Showing results by narrator "Mark Elstob" in All Categories

On 28 November 1911, a retired showman died violently at his home in North London. Known to the world as Lord George Sanger, he was once the biggest name in show business, and was venerated as a national institution. The death of Britain's wealthiest showman read like a popular crime thriller: a merciless killer, a famous victim, a desperate manhunt and a dramatic denouement few could have anticipated. But for over a century, questions have persisted about the murder.

For over forty years, criminal defence solicitor Henry Milner has been the go-to lawyer for some of Britain's most notorious criminals including Kenneth Noye and the Brink's-Mat robbers, Freddie Foreman, John 'Goldfinger' Palmer and the gang behind the Millennium Dome raid. Here, the lawyer offers a fascinating insight into life at the top of the profession, lifting the lid on the psychology of those who end up on the wrong side of the law and those who defend them. By turns shocking and hilarious, this remarkable memoir takes us deep into the enigmatic criminal underworld.

A notorious loan shark is shot dead, in broad daylight, right outside the front doors of the Old Bailey. The killer is arrested at the scene and Adrian Stanford is lined up to take on the toughest defence case of his career. Can he steer his client past the no-nonsense Detective Chief Superintendent ‘Iron-Rod' Stokes, hell-bent on achieving a murder conviction in his last case before retirement? That's assuming he can keep his client alive in prison long enough for the trial to go ahead.

Mr Horniman's Walrus tells the story of the rise and fall of three generations of a remarkable and dysfunctional Victorian family—the Hornimans—exploring the lives and loves behind their extraordinary and varied legacies. Drawing on her years of research and unfettered access to the family archive, Clare Paterson has written a riveting tale of trade, collecting, the stage, sex and politics in Victorian Britain. 

British Redcoats torch the White House and 6,000 American sailors languish in the world’s largest prisoner-of-war camp, Dartmoor. A myriad of races and backgrounds, with some prisoners as young as 13. Known as the ‘hated cage’, Dartmoor wasn’t a place you’d expect to be full of life and invention. Yet prisoners taught each other foreign languages and science, put on plays and staged boxing matches. In daring efforts to escape they lived every prison-break cliché—how to hide the tunnel entrances, what to do with the earth.

One crew takes the long route, sleeping for 1,000 years, in secret, on a ship called The Human Frontier. The other crew set off hundreds of years later, at hyper speed. When the sleepers wake as they approach the planet, the hyper-speed crew have been living there for 300 years already - and they have no clue the ‘sleepers’ are about to arrive.

There have been literally hundreds of books about T. E. Lawrence, best known as Lawrence of Arabia, but never a work quite like Legion. Legion tells the astonishing life story of an man who was far more than a war hero; for Lawrence was also an archaeologist, a linguist and translator, a historian and classicist, a marine engineer, an airman and one of the great English writers of the 20th century. He was also an enigma, even at times to himself, tormented by guilt and shame, by his masochism, self-loathing and his fear of his own sexuality.

In 1977 a group of scientists, artists and writers gathered in a house in Ithaca, New York to work on the most important mixtape ever conceived. It wasn’t from one person to another - it was from Earth to the cosmos. When NASA sent Voyagers 1 and 2 on a grand tour of the outer planets, they knew the ultimate fate of these plucky probes would be to drift forever in the unimaginable void of interstellar space. 

In 1967, retired army major and self-made millionaire Paddy Roy Bates proclaimed himself ruler of the Principality of Sealand on a World War II Maunsell Sea Fort in the North Sea, off the East Anglian Coast - and began the peculiar story of the world’s most stubborn micronation. Having fought off attacks from the British government and armed mercenaries for half a century - and thwarted an attempted coup that saw the Prince Regent taken hostage - the self-proclaimed independent nation still stands.

After decades of peace and prosperity, the international order put in place after World War II is rapidly coming to an end. Disastrous foreign wars, global recession, the meteoric rise of China and India and the COVID pandemic have undermined the power of the West's international institutions and unleashed the forces of nationalism and protectionism. In this lucid and groundbreaking analysis, one of Britain's most experienced senior diplomats highlights the key dilemmas Britain faces.

