Showing results by narrator "Peter Wickham" in All Categories

Only the past can save the future for Winston Churchill, and it’s a past with many secrets.There is vast treasure hidden in an almost impregnable Central African fortress surrounded by cliffs. The mountain is a honeycomb of ancient tombs and palaces, as well as the ancient burial place of a Nubian queen mysteriously wedded to a Roman. Young Winston Churchill, a prisoner during the Boer War, is offered a secret deal for freedom by Britain’s enemy Louis Botha

England, 1659: Captain Kit Faulkner's house is prospering; his eldest son recently returned from a profitable trip to Jamaica, and his daughter has made a suitable match with a young sailor. But the resignation of the Lord Protector, Richard Cromwell, throws England into uncertainty. Will the republic flourish, or will a King return to the throne? Kit is content to let matters take their natural course, but his younger son, Henry, is an idealist with political ambitions. It soon becomes clear that Henry is in much deeper than Kit first realised, and his actions may threaten everything that Kit holds dear.…

Written in 1873 it was autobiographical and the heroine Elfride Swancourt is based on Hardy's first wife Emma Gifford. The novel tells the tail of a the love triangle between a young woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors from very different backgrounds.

Between 1821 and 1826, the prolific writer and journalist William Cobbett travelled the countryside of the South of England on foot and horseback. Rural Rides is a fascinating account of his journeys, and depicts a way of life in transition, juxtaposing lyrical descriptions of the countryside with criticism of the poverty of agricultural workers. A man of radical politics who encouraged the rural rising of 1830, Cobbett went on to become MP for Oldham and sought to represent the interests of both industrial and agricultural workers. Above all, Rural Rides celebrates agrarian England.

Quo Vadis, best known for its star-studded 1951 film version, was first published in 1896 and contributed to the author’s Nobel Prize for Literature of 1905. Set in the latter years of the reign of Roman Emperor Nero, the plot concerns the love between a young Christian woman, Lygia, and a Roman patrician, Marcus Vinicius.

Though published in 1867 when the British Empire was approaching its height, Walter Bagehot’s essay "The English Constitution" is not only one of the great political classics but is also an unquestionably relevant document for our times. Despite the passing of more than 150 years, despite huge changes in enfranchisement, in attitudes and in world order, this fascinating document prompts us to re-evaluate the process of government - wherever we live. And what is more, it is written with grace, elegance - and wit!

Maxwell’s Millennium is not quite like other people’s - for a start, it is a year later. After much quibbling with the maths department, everyone calls it an honourable draw and he celebrates as only he can: with his cat, his model soldiers and his Southern Comfort. A knock on the door could be Jacquie Carpenter, released from night shift earlier than expected, but instead of a warm girl Maxwell opens his door to find a very cold old lady, dead and naked.

Haunted by the brutal killing of his UN interpreter wife in Bosnia, ex-SAS operative Ed Coltrane is consumed with the need to hunt down her murderers. Drinking too much and spending too much on his search, his life is going into meltdown. Just as it seems he can fall no further, a former colleague informs him that one of his wife's killers is in London, as a guest of the British government. Certain unofficial figures in the corridors of power would like to see this man disappear, and they'd like Ed Coltrane to accept the contract.

As Head of Sixth Form at Leighford High and a new father, Peter "Mad Max" Maxwell is a very busy man. Despite this, he still finds time for some amateur sleuthing, even though his policewoman "Significant Other", DS Jacquie Carpenter, has decided that, this time, he's leaving any murder investigations to her. But how can he refuse when the school photographer asks for his help after accidentally photographing a murder on the beach?

Peter “Mad Max” Maxwell, the “dinosaur” Head of Sixth Form, doesn’t see the need to know how to send a text or an email. However, it soon becomes vital that he learns. Some of his female pupils begin to receive threatening messages. Then Max starts to receive messages too, and two of the girls go missing. When a body is found it seems that the prank has taken a sinister turn. And Mad Max may well be next.

Deena Harrison was one of Leighford High School's “characters” - setting fire to the toilet block and throwing boys down stairs. But she had the voice of an angel and could act the skin off a rice pudding. The autumn she came down from Oxford, there was something of a crisis in the Drama department at Leighford High. Mrs Carmichael was in danger of losing her baby and the Little Shop of Horrors was in danger of closing down. So Deena comes back to help out.

Published in 1789, The Natural History of Selborne was written by Gilbert White, an English naturalist and clergyman. It comprises White’s letters to fellow naturalists and friends, documenting the flora and fauna of his home town in Hampshire.

Cambridge, 1939. The opening weeks of the Second World War, and the first blackout - The Great Darkness - covers southern England, enveloping the city. Detective Inspector Eden Brooke, a wounded hero of the Great War, takes his nightly dip in the cool waters of the Cam. Daylight reveals a corpse on the riverside, the body torn apart by some unspeakable force.

St Petersburg, 1879. A shot rings out in Palace Square. Cossack guards tackle the would-be assassin to the ground. In the mêlée no one notices a striking dark haired young woman in a heavy coat slip away from the scene. Russia is alive with revolutionaries. While Tsar Alexander II remains a virtual prisoner in his own palaces, his ruthless secret police will stop at nothing to unmask those who plot his assassination and the overthrow of the Imperial regime.

Julius Hutch has planned to spend his retirement years 'pottering' and worrying about his bills, but wakes one morning to discover a foreign merchant bank has put four million pounds into his account—and won't take it back. So Julius, a humble man, sets out to spend the money helping other people, and wooing Pauline, the local bank teller. Up against an enormous banking corporation and an unsavoury property developer, Julius soon discovers that rather than being crushed by these financial giants as he would have been in the past, he is rendered rather more delightfully impervious.

March, 1587. Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine has opened at the Rose Theatre. But the play is almost shut down on its opening night. For a member of the audience, Eleanor Merchant, lies dead, hit by a musket ball fired from the stage. The man with his finger on the trigger? A bit-part player named Will Shakespeare. Convinced of Shakespeare’s innocence, Marlowe determines to find out what really happened. When a second body is found floating in the River Thames, it becomes clear that Eleanor Merchant’s death was no accident and that something deeper and darker is afoot. And why is the Queen’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, taking a close personal interest in the case?

There were five dead men in the cabin of the boat, lying under six fathoms of Caribbean water. But the men had not been drowned: they had been shot through the head at close range. John Fletcher had gone down to photograph a sunken ship, but he took photographs of the boat and its cargo of dead men instead. Soon he is having trouble with the island police, a private army of thugs and two CIA agents. Now Fletcher wishes he had followed his first impulse and said nothing to anyone....

It was an oddly assorted company of passengers that boarded the S.S. Chetwynd in Hong Kong and Singapore to take passage to Freemantle. In this company, living in such close quarters, there was inevitably a certain amount of friction. But human passions would prove insignificant by comparison when the indescribable fury of the storm that hit.

Hector Langdon volunteered for service in the army in World War I when he was no more than 17 years old, though he gave his age as 20. It was the kind of reckless action he was to take all his life, much to the regret of his solicitor father who wished him to follow in the same profession. So he drifted from one occupation to another after the war, never really settling down. It seemed he had to be forever on the move. Until he met Eva Gray, and even that meeting was to lead in the end to tragedy.

When a lifeboat marked 'Valparaiso I' is discovered, a strange mystery unfolds. The Valparaiso had been sunk by a Japanese submarine nearly a year earlier whilst carrying a million pounds of gold bullion. In the lifeboat is a man with a question mark tattooed on his left forearm; but he can shed no light on the situation because his memory has gone - or so he claims. Two other survivors from the Valparaiso, Rains and Jones, have doubts about the man's professed amnesia.