Showing results by narrator "Tony Robinson" in All Categories

Up on the chalk downs they call The Wold, witches are banned: ever since the Baron's son vanished in the woods. Anyway, as all witches know, chalk's no good for magic. Nine-year-old Tiffany Aching thinks her Granny Aching, a wise shepherd, might have been a witch, but now Granny Aching is dead, and it's up to Tiffany to work it all out when strange things begin happening.

A Bright New Dawn is just around the corner for thousands of tiny nomes when they begin to move into the ruined buildings of an abandoned quarry. Or is it? Soon strange things start to happen. Like the tops of puddles growing hard and cold, and the water coming down from the sky in frozen bits. Then humans appear and they really mess everything up. But how long will the nomes be able to keep the humans at bay: even with the help of the monster Jekub? A hilarious sequel to Truckers.

Another fascinating title in the fantastically funny history series from the acclaimed Tony Robinson. Tony Robinson takes you on a headlong gallop through time, pointing out all the most important, funny, strange, amazing, entertaining, smelly and disgusting bits about the Greeks! It's history, but not as we know it! Find out everything you ever needed to know in this brilliant, action-packed, fact-filled book.

Other children receive xylophones. Susan just had to ask her grandfather to take his vest off. Yes. There's a Death in the family. It's hard to grow up normally when Grandfather rides a white horse and wields a scythe: especially when you have to take over the family business, and everyone mistakes you for the Tooth Fairy. And especially when you have to face the new and addictive music that has entered Discworld. It's lawless. It changes people. It's called Music With Rocks In.

Religion is a controversial business in the Discworld. Everyone has their own opinion, and indeed their own gods - who come in all shapes and sizes. In such a competitive environment, there is a pressing need to make one's presence felt. And it's certainly not remotely helpful to be reduced to be appearing in the form of a tortoise, a manifestation far below god-like status in anyone's book. In such instances, you need an acolyte, and fast - preferably one who won't ask too many questions.

William de Worde is the accidental editor of the Discworld's first newspaper. Now he must cope with the traditional perils of a journalist's life: people who want him dead, a recovering vampire with a suicidal fascination for flash photography, some more people who want him dead in a different way and, worst of all, the man who keeps begging him to publish pictures of his humorously shaped potatoes. William just wants to get at the truth.

Moist von Lipwig was a con artist and a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put Ankh-Morpork's ailing postal service back on its feet. It was a tough decision. But he's got to see that the mail gets though, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer. Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too.

The alchemists of the Discworld have discovered the magic of the silver screen. But what is the dark secret of Holy Wood hill? It's up to Victor Tugelbend ("Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little") and Theda Withel ("I come from a little town you've probably never heard of") to find out. Moving Pictures, the ninth Discworld novel, is a gloriously funny saga set against the background of a world gone mad!

It's the night before Hogswatch. And it's too quiet. It's the night before Hogswatch. There's snow, there are robins, there are trees covered with decorations, but there's a notable lack of the big fat man who delivers the toys. He's gone. Susan the governess has got to find him before morning; otherwise, the sun won't rise. And unfortunately, her only helpers are a raven with an eyeball fixation, the Death of Rats, and an "oh god of hangovers".

Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed. And on Discworld, that is the job of the Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where it's wasted (like underwater; how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there's never enough time. But the construction of the world's first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time for Lu Tze and his apprentice, Lobsang Ludd. Because it will stop time. And that will only be the start of everyone's problems.

Polly Perks had to become a boy in a hurry. Cutting off her hair and wearing trousers was easy. Learning to fart and belch in public and walk like an ape took more time. And now she's enlisted in the army, and searching for her lost brother. But there's a war on. There's always a war on. And Polly and her fellow recruits are suddenly in the thick of it, without any training, and the enemy is hunting them.

Sam Vines is a man on the run. Yesterday he was a duke, a chief of police, and the ambassador to the mysterious, fat-rich country of Uberwald. Now he has nothing but his native wit and