Showing results by narrator "Michael Maloney" in All Categories

Michael Maloney reads this original adventure by Dan Abnett, featuring the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory. For centuries the Maintainers have worked. With no help from other worlds, they subsist on the food they can grow and that’s little enough. But their purpose, their whole life, is to maintain the machines that will one day make their world as habitable as old Earth. Life used to be hard. Now as crops fail, livestock sicken, and the temperature drops, it’s becoming impossible.

Carleton Myatt meets Coral Musker, a naïve English chorus girl, aboard the Orient Express as it heads across Europe to Constantinople. As their relationship develops, they find themselves caught up in the fates of the other passengers and drawn into a web of espionage, murder and lies.

Rumer Godden is well known for her acclaimed novels for adults and children. She wrote over 60 works in her lifetime, nine of which were made into films. Included here are dramatisations of three of her classic tales, as well as a fascinating interview with the renowned author.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. A descendant of judge John Hathorne, who oversaw the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, he wrote several works inspired by Puritan New England, with themes of guilt, sin and retribution. This collection contains his classic novel, The Scarlet Letter, as well as four other stories.

Set in the 19th century against a backdrop of island life and the vast surrounding seas, A High Wind in Jamaica is the gripping story of the Bas-Thornton children, whose parents send them back to England following a hurricane in the postcolonial Caribbean they call home. Having set sail, the children quickly fall into the hands of pirates. As their voyage continues, things take an awful turn

Alexander of Macedon was one of history’s greatest ever military commanders. By the time of his death, aged just 32, he had conquered the entire Persian Empire and was ruler of a vast territory stretching from Greece to the borders of India. These six episodes tell his extraordinary life story, as reimagined by acclaimed dramatist David Wade.

Media mogul Lord Malan is the billionaire owner of The Blue Touch Paper, an old-fashioned, hard-right weekly magazine with traditional Conservative values. But the paper is so true blue, it’s losing its touch. Sales are falling and circulation is down – mainly because its core readers are either on the brink of death or foam-flecked with rage. It’s time for a new editor, and political commentator Anna is sure she’s a shoo-in for the position. Much to her disappointment, however, Malan picks a different candidate: Keith, the Guardian’s token Tory, who champions compassionate Conservatism.

Michael Maloney, Josette Simon and Anne-Marie Duff star in this fast and funny production of Shakespeare's most sparkling and optimistic comedy, when all the world is turned on its head and authority is usurped, when by civil misrule girls become boys and women lust after women.

Hedda Gabler, the daughter of a deceased General, marries dull George Tesman and foresees a life of middle class tedium stretching ahead when they return from their honeymoon. Increasingly, she is drawn into the clutches of her admirer, Judge Brack, who seeks to establish a ménage a trois. Then the brilliant but dissolute Eilert Lovborg, a former flame, arrives to rival her husband for an academic post.

Nikos Kazantzakis is widely regarded as the greatest Greek writer and philosopher of the 20th century. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 14 times, and his works have been translated into over 50 languages. Included here are dramatisations of his two most famous and influential novels, both of which were adapted as hit films and became cultural phenomena.

Elizabeth Bowen was one of the 20th century's most distinctive writers. An associate of the Bloomsbury Set, she was a keen observer of upper-middle-class life and relationships. Best known for her novels of the Anglo-Irish gentry and wartime London, her fiction displays recurring themes of loss, rootlessness and displacement. This collection contains five of Bowen's best-loved works, and hears from the author herself in three radio talks on the art of novel-writing.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys is perhaps the most well known collection of reminiscences. He maintained it, in secrecy, from 1660, the year of the Restoration, until 1669 when fear of blindness prevented his daily labours. Though it covers less than a decade, it offers a lively and detailed insight into a period and a personality, for he noted events in both public and private life. Famous passages include descriptions of The Plague and the Great Fire of London.

A BBC Radio 4 production of Terence Rattigan’s famous play about an innocent boy unjustly accused ‘It is easy to do justice - very hard to do right.’ When he is accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order, fourteen-year-old Ronnie Winslow is expelled from naval college. But his father believes his claim of innocence and, determined to clear his name, engages the most famous barrister in England to fight his case.

Weaving together hints of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty with a shimmering thread of dark magic, this twist on classic fairy tales will hold readers spellbound from start to finish. On the eve of her wedding, a young queen sets out to rescue a princess from an enchantment. She casts aside her fine wedding clothes, takes her chain mail and her sword and ventures into the tunnels under the mountain towards the sleeping kingdom. This queen will decide her own future – and the princess who needs rescuing is not quite what she seems.

Samson Agonistes, the 'dramatic poem' by John Milton, was published in 1671, three years before the poet's death. Written in the form of a Greek tragedy, with the Chorus commenting on the action, it follows the biblical story of the blind Samson as he wreaks his revenge on the Philistines who have imprisoned him. A powerful subject, with a personal resonance for the blind Milton, it is a perfect work for the medium of audiobook where poetry and drama can be balanced equally.

King John of England is pitted against the united powers of France, Brittany, Austria, and the Papacy. Will England be destroyed by his fatal indecision? As alliances are made, broken, and remade, the paranoid and erratic John reveals his weakness and reliance on those around him - including his powerful mother, Queen Elinor, and Faulconbridge, the cynical and witty bastard son of the dead King Richard I.

Robin has made a powerful ally in the Duke of Lancaster. But he has made powerful enemies too: not only his childhood adversary Mortimer, but the sadistic knight Peter de Gray. Returning to England, he is awarded the fiefdom of Fernbrook in Lancashire, where he meets the beautiful noblewoman Joanna. But the wheel of fortune keeps turning and as the years pass Robin and his friends must face trials and tragedies: plague, war and political intrigue are never far away.

For 32 days, they were chased across the mountains as they headed for the coast and a rendezvous with a Royal Navy launch waiting to spirit the general to Cairo. Rick Stroud, whose Phantom Army of Alamein won plaudits for its meticulous research and its lightness of touch in the telling, brings these same gifts to bear in this new project.

Proteus loves Julia in Verona, Valentine loves Silvia in Milan. But when Proteus meets Silvia, he falls for her too, and the heartbroken Julia sets out in pursuit. This delightful and sometimes disquieting early comedy of love lost and found offers lyrical poetry, disguise, clowning, outlaws, and a most unreliable dog.

From schooldays to summer holidays, and from childhood fantasies to nostalgic reminiscences, writers have provided us with a rich seam of children’s poetry over the years.This delightful selection brings over seventy poems together, from such celebrated poets as A.A.