London, 1798. Late one night, a junior naval officer at the Admiralty intercepts a coded despatch, marked with blood: Napoleon Bonaparte is about to launch the largest invasion fleet in history. Target: unknown.

A practical handbook examining how established businesses can use their unique advantages to fight back and win in a digital arena too often dominated by tech start-ups, disruptors and unicorns. The big tech companies (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft) have had an enormous impact on our everyday lives. A new wave of start-ups in the tech sector has dominated the press and swallowed up huge amounts of investment. But what about those established companies in the traditional parts of the world’s economies, from energy, industrial and consumer goods to travel and health?

Reflecting on many examples from real life as well as literature, and on the insights of psychologists and philosophers, Cherry uses the tension between the desire to forgive and the protest that a person is unforgivable to push towards understandings of forgiveness that avoid the harshness of binary models. Forgiveness is not, he insists, the only good way forward after harm. A positive understanding of non-vengeful unforgiveness is vital if the harmed are to be given the care and support they need and deserve, and if forgiveness itself is to be authentic and liberating.

Within a day of each other, two pretty young married women are brutally murdered. The first body is discovered in Bluebell Wood. The second is found in a remote corner of Lumbertub Park. Chief Inspector Jim Ashworth is brought in to investigate and he immediately notes the similarities between the two cases – both women were beaten to death. Both were unemployed and both may have been straying from their new husbands. Meanwhile Ashworth – a married man and father – has fallen for the ripe charms of resident pathologist, the delectable Dr Gwen Anthony. And Gwen thinks that her husband knows.

Price Catalysts explores the world of corporate special situations and demonstrates how savvy investors can profit from untapped investment opportunities in this niche sector of the market. The book is a resource for investors looking for a competitive edge in studying and comprehending the...

Mr Pooter is a man of modest ambitions, content with his ordinary life. Yet he always seems to be troubled by disagreeable tradesmen, impertinent young office clerks and wayward friends, not to mention his devil-may-care son Lupin with his unsuitable choice of bride. In the bumbling, absurd, yet endearing figure of Pooter, the Grossmiths created an immortal comic character and a superb satire on the snobberies of middle-class suburbia.

Dive into the sharp and insightful mind of Charles Dickens with The Selected Journalism & Essays, a collection that showcases his unparalleled skill as a social critic, journalist, and essayist. From his early writings on urban poverty to his passionate commentary on politics, crime, and education, Dickens’ sharp observations remain as relevant today as they were in Victorian England.

The Cambridgeshire hamlet of Jude’s Ferry is a lonely, forgotten spot. Requisitioned decades earlier by the Ministry of Defence for military training, one of its few claims to fame is that in its entire thousand-year history, it never recorded a single crime. But when a Territorial Army exercise is held amongst the ruins, a skeleton is found hanging in a bricked-up cellar, a noose round the neck. It seems that the ghostly village may hide many secrets and local newspaper reporter Philip Dryden is soon on the case.

The second volume of David Hume's classic survey of English history covers nearly 300 years (1200-1485) from the long reign of Henry III to the dramatic end of Richard III on Bosworth Field—he was the last Plantagenet, and the last king of England to die in battle. In telling this all-action tale, Hume delves deeply into contemporary records and presents a considered, even sympathetic view, showing that many factors, not just personalities, resulted in dramatic consequences for the nation.

As mid-winter temperatures grip the cathedral city of Ely, a man is found frozen to death in his high-rise flat. The police may think that Declan McIlroy killed himself, but journalist Philip Dryden is not convinced, and he begins digging for the truth. All too soon, there's another frozen corpse to consider–that of Declan's best friend. And suddenly a routine suicide gives way to a chilling trail of cruelty and betrayal stretching back thirty years, towards a mystery from Dryden's own childhood.