Showing results by narrator "Tim Pigott-Smith" in All Categories

In 1616, an English adventurer, Nathaniel Courthope, stepped ashore on a remote island in the East Indies on a secret mission: to persuade the islanders of Run to grant a monopoly to England over their nutmeg, a fabulously valuable spice in Europe. This infuriated the Dutch, who were determined to control the world's nutmeg supply.

Anthony Stevens argues that Jung's visionary powers and profound spirituality have helped many to find an alternative set of values to the arid materialism prevailing Western society.

The monarchy is one of Britain’s longest surviving institutions – as well as one of its most tumultuous and revered. In this masterful book, David Starkey looks at the monarchy as a whole, charting its history from Roman times, to the Wars of the Roses, the chaos of the Civil War, the fall of Charles I and Cromwell's emergence as Lord Protector – all the way up until the Victorian era when Britain’s monarchs came face-to-face with modernity.

This is the first of three volumes, which, taken together under the over-arching title of Monarchy, will form a new, ground-breaking history of England as told through the lives of its Kings and Queens.

Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in London, chief city of Airstrip One. Big Brother stares out from every poster and the Thought Police uncover each act of betrayal. When Winston finds love with Julia, he discovers that life does not have to be dull and deadening and awakens to new possibilities. Despite the police helicopters that hover and circle overhead, Winston and Julia begin to question the Party.

Five classic novelisations of TV adventures set in Earth’s history. In Doctor Who: The Aztecs, the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan materialise in Mexico during the bloodthirsty Aztec civilisation. In Doctor Who and the Crusaders the First Doctor and his friends are embroiled in the 12th-century conflict between Richard the Lionheart and the Sultan Saladin. In Doctor Who: The Myth Makers, the First Doctor, Steven and Vicki arrive on the plains of Ursa Minor, in the middle of the Greek and Trojan battlefields.

Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time in over 50 years at his mother’s funeral. Soon after, she persuades Henry to abandon South wood, his dahlias and the Major next door to travel through Brighton, Paris, Istanbul, Paraguay...

In a small continental country civil war is raging. Once a lecturer in medieval French, now a confidential agent, D is a scarred stranger in a seemingly casual England, sent on a mission to buy coal at any price. Initially, this seems to be a matter of straightforward negotiation, but soon, implicated in murder, accused of possessing false documents and theft, held responsible for the death of a young woman, D becomes a hunted man, tormented by allegiances, doubts and the love of others.

When a leak is traced back to a small sub-section of SIS, it sparks off security checks, tensions and suspicions - the sort of atmosphere where mistakes could be made. This novel opens up the lonely, isolated, neurotic world of the Secret Service.

You'll be awe-inspired by the heroic efforts of the crew of the Endurance, a ship that battled its way for six weeks through thousands of miles of pack ice while ironically only a day's sail from its destination.

Six lavish BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations of Anthony Trollope's much-loved novels. Anthony Trollope's series of witty and gently satirical stories of provincial life are set in the fictional town of Barchester and its surrounding county of Barsetshire. The canvas is broad and colourful, with a set of iconic characters in whose lives we become intimately involved as they grow up, grow old, and fall in or out of love and friendship across the years.

Max Skinner is a man at the heart of London's financial universe until his employers embark on a little asset-stripping of their own. Himself. Amid the grey London drizzle, there is one potential ray of sunshine: Max's Uncle Harry has left him his estate in his will, an eighteenth-century chateau and vineyard an hour's drive from Avignon.

A naked woman in red, high-heeled shoes is poised on the edge of Clifton Suspension Bridge with her back pressed to the safety fence, weeping into a mobile phone. Clinical psychologist Joseph O'Loughlin is only feet away, desperately trying to talk her down. She whispers "You don't understand" ¿ and jumps.

The events of 1950-1999 are described by the people who saw them happen, from the Festival of Britain in 1951 through to the dawn of a new millennium at the end of 1999. In between are the eras of the Angry Young Men, the Teddy Boys and the Punk Rockers; the arrival of rock and roll and the permissive society; the advent of industrial strife in England and sectarian unrest in Northern Ireland; the rise to power of Margaret Thatcher; the miners' strike, three-day week and Winter of Discontent; the Queen's Silver Jubilee....

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a titanic among the world's great authors, and The Brothers Karamazov is often hailed as his finest novel. A masterpiece on many levels, it transcends the boundaries of a gripping murder mystery to become a moving account of the battle between love and hate, faith and despair, compassion and cruelty, good and evil.

A BBC Radio 3 adaptation by Michael Symmons of Alfred Lord Tennyson's ‘The Idylls of the King’, narrated by Tim Pigott-Smith and broadcast on 12 July 2009 to mark the bicentenary of the poet's birth.In this extraordinary epic poem, Tennyson transforms Malory's ‘Le Morte d'Arthur’, infusing the legend of King Arthur with a passionate intensity.

Brunetti's investigations take him into unfamiliar areas of Venetian life, drug abuse and loan-sharking, while the deaths of two young drug addicts and the arrest, and subsequent release, of a suspected drug-dealer reveal, once again, what a difference it makes in Venice to have friends in high places.

On 1 July 1916, Douglas Haig's army launched the "Big Push" that was supposed finally to bring an end to the stalemate on the Western Front. What happened next was a human catastrophe: scrambling over the top into the face of the German machine guns and artillery fire, 19,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers were killed, the greatest loss in a single day ever sustained by the British Army. The battle did not stop there, however.

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation....

These three legendary plays, performed by some of the best-known theatrical actors of the 20th century, are the perfect way to commemorate England's greatest dramatist. The Winter's Tale: one man's consuming jealousy threatens to destroy both himself and those around him, but his actions arouse a passionate sense of honour, love, justice and self-sacrifice in members of his Court and family. First broadcast in 1982, starring Ronald Pickup as Leontes, with Hannah Gordon as Hermione and John Gielgud as Time.