Showing results by narrator "Clifford Rose" in All Categories

This audio biography vividly traces the life of a man who is regarded as the greatest scientist the world has ever known. It tells of his schooldays and earliest experiments, through the terrible plague years when he began the work that was to make him famous forever, to the publication of his book, The Principia, a masterpiece that did no less than describe the workings of the universe. Yet he was a modest man, who cared little for his appearance and detested argument.

Sigmund Freud will be remembered by most people for the 'slip' that bears his name. But the most far-reaching of Freud's contributions is arguably that of psychoanalysis. He developed it, claimed to have made staggering discoveries with it, and used these discoveries to propose theories about human behaviour that are still the subject of heated debate.

At the dawn of the 20th century there emerged a man with a burning zeal to sow chaos, and out of that chaos build a new conception of human existence. Lenin, the back-room plotter, revolutionary, lawyer, writer, and anti-God prophet of a new world order called communism, flourished in a world shattered and disillusioned by war. In the Soviet Union, his writings and sayings were sacred, and a Lenin quotation once brooked no argument. Yet his spell of power was brief and his end enfeebled.

There have been many invasion threats to Britain. This programme dramatises one of the most potent: the mighty Armada sent by Philip of Spain against the navy of Elizabeth I and her sea captains, led by Sir Francis Drake. This is a crucial narrative of stirring history, relived with verve and freshness.

Columbus did not discover America. That honour goes to Norseman Bjarni Herjolfsson whose storm-driven Viking longship took him briefly to the mainland of North America. Yet it was five centuries before Europeans arrived once more on the American coast. Columbus happened to be the first.

The world of Victorian melodrama, of wilting heroines, brave and handsome heroes, horrible foreign villains, and powerful action with a host of scenes from the best plays of the period; acted, amusingly explained, and related to the development of the English-speaking theatre.

Shakespeare lived for only 52 years, yet enriched the English language with an astonishing number of literary masterpieces. This dramatisation tells the story of Shakespeare's life in the boisterous days of the ageing Queen Elizabeth and the early years of her successor, James the First. It covers most of the known facts of his life and presents the man as well as the poet and dramatist.