Showing results by narrator "Simon Shepherd" in All Categories

The Horologicon - which means 'a book of things appropriate to each hour' - follows a day in the life of unusual, beautiful, and forgotten English words. From the moment you wake to the second your head hits the pillow, there's a cornucopia of hidden words ready for every aspect of your day.

The Dealmaker is a frank and honest account of how a severely dyslexic child who struggled at school went on to graduate from Oxford and become a serial entrepreneur. It describes Guy Hand's career in private equity, first at Nomura and then as head of his own company, Terra Firma. It looks in detail at the huge deals that Terra Firma has done over the years, involving everything from cinema chains and pubs to waste management, aircraft leasing and green energy. 

A quirky, entertaining and thought-provoking tour of the unexpected connections between words, read by Simon Shepherd. What is the actual connection between disgruntled and gruntled? What links church organs to organised crime, California to the Caliphate, or brackets to codpieces? The Etymologicon springs from Mark Forsyth's Inky Fool blog on the strange connections between words.

The acknowledged ‘queen of Regency romance’, best-selling author Georgette Heyer, also penned a dozen delightful mystery novels. Included here are dramatisations of four of her finest stories from both genres, full of her characteristic wit, charm and period detail.

Now leader of the UK himself, Boris Johnson explores what makes up the 'Churchill Factor' - the singular brilliance of one of the most important leaders of the 20th century. Taking on the myths and misconceptions along with the outsized reality, he portrays - with characteristic wit and passion - a man of multiple contradictions, contagious bravery, breath-taking eloquence, matchless strategizing and deep humanity. 

Late one evening investigative journalist Bastian Obermayer receives an anonymous message offering him access to secret data. Through encrypted channels he then receives documents showing a mysterious bank transfer for $500 million in gold. This is just the beginning. Obermayer and fellow Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist Frederik Obermaier find themselves immersed in a secret world where complex networks of shell companies help to hide people who don't want to be found.

In an age unhealthily obsessed with substance, this is a book on the importance of pure style, from the best-selling author of The Etymologicon and The Horologicon. From classic poetry to pop lyrics and from the King James Bible to advertising slogans, Mark Forsyth explains the secrets that make a phrase - such as 'Tiger, Tiger, burning bright', or 'To be or not to be' - memorable. In his inimitably entertaining and witty style he takes apart famous lines and shows how you, too, can write like Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde.

From 1890 and through the early years of the 20th century, Vienna became a dazzling beacon. The city was powered by an unprecedented number of extraordinary people - artists Klimt and Schiele, thinkers such as Theodor Herzl, and fashion icons like the glamorous Empress Sisi. The influence of early 20th century Vienna is still detectable all around us. The way we think about ourselves has been largely determined by Vienna's most celebrated resident: Sigmund Freud. Mortal Secrets is the story of Freud's life, Vienna's golden age, and an essential reappraisal of Freud's legacy.

Guy Burgess is the most important, complex and fascinating of 'The Cambridge Spies' - the group of British men recruited to pass intelligence to the Soviets during World War Two and the Cold War. Burgess' story takes us from his student days in 1930s Cambridge, where he was first approached by Soviet scouts, through his daring infiltration of the BBC and the British government to his final escape to Russia and lonely, tragic-comic exile there.

Uncover the secrets of Edward Fairfax Rochester, the beloved, enigmatic hero of Jane Eyre, as he tells his story for the first time in Mr Rochester, Sarah Shoemaker's gorgeous retelling of one of the most romantic stories in literature. On his eighth birthday, Edward is banished from his beloved home, Thornfield Hall, to learn his place in life. With the help of friends, enemies and a series of eccentric mentors, he discovers more than he might have wished about the ways of the men - and women - who will one day be his peers.

Bushcraft and survival legend Ray Mears takes us on his own lifetime's journey through the natural world, into the British countryside and across continents, and shows us how to tune our senses, enhance our experience of nature, and understand our place within it. Guiding us through practical fieldcraft tips, Ray brings us up close with creatures we share our planet with, and reveals how we can learn from them, from the stealth of the leopard to the patience and stillness of the crocodile, and even the colour-changing camouflage of the octopus.

Ray Mears is a household name through his television series Tracks, World of Survival, Bushcraft Survival, The Real Heroes of Telemark, and many more.

He is a private individual who shuns publicity whenever possible and would prefer to let his many skills tell their own tale - until now. In My Outdoor Life, Ray tells of his childhood and the formative years when he first developed a passion for both bushcraft and the martial arts skills that are central to his life.

On 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. The following day, his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, also killed himself, and the crumbling Third Reich passed to Admiral Karl Dönitz. The Nazis' position seemed hopeless. Yet remarkably, the war in the rest of Europe went on for another 10 days. After Hitler looks at these days as a narrative day-by-day countdown but also as a broader global history of a European war that had seen some of the most savage battles in history.

The thrilling history of the turning point of the Second World War, when Hitler's armies were halted on the Eastern Front. At the moment of crisis in 1941 on the Eastern Font, with the forces of Hitler massing on the outskirts of Moscow, the miraculous occurred: Moscow was saved. Yet this turning point was followed by a long retreat, in which Russian forces, inspired by old beliefs in the sacred motherland, pushed back German forces steeled by the vision of the ubermensch, the iron-willed fighter. 

In the respectable seaside town of Flaxborough, the equally respectable councillor Harold Carobleat is laid to rest. Cause of death: pneumonia. But he is scarcely cold in his coffin before Detective Inspector Purbright, affable and annoyingly polite, must turn out again to examine the death of Carobleat's neighbour, Marcus Gwill, former prop. of the local rag, the Citizen. This time it looks like foul play, unless a surfeit of marshmallows had led the late and rather unlamented Mr Gwill to commit suicide by electrocution. ('Power without responsibility', murmurs Purbright.)  

Welcome to a world where everything seems normal. At least, at first. But the sinister and truly terrifying lurk just beneath the surface. Like a bathtub with a history so haunted, no one dares get in it ... or an ordinary-looking camera that does unspeakable things to its subjects ... or a mysterious computer game that has terrible consequences if you lose ...

The Inner Consultation, Second Edition sets out the author’s thoughts on how consulting skills, and methods of teaching them, have evolved in the 17 years since the book’s first publication. It also develops the theme of "curiosity" as the key requirement for patient-centered consulting and provides a practical consultation model with five checkpoints to work to, advice for developing skills, and suggestions for doctors to ensure they know the cues in the consultation that require their full attention. 

Science, technology and Western liberal democracy have all had a dramatic impact on our quality of life. Compared to previous generations, we have unprecedented access to information, increased personal freedom, more material comforts and more possessions. Yet, even before the shock of COVID-19, more people than ever before were reporting being depressed, anxious or unfulfilled. As our material circumstances become easier, life seems to get harder. 

It's the height of World War II. Britain is being ravaged by bombs, and most young men are off fighting. Gordon wishes he was too. Maybe then he wouldn't get bullied for having a cowardly family.... Gordon's dad didn't serve in World War I, and now his older brother ,Raymond, isn't serving in World War II - he's gone missing. When Gordon finds a revolver hidden in his house, he tracks Raymond down but ends up involved in more than he'd bargained for.

A two-timing pornographer becomes the unwilling object of one of his victim's vengeful fantasies. A millionaire buys himself the perfect mistress - passive, yet beautiful - but the union soon becomes a nightmare of jealousy and despair. And an ape reflects on the relationship with a young female writer, mourning their fading love and musing on the fateful deceptions of art. In these seven stories of dreamlike lucidity, the wasteland of the human psyche is mapped with deadly precision.