Showing results by narrator "Jonathan Oliver" in All Categories

The gothic tale of Frankenstein and his construction of a human being who runs amok has, with the help of numerous films, become one of the most vivid horror stories. But Mary Shelley's original novel, written in 1816, dealt more sympathetically with "the daemon," showing how an initially beneficent creature is hammered into a daemon by the way he is treated. Her ideas, and her dramatic but poignant story, is brought to life in this sound dramatization.

Article 9 of the Tokyo Judgement at the end of WWII withdrew from the Japanese constitution the state's right of belligerency. Traumatised and guilt ridden for having killed enemy soldiers in war, Bernard has to attempt to coerce his children to continue his life's work, and makes their awaiting inheritance dependent on their abandoning their present careers and dedicating their lives to the promotion of A9.

When the managing director of Wainwright Enterprises dies everyone is amazed to find he was far richer than they supposed, and that he's left his estate to his nephew Alex and his wife Sally. She uncovers accounting irregularities within the company, but resists involving the police - until the firm's accountant is murdered. But DCI Andrew Fenwick's investigation reveals a web of corruption reaching the highest levels of the local community that puts his own child's life in peril.

Ivanhoe has never been superseded as the epitome of chivalric novels. The brave knight comes from the Crusades to claim the Anglo-Saxon princess, Rowena, as his bride. But he becomes caught up in the feud between Prince John and his brother, Richard the Lionheart, who has returned to England incognito.

René Descartes is one of the formative figures in Western philosophy, logic and mathematics. His famous statement: "I think, therefore I am," has become perhaps the most famous phrase in all of philosophy. Descartes’s ground-breaking writings attempted to establish unshakeable foundations of knowledge, and set a trend for subsequent Western philosophy, which has endlessly critiqued and expanded upon his ideas.

One of Tolstoy’s most important shorter works, The Kreutzer Sonata presents a problematic view of the relationship between the sexes and promotes abstinence as the solution. Pozdnyshev jealously observes the intimacy that emerges between his wife and a violin player. Haunted by The Kreutzer Sonata, over which they bonded, it plays round and round in Pozdnyshev’s head driving him to distraction and to an unquenchable rage.

It is now three years since Justin Welby first published his Reimagining Britain. The fundamental message of that book remains as urgent as ever. But in this revised and expanded edition, Welby has taken fully into account the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit and all the social and political unrest that has ensued. If anything, the new edition of Archbishop Welby's book is even more important than its predecessor. Here is a radical vision for 21st-century Britain.

The 22nd book in the New York Times bestselling series of biographies about heroes tells the story of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who documented her life while hiding from the Nazis during World War II. This engaging biography series focuses on the traits that made our heroes great--the...