Showing results by narrator "Michael Jayston" in All Categories

Best-selling author Donald James grew up in World's End, Chelsea during the Blitz years. Just on the edge of a fashionable middle class world, his childhood experience was in stark contrast to the privileged, bourgeois lifestyle glimpsed a few hundred yards away. He grew up in stark poverty and depredation, a hard existence yet shot through by the humour and courage of his family and neighbours.

On the morning of 24th February 1944 following a devastating Luftwaffe raid, Donald Wheal and his family were homeless refugees with bulging suitcases and faces blackened by soot blast. In World's End, the first part of his bestselling childhood autobiography, he told of his upbringing during the Blitz in the rough working class community which was Chelsea's World's End.

Hugo's vibrant portrait of the characters in late 18th century Paris is a world-famous story, which has also been made into an award-winning musical. Jean Valjean, an ex-convict, tries to turn his life around for the sake of his adopted daughter, Cosette. Set in turbulent times, this reding by Michael Jayston of this classic tale is a bustling and thrilling trip for a listener through the streets and cafes of a Paris finding its feet and losing its head.

Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt communicated by letter from 1939 to 1945 on a direct and personal basis. Their letters chart the events of the war as they unfold and also their attempts to influence and overcome the great tyranny of Nazism.

Victor Hugo's tale of injustice, heroism and love follows the fortunes of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict determined to put his criminal past behind him. But his attempts to become a respected member of the community are constantly put under threat: by his own conscience, when, owing to a case of mistaken identity, another man is arrested in his place; and by the relentless investigations of the dogged policeman Javert.