Showing results by narrator "Mitchley Richard" in All Categories

Trains have always held a special place for most of us. We’re intrigued by the mere fact that we can sit down in one place and arrive in another and enjoy the adventure and time in between. In this volume we explore both the journeys and the workers who run and maintain the railway network.

Some people have basic needs of foods and materials that only theft can provide an answer for, and some others just pursue the taking of what they want, whenever they want and from whoever they want. These are their stories.

In this volume we bring together men of the cloth, those people of faith who spent most of their lives in devotional duties in the service of one so they could, in their spare time, serve another.

Murder is that most heinous of crimes. But some murderers simply can’t get enough of it. Beneath the well-known monsters such as Lecter there lurk those other evil-doers who are the vivid confessions of our classic authors.

In this volume we gather together those 17th Century poets and their poems which took poetry in a different but very revealing direction, with their artistry and verse.

The dreaming spires of Oxford may be one of the great educational establishments of the Centuries. But it is also a place where the Nation’s young learn much more. Within its walls, courtyards and cloisters these 10 Poets mused and illuminated on the beauty of poetry with eager yet tender words.

Is it really true that working longer hours makes you more successful? Do you really need to hide your emotions in order to gain respect as a manager? Does higher pay really always lead to higher performance? The world of management is blighted by fads, fiction and falsehoods. In Myths of Management, Cary Cooper and Stefan Stern take you on an entertaining journey through the most famous myths surrounding the much-written about topic of management. They debunk false assumptions, inject truth into over-simplifications and tackle damaging habits head-on.

Mental illness though can still carry a stigma. A case of ‘you’re not trying hard enough’, ‘or knuckling down and getting on with it’. But in more recent decades mental issues have come to be recognised as an illness, a disease rather than an affliction. We all remember horror stories of lobotomy’s and electric shock being used to ‘cure’ what society viewed as anti-social behaviour but illness, mental or physical is very real. Depression, schizophrenia, breakdown, psychosis are alarming events to have or to witness.

The ninth month of the Gregorian calendar strides onto stage with the autumn equinox and the first glimpses of a new season. Nature may adorn the coming days with a blaze of Indian summer, or the early showers and storms of autumn may begin their symphony. Regardless of Nature’s elemental whims the landscape is a riot of colours, hues and swathes, the harvest of crops continues, the orchards heave with bounty.

During the Victorian era the publishing of magazines and periodicals accelerated at a phenomenal rate. This really was mass market publishing to a hungry audience eager for literary sustenance. Many of our greatest authors contributed and expanded their reach whilst many fledging authors also found a ready source for their nascent works and careers. Amongst the very many was ‘The Yellow Book’.

Poetry has over the centuries grouped poets or poems into many different themes and movements. Amongst its most unusual movements are the English wordsmiths, The Silver Poets. This select band lived during the sixteenth century reign of Queen Elizabeth 1st. Amongst their storied ranks were Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Davies, Michael Drayton and Mary Sidney (Herbert), the Countess of Pembroke.

Mary Anne Evans was born on 22nd November 1819, at Nuneaton in Warwickshire, England. Her first major literary work was completing an English translation of Strauss's ‘The Life of Jesus’ in 1846. Under the pseudonym of George Eliot that we know so well, ‘Adam Bede’ was published in 1859, followed by her other great novels: ‘Mill on the Floss’, ‘Silas Marner’ and ‘Middlemarch’. ‘The Lifted Veil’ is a both a beautiful story and typical of Eliot’s formidable powers of writing.

Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant, Kate Chopin. These three names thrill the literary world as well as our own. They have gravitas, they have knowledge, experience and they have the literary style and panache to seduce our imagined world. Each has written a short story on pleasured lips placed on another’s flesh. For Chekhov it was a kiss in a darkened room that happened by mistake. Who was she? For Chopin it was a kiss that almost derailed a hoped-for marriage proposal. Why did he do that? For de Maupassant it was a niece seeking advice from her Aunt on when to kiss and whom. And did she?

Gustave Flaubert was born on 12th December 1821 in Rouen, in Normandy, France. In September 1849, Flaubert completed ‘The Temptation of Saint Anthony’. A long journey to the Middle East brought encounters with both female and male prostitutes and a case of syphilis caught in Beirut. On his return he began ‘Madame Bovary’, a work he would take 5 years to complete. He toiled on his unfinished ‘Bouvard et Pécuchet’ but did complete ‘Three Tales’ in 1877, from which ‘The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller’ is taken.

In 1890 W. B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys founded a poetry club. Based mainly at Fleet Street’s immortal ‘Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese’ pub, with occasional appearances at the Domino room in the Café Royal, poets gathered together to dine and drink. Whilst it was based on a core of poets, many others attended on an ad hoc basis including Oscar Wilde, Francis Thompson & Lord Alfred Douglas. The camaraderie, banter and poetry that played out in their dreams, ambitions and for many, their difficult lives led Yeats to call them ‘the tragic generation’.

Once more the year begins. The first month of the Gregorian calendar. Cold winds howl, the landscape shivers, frost, snow, ice are the many blankets for the land. Daylight is thin; it arrives late and leaves early, ceding the hours to shadow and the ink of night. From the pens of our remarkable poets, including Shelley, Dickenson, Shakespeare, Whitman, Gilbran and a wealth of others, come sumptuous verse that describe our moods, feelings, travels and desires of the dawning year.

Barry Eric Odell Pain was born at 3 Sydney Street in Cambridge, on 28th September 1864. He was one of 4 children. It is often said that Pain was discovered by Robert Louis Stevenson, who compared his work to that of Guy de Maupassant. It’s an apt comparison. Pain was also a master of disturbing prose but able to inject parody and light comedy into many of his works. A simple premise could in his hands suddenly expand into a world very real but somehow emotionally fraught and on the very edge of darkness as many of these short stories demonstrate.

The year reaches its end with the Twelfth month. The landscape may be bleak, a sculpture of lines, monochrome dominates. The air carries the sounds of winter: wind, storms, silence. Our classic poets flex their lexicons with verse that describes all manner of events, sights and sounds. Among their ranks are Hardy, Shakespeare, Rossetti, Nesbit, Burns and a wealth of others, who, with their thoughts and desires express the world in lines of inky marvel.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow on 11th November, 1821, to distinguished multi-ethnic parents from a Lithuanian background. In 1846 he published his first novel ‘Poor Cow’ to great literary acclaim. His next was unable to emulate that success but his short stories helped provide an income. ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’ is one of his many classic short stories that turn a splinter of the ordinary into the spiralling descent of chaos.

In this collection of short stories some of our most popular and well-known authors are grouped together with an unfortunate tag: dead at 44. These authors are not run-of-the-mill or ten a penny; they are literary leviathans who left enduring works of literature and sadly may have left us many more had they lived. We will never know.