written in traditional canonical style, these stories provide fresh details of Holmes's world. Join us as we climb the seventeen steps to the Baker Street sitting room, where Holmes and Watson prepare to begin their next adventure. The game is afoot!

Unforbidden Pleasures is the dazzling new release from Adam Phillips, author of Missing Out and Going Sane. Adam Phillips takes Oscar Wilde as a springboard for a deep dive into the meanings and importance of the unforbidden, from the fall of our 'first parents', Adam and Eve, to the work of the great 20th-century psychoanalytic thinkers.

Love is a great leveller. Everyone wants love, everyone falls in love, everyone loses love, and everyone knows something of love's madness. But the experience of obsessive love is no trivial matter. In the course of his career, psychologist Dr Frank Tallis has treated many unusual patients, whose stories have lessons for all of us.

Elton John is as much loved for his outrageous personality and witty outspokenness as for his music. Such shamelessness and sheer silliness rivals anything uttered by punk rockers, yet it is so typically Elton: honest and intemperate. Tragedy and heartbreak have played a large part in his life. Behind the parties, the hedonism, the lavish stage costumes, and silly glasses lies a more somber story. Between disputes with managers, legal wranglings, public breakups, and divorce, John has been faced with serious health problems and drug addictions.

From 1890 and through the early years of the 20th century, Vienna became a dazzling beacon. The city was powered by an unprecedented number of extraordinary people - artists Klimt and Schiele, thinkers such as Theodor Herzl, and fashion icons like the glamorous Empress Sisi. The influence of early 20th century Vienna is still detectable all around us. The way we think about ourselves has been largely determined by Vienna's most celebrated resident: Sigmund Freud. Mortal Secrets is the story of Freud's life, Vienna's golden age, and an essential reappraisal of Freud's legacy.

Its two days before Christmas and Helsinki is battling ruthless climate catastrophe: subway tunnels are flooded; abandoned vehicles are burning in the streets. People are fleeing to the far north where conditions are still tolerable. Social order is crumbling and private security firms have undermined the police force. Tapani Lehtinen, a struggling poet, is among the few still willing to live in the city.

The swashbuckling first book in an explosive new series. Imagine if you lost your parents - not just in place, but in time. Jake Djones' mum and dad have gone missing and they could be anywhere in the world - at any time in history. Because the Djones family have an astonishing secret, which for years they've managed to keep - even from each other. They belong to the History Keepers: a secret society which travels through the centuries to prevent evil enemies from meddling with history itself.

A two-timing pornographer becomes the unwilling object of one of his victim's vengeful fantasies. A millionaire buys himself the perfect mistress - passive, yet beautiful - but the union soon becomes a nightmare of jealousy and despair. And an ape reflects on the relationship with a young female writer, mourning their fading love and musing on the fateful deceptions of art. In these seven stories of dreamlike lucidity, the wasteland of the human psyche is mapped with deadly precision.

Imperial Tragedy tells the story of Rome's gradual collapse. Full of palace intrigue, religious conflicts and military history, as well as details of the shifts in social, religious and political structures, Imperial Tragedy contests the idea that Rome fell due to external invasions.

The History Keepers embark on their third adventure, and this is the most explosive one yet! The time-travelling agents voyage from Shakespeare's England to Imperial China in pursuit of their most villainous foe yet, Xiang Xi, whose aim is to decimate the population and destroy the world's trade links. Jake, Nathan and Topaz must join forces with international agents in order to prevent mayhem on a global scale.

As a small boy, Bill François was frightened of deep water. Until a chance encounter with the elusive sardine set him on course for a life in marine science: a mission to better understand, and preserve, the underwater world, to find his place in that ecosystem and learn how to converse harmoniously with the ocean. In a series of exquisitely rendered vignettes of marine life, François invites us on a whistle-stop global tour to reveal the mysteries of the sea, beginning with the simple eloquence of the sardine.

William is a happy man. He has just married Isabel, the girl of his dreams, and is confidently sailing along on a sea of wedded bliss. He’s got a hot wife, a snazzy new job and things couldn’t be much better. Sure, there are a few bumps in the road, but life on the whole is good. That is until Isabel’s ‘best friend’ Alex starts to intrude on their wedded bliss. And when William’s ex-girlfriend Saskia - aka the ‘Destroyer of Relationships’ - appears on the scene, things go from bad to worse.

At the war's end, Churchill and his colleagues left the chamber and locked the door behind them and the War Rooms remained there, untouched and little known, until the early 1980s. Today, those historic chambers are on display as the Churchill War Rooms exhibit. With Secrets of Churchill's War Rooms, you can go behind the glass partitions that separate the War Rooms from the visiting public, bringing listeners closer than ever before to where Churchill not only ran the war but won it.

Dame Beryl Bainbridge was one of the best loved and most recognisable English novelists of her generation. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, and her critically acclaimed novels The Dressmaker (1973), The Bottle Factory Outing (1974), An Awfully Big Adventure (1990), Every Man for Himself (1996) and Master Georgie (1998) confirmed her status as one of the major literary figures of the last 50 years.

William Dougal, a post-graduate expert in the medieval script of Caroline Minuscule, stumbles on the garroted corpse of his tutor and finds himself embroiled in a hunt for a cache of diamonds, in a deadly fairy story in which no one obeys the rules. Least of all Dougal's girlfriend Amanda. As the body count rises, the couple pursue the diamonds from London to an East Anglian cathedral close, from Cambridge to a wintry Suffolk estuary.

Ray Mears is a household name through his television series Tracks, World of Survival, Bushcraft Survival, The Real Heroes of Telemark, and many more.

He is a private individual who shuns publicity whenever possible and would prefer to let his many skills tell their own tale - until now. In My Outdoor Life, Ray tells of his childhood and the formative years when he first developed a passion for both bushcraft and the martial arts skills that are central to his life.