Showing results by narrator "Roy McMillan" in All Categories

As one of just a few judges licensed to try murder cases at the Old Bailey, the author has presided over many of the high-profile cases that all too often grab our attention in dramatic media headlines—for every unlawful death tells a story. But, unlike most of us, a judge doesn't get to turn the page and move on. Nor does the defendant, or the family of the victim, nor the many other people who populate the court room. Peeling apart six dramatic murder and manslaughter cases, Unlawful Killings removes this distinction between 'them' and 'us'.

Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past is one of the world's most celebrated books. And yet many people are daunted by its formidable size: it is more than 3,000 pages long. In this audio version Proust's masterpiece is presented in easily accessible form, the author's major themes and unique style are retained, and the key scenes are linked by a specially written narration.

In his near-contemporary account of classical Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process. Taking examples from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the Poetics introduced into literary criticism such central concepts as mimesis ('imitation'), hamartia ('error') and katharsis ('purification'). 

This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite his body, he was really a girl.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Athelstan: The Making of England by Tom Holland, read by Roy McMillan. The formation of England happened against the odds - the division of the country into rival kingdoms, the assaults of the Vikings, the precarious position of the island on the edge of the known world. But King Alfred ensured the survival of Wessex, his son Eadweard expanded it, and his grandson Æthelstan finally united Mercia and Wessex, conquered Northumbria and became Rex totius Britanniae.

Dawn. 19th July 1972. A force of nearly 300 heavily armed, well-trained guerrillas launches a surprise attack on the small fishing village of Mirbat. All that stands in their way is a troop of just nine SAS, aided only by an elite band of fighter pilots overhead. Two years earlier, a Communist rebellion had threatened the Arabian Peninsula, in the strategically critical Sultanate of Oman. Following a covert intelligence mission, 22 SAS deployed their largest ever assault force against the rebels. But this was to be a bitter and hard-fought campaign culminating the Battle of Mirbat.

One in four adults sleeps badly. Sleeping pill prescriptions have increased dramatically over the last three decades, and our bookshelves and browser histories are littered with experts promising to 'fix' our insomnia. But is this so-called sleep crisis anything new? Our relationship to sleep has always been irregular and changeable, shaped by social conventions, commercial imperatives and personal psychologies. Look beneath the headlines and it seems that there is no such thing as a perfect night's sleep. Here Darian Leader reveals the history and pathology of sleeplessness.

Demobilised officer, finding peace incredibly tedious, would welcome diversion. Legitimate if possible; excitement essential. When Captain Hugh Drummond, DSO, MC placed that advertisement, he was looking for adventure. What he finds is an international plot headed by the greatest criminal mastermind in the world.

Penguin Audio presents The Plant Messiah by Carlos Magdalena, read by Roy McMillan. Carlos Magdalena of Kew Gardens is not your average botanical horticulturist. He's a man on a mission to save the world's most endangered plants from ecological destruction and thieves hunting for wealthy collectors. He is a plant messiah. From the planet's tiniest waterlily - the Nymphaea thermarum - to Huarango trees with roots over 50 metres long, Carlos has a miraculous ability to bring breathtakingly beautiful plants back from the brink of extinction.

When a respected surgeon decides to transplant human body parts into a stray dog, he creates a monster - drunken, profligate, aggressive and selfish. It seems the worst aspects of the donor have been transplanted as well. As his previously well-regulated home descends into riotous chaos, the doctor realises he will have to try to reverse the operation; but the dog isn't so keen....

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Vulcan 607 by Rowland White, read by Roy McMillan. It was to be one of the most ambitious operations since 617 Squadron bounced their revolutionary bombs into the dams of the Ruhr Valley in 1943.... When Argentine forces invaded the Falklands in the early hours of 2 April 1982, Britain's military chiefs were faced with a real-life Mission Impossible.

Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and scope. It tells the story of the heroic Beowulf and of his battles, first with the monster Grendel, who has laid waste to the great hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, then with Grendel's avenging mother and finally with a dragon that threatens to devastate his homeland.

Calming, thought-provoking, poetic and honest, Notes from Walnut Tree Farm is a collection of writing and musing by documentary-maker, environmentalist and author of Waterlog Roger Deakin. For the last six years of his life, Roger Deakin kept notebooks. In them, he wrote his daily thoughts, feelings and observations about and around his Suffolk home, Walnut Tree Farm. Collected here are the very best of these writings, capturing his extraordinary, restless curiosity about nature as well as his impressions of our changing world.

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.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of 'Broadsword Calling Danny Boy' by Geoff Dyer, read by Roy McMillan. From the acclaimed writer and critic Geoff Dyer, an extremely funny scene-by-scene analysis of Where Eagles Dare - published as the film reaches its 50th anniversary. A thrilling Alpine adventure starring a magnificent, bleary-eyed Richard Burton and a coolly anachronistic Clint Eastwood, Where Eagles Dare is the apex of 1960s war movies, by turns enjoyable and preposterous. 'Broadsword Calling Danny Boy' is Geoff Dyer's tribute to the film he has loved since childhood.

This is the story of our love affair with books, whether we arrange them on our shelves, inhale their smell, scrawl in their margins or just curl up with them in bed. Taking us on a journey through comfort reads, street book stalls, mythical libraries, itinerant pedlars, radical pamphleteers, extraordinary bookshop customers and fanatical collectors, Canterbury Bookseller Martin Latham uncovers the curious history of our book obsession - and his own.

This is our blue planet: a beautiful blue marble suspended in a sea of stars. Unlike billions of other worlds in the Milky Way, 71 percent of our blue planet is covered by ocean. It's home to the greatest diversity of life on Earth but is our least explored habitat; we've better maps of Mars than of the ocean floor. With so much more to discover, take a deep breath...and dive into a wondrous world beneath the waves. Explore coral reefs that shimmer in a kaleidoscope of colours. Venture to the bottom of the ocean, where creatures beyond your wildest imagination live in the dark.

Anyone who has ever gone for a run, a jog or even a walk knows that uplifting, happy feeling they get at the end of their journey. Some call it the runner's high; others put it down to endorphins. Here William Pullen teaches us focus that incredible energy to experience our emotions in motion. In Run for Your Life, Pullen argues that we need a radical new approach to mindfulness - an approach which originates in the body itself.

Termight, a world at the heart of a cruel galactic empire. A world devastated by nuclear warfare. Deep below ground its inhabitants try to eke out a mere existence, continually threatened by the Terminators, led by the diabolically evil Torquemada. Torquemada, a twisted human despot intent on purging all alien life from the galaxy and punishing the deviants. His motto: Be pure! Be vigilant! There is a resistance though, and a new kind of hero. Meet Nemesis the Warlock, champion of the coming rebellion! This vast and arcane tome contains the first four books of the Nemesis saga.

George and his best friend, Annie, haven't had any space adventures for a while, and they're missing the excitement. But not for long.... Seriously strange things start happening. Banks are handing out free money; supermarkets can't charge for their produce, so people are getting free food; and aircraft are refusing to fly. It looks like the world's biggest and best computers have all been hacked. George and Annie will travel further into space than ever before in order to find out who is behind it.