Showing results by narrator "George Cole" in All Categories

The greats of comedy, when they were young and struggling, performing their great early routines.

Hercule Poirot is a guest at a weekend house party, given at the Cornish clifftop home of the celebrated actor Sir Charles Cartwright. The other visitors include keen amateur detective Mr Satterthwaite and distinguished Harley Street nerve specialist Sir Bartholomew Strange. Death visits the house soon after Poirot's arrival, the victim an elderly clergyman who's only had a sip of dry martini. What else was in the glass? Are natural causes to blame... or murder?

A newly reissued edition of Agatha Christie's 'Mary Westmacott' novel, a Crime of the Heart novel about a soldier who returns from the grave. Vernon Deyre is a sensitive and brilliant musician, even a genius. But there is a high price to be paid for his talent, especially by his family and the two women in his life

There is the warmest of Christmas fires in this hearth. It was reportedly written in a matter of weeks to catch the Christmas deadline. Unlike his other seasonal stories, this is not a supernatural tale but one of the perfect domestic scene with which Dickens was so obsessed throughout his writing. It is all here: the warmth of home, the loving little woman, the children, the food and the laughter. All the things that go to make an idealised Christmas are rolled into one very warming story.

Filled with an array of comic characters, The Chimes tells the story of Toby Veck, a humble porter whose loses his faith in human nature at the hands of his presumed social superiors but regains it thanks to the spirits of the bells. Like its predecessor, it carries a heartfelt plea for charity and brotherhood and examines such distressing themes as suicide and infanticide as well as the question of whether the poor have any right to live at all.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without A Christmas Carol. At the time Dickens was writing it, many of the time-honoured customs linked with Christmas were beginning to disappear. It is largely due to this book that we carry with us much of the imagery that is now associated with the traditional celebration and spirit of Christmas.