Showing results by narrator "Mark Meadows" in All Categories

Rufus is an apprentice in his father's goldsmith workshop in Cologne, Gemany. One day he hears a boy, Nick, preach in the city Centre. Nick's message and words are mesmerizing and Rufus is spellbound. He is overcome with the desire to follow the flawed yet charismatic young Crusade leader on his journey to the Holy Land. And Rufus is not alone. Many children are captivated just as Rufus is, and leave their homes and families having fallen under Nick's spell.

Simon Majumdar is a man on a mission, and he might just be hungry enough to accomplish it. Setting out in search of the ultimate meal, he travels to every corner of the globe - from China to Brazil and from Finland to Japan. He tries everything, from mouldy shark in Iceland (not very nice) to kare stew in the Philippines (almost unimaginably delicious) and befriends (and sometimes fights with) some extraordinary characters along the way.

Shaun is finally free of responsibilities to anyone but himself; single, with two grown up daughters, he is just embarking on a new life in a new country when he gets a call to say his father is dying. His mother has Parkinson's Dementia and is in a care home. Shaun faces a stark choice: should he give up his new-found freedom, or turn his back on the woman he'd fought so hard to protect, not least from his own father? Shaun's mother had loved and cared for her son all her life. Could he now do the same for her?

Denis is searching for his mother’s past, knowing she had secrets. In Nice, he finds her friends, Monique and Clemence. In the 1950s, they were Matisse’s assistants when he was old and ill, pinning up his coloured paper shapes, putting the great cut-out works together. Monique inspired his great designs in the chapel at Vence, Clemence, in pursuit of love, was caught in an affair that led to violence and disaster. So they have their own intense and colourful past - but they hold the key to Denis’s past, too. He’s about to face the greatest challenge of his life.

Arthur Schopenhauer's The Art of Literature is a lively, illuminating and brutally honest collection of essays on literary style and values, writers and critics, and the nature of genius. Schopenhauer advises seclusion and independent thought, criticizes Pliny's reading habits, and explains the pitfalls of certain schools of thought and even virtues like modesty. His thought-provoking arguments, caustic wit, and accessible style make this a must for any aspiring writer.

Brimming with wisdom and humour, David Kynaston’s diaries written over one football season offer up his most personal take on social history to date. David Kynaston was seven and a half years old when he attended his first Aldershot match in the early months of 1959. So began a deep attachment to the game and a lifelong loyalty to an obscure, small-town football club. Though as he sits down to write his diaries almost 60 years on, he reflects that life might have been simpler if his father had never taken him to that first match at the Rec....

It is September 1939. Shortly after war is declared, Anthony Rhodes is sent to France, serving with the British Army. His days are filled with the minutiae and mundanities of army life - friendships, billeting, administration - as the months of the 'Phoney War' quickly pass and the conflict seems a distant prospect. It is only in the spring of 1940 that the true situation becomes clear; the men are ordered to retreat to the coast and the beaches of Dunkirk, where they face a desperate and terrifying wait for evacuation.

IWM was founded on 5th March 1917 when the War Cabinet approved a proposal by Sir Alfred Mond MP for the creation of a national war museum to record the events still taking place during the First World War. The intention was to collect and display material as a record of everyone's experiences during the war - civilian and military - and to commemorate the sacrifices of all sections of society.The First World War Retold tells the story of that war from a fresh perspective from IWM's unparalleled collections. 

1943, the North African desert. Major Tim Sheldon, exhausted and battle weary, is tasked with carrying out a futile and unexpected patrol mission. Fred Majdalany's intimate, tense novel puts this so-called minor action centre stage, as over the course of the day and through the night of the patrol itself, Sheldon reminisces about his time as a soldier, his own future and what it means to confront fear.

Masculinity has reached a moment of crisis. From the erosion of unifying institutions, such as marriage, to a rise in male suicide rates, the last century and a half has been a particularly turbulent time to be a man. Increasing numbers of men are finding themselves anchorless, uprooted from the conventions and certainties of their forefathers. Today masculinity itself has come under attack, relentlessly maligned in the media. Now, more than ever, the long and perilous journey from infant to old age is fraught with strange complexities, moral dichotomies and maddening contradictions.

The last thing psychotherapist Harry Hope expects on his walk home one evening is to be knifed. At first, he thinks it’s a random event. But as the police investigate further, seemingly unrelated attacks, Harry is shocked to discover that every victim is linked to him - and that his name is on a death list. Why? Teaming up with his old friends DI Theo McCannon and DS Libby Harding, Harry is forced to delve into the dark and twisted world of a cold and calculating killer.

Every captain would love Brearley's degree in people, as well as a hardhitting all-rounder like Botham. But theirs was a barely recognisable game from the one we play on often dishevelled grounds up and down the country with ragtag teams of ageing, deluded or hungover friends and acquaintances. Now, Charlie Campbell offers us a New Testament to Brearley’s Old Testament, as he guides us through the realities of captaining an amateur team.

A wonderfully written and entertaining book which places Britain under the microscope and asks who we are today and how we’ve changed as a nation. ‘Entertaining and absorbing’ – The Sunday Times In 1841 there were 734 female midwives working in Britain, along with 9 artificial eye makers...

Henry’s confession of spying on Russians in London doesn’t get the reaction he expects. Nea has her own dark secrets to guard and refuses to see her patient again. Now frightened and on his own, a chain of events leads to murder. Having stumbled upon a poison at the heart of the British establishment, Henry fears for his life and decides to lie low at his holiday home in Lisbon. A professional killer catches up with him and a terrifying chase across Europe ensues.

In Rome, Pope Alexander lies dying. Across Europe, in Oxford's Oseney Abbey, ambitious Bishop Otho is already positioning himself as successor. Almost immediately, a student protest against the greed of the Church spirals out of control and the bishop's brother is killed. Everyone assumes the fatal arrow was meant for the bishop himself, and the protesters are swiftly accused of murder and imprisoned in an Oxford gaol.

Harry, Lucas and Guy were best friends when they were kids. But then they made a terrible mistake and their friendship shattered, forcing them to cut all ties. Years later, a man’s head is discovered in the woods, skinned and with the tongue cut out. The police call on Harry, a psychologist, to help with the case, and when it turns out the victim is his childhood friend Guy, old skeletons begin to surface. Then one of Harry’s clients goes missing. Forced into a desperate hunt to save the boy, Harry finds himself closing in on a shocking secret.

In 1495, Leonardo da Vinci began what would become one of history’s most influential works of art—The Last Supper. After a decade at the court of Lodovico Sforza, the duke of Milan, Leonardo was at a low point: at forty-three, he had failed, despite a number of prestigious commissions, to complete anything that truly fulfilled his astonishing promise. His latest failure was a giant bronze horse to honor Sforza’s father, made with material expropriated by the military.

Countless heroes have met their doom at the gaze of monstrous Medusa. Anyone who looks at her turns to stone! Perseus is not a warrior, but he has vowed to defeat Medusa within a week. His only chance is to persuade the goddess Athena to help him ...

Anyone shot by one of Eros's arrows will fall in love with the next creature they see. Eros thinks this is a great joke—until he falls in love himself! Psyche, his beloved, is smart and brave, but Eros' mother Aphrodite hates her with a passion. Can true love triumph?

Jason is the rightful ruler of Iolcus, but to prove it he's going to need his wits about him. Only the greatest hero in the land could steal the precious golden fleece—and make it back alive. Is Jason that hero?