Showing results by narrator "Peter Noble" in All Categories

In April 1945, as Hitler’s Third Reich was unravelling, George Orwell published 'Anti-Semitism in Britain'. The short essay sketches the contours of British anti-Semitism, an essentially non-virulent, though a tenaciously pervasive, societal attitude that ran deep and cut across class and ideological differences.

According to biographer D. J. Taylor, the young Orwell displayed ‘an enthusiasm for poetry that in [his] formative years seems to have been as least as strong as any desire to write fiction’. Orwell’s poetry is not among his best known - or most highly praised - work but nonetheless shares similar concerns to (and displays the dry sense of humour present in) his prose. Mere foothills in the range of Orwell’s work perhaps - but building up to the summits later scaled. 

Books v Cigarettes is a funny and irreverent essay comparing the costs of reading to other forms of recreation including smoking. Originating from the experience of an editor friend who was firewatching during the Second World War, who was told by factory workers that they had no interest in literature because they could not afford books, the essay first appeared in Tribune in 1946.

Looking Back on the Spanish War contains George Orwell's reminiscences of the sights, smells and politics of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) in which he almost lost his life. 

Published a mere two and a half months after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Orwell’s 'You and the Atomic Bomb' is notable as one of the first efforts to divine the social and political implications of a new weapon of previously unimaginable power. Its fame arises from Orwell’s coinage of a new term for the permanent standoff the bomb would foster between two great powers, the United States and the Soviet Union: the 'cold war'.

In this insightful and politically powerful essay, Orwell attempts to evaluate non-violence as a method of political leverage outside of the unique circumstances in which Gandhi successfully deployed his method. He discusses the particular context that gave Satyagraha political force: the struggle for national self-determination in colonial India, and looks to Gandhi’s method as a reference for what he feels is a necessary discussion of alternative methods of political resistance.

Cambridge Archaeology Professor Alex Harker is drawn back into the twisted clutches of the Mithras, who are seeking to unearth a knowledge lost to humankind since the dawn of civilization. His journey will take him from the Bay of Bengal to the murky depths of the Gibraltar strait, from the Swiss Alps to an island untouched for over 30,000 years, all in pursuit of this fateful knowledge.

At a remote farmhouse outside Turin, a mysterious religious exorcism goes horribly wrong, setting in motion a series of catastrophic events, that threatens to bring the world to its knees... Meanwhile, Professor Alex Harker is settling into his new life in the Templar Brotherhood, when he is suddenly whisked away to the Tower of London. There he learns of a disturbing murder, and a strange riddle hinting at a sinister truth.

In Foreign Native, RW Johnson looks back with affection and humour on his life in Africa. From schooldays in Durban - fresh off the boat from Merseyside - to later years as an academic, director of the Helen Suzman Foundation and formidable political commentator, he has produced an entertaining and occasionally eye-popping memoir brimming with history, anecdote and insight. Johnson charts his evolution from enthusiastic, left-leaning Africanist to political realist, relating the episodes that influenced his intellectual worldview.

Health and wellness entrepreneur Peter Darrow thought he had life all figured out. A native of the posh and privileged Upper East Side, the young millennial lived large, attending elite schools, throwing lavish birthday parties, and spending summers in the Hamptons. Then one day, his seemingly perfect, polished life came crashing down. Over the course of three hellish years, his father died, he inherited and burned through a shit-ton of money, his girlfriend dumped him, and his first business floundered. 

When bon vivant Italian opera star turned pilot Pietro is shot down during WWII, he nearly loses his life. Worse, he's lost his passion for music and is close to losing his sanity in a soul-crushing prisoner-of-war camp in South Africa when he meets Iris. He has a vision of love worth dying for - worth living for - and realizes he must find his voice if he ever hopes to find her again.

This book investigates the thesis that despite America lacking a world-leading welfare state, America and its cultural desire for individual immortality may give Americans more psychological benefits than Europeans get in their welfare states. 

In the fiery environment of an election season, with tensions stoked by an unrelenting heat wave, Danny Walker goes about the business of being a carefree boy. But when a horrific act of violence is visited on his family, his sense of innocence is shattered and his grip on reality slowly begins to fracture. In lean, lyrical prose - reminiscent of the work of J. M. Coetzee and Cormac McCarthy - Zimbabwean writer Ian Holding delivers a mesmerising coming-of-age tale of guilt and responsibility set within the fault lines of modern Africa.

When troubled army veteran and musician Josh Robertson returns home to Nashville to be the best man at his younger brother Chad’s wedding he’s just sure that he’s going to mess it all up somehow. But when it becomes clear that the wedding might not be going to plan, it’s up to Josh and fellow guest Louise Giles to make sure that Chad and his wife-to-be Maggie get their perfect day. Can Josh be the best man his brother needs? And is there somebody else who is beginning to realise that Josh could be her “best man” too?

Come away to ancient Jerusalem in the time of King Solomon - a city of great splendor and great squalor, of many gods and goddesses, of paupers and kings. Behold the beating heart of the Middle East, whose economic and political affairs reach far and wide and impact lands hundreds of miles away. Barbarism and wisdom. Lust and love. The most senseless violence and the most exquisite wisdom. All are joined together in Alexander Kuprin's brilliant Sulamyth.

From the author of The Girl from Lace Island and A Twist of Fate. When five random people simultaneously receive 'the key', they don't realise that their lives are about to change forever. Shrouded in secrecy, the mysterious silver key is delivered to each of them along with a code, a web address and a promise that - if used wisely - it can unlock a door to luxury and privilege beyond their wildest dreams. However, as each of them begins to use the key, they are propelled into a world of hazy moral choices and soon start to question their enigmatic gift.

After that summer in Kabul province, the young freelancer became a staff reporter for The Times of London, covering conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Gulf, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Balkans, but Afghanistan never let him go. Death of a Translator is a searingly honest description of a mind haunted and eventually paralysed by the terror of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Who does Andrew Clayton turn to when his wife has been murdered, his child is in danger, and the police think he is responsible? Despite his mistrust of Clayton, Joe Hunter accepts the job of protecting young Cole. But who is he protecting the boy from? And why? It's clear Clayton knows more about his wife's killer, but he isn't saying. And when his silence places Cole in the killer's sights, there's...No Safe Place.

The year is 1832, and great change and reform are sweeping England, but 23-year-old Joshua Weyland is languishing in Key West, USA. He was third mate on the schooner Jessica, which ran aground in suspicious circumstances, and the skipper has been arrested on charges of deliberately wrecking his ship. Josh is eager to get back to England to marry his fiancée, so he ships as second mate on a brig bound for Bristol. But when the ship founders off the coast of Cornwall, it's clear it's been deliberately wrecked.

Certain Signs That You Are Dead is the fourth psychological thriller in Torkil Damhaug's Oslo Crime Files, a tense and dark quartet for fans of Camilla Lackberg and Jo Nesbo. Every killer leaves a trace. In Akershus University Hospital, a patient disappears into thin air. That evening, his body is found in a basement box-room, his throat cut. When retired forensic pathologist Jennifer Plåterud is called in to examine the dead man, she has no idea just how closely she is involved in the murder herself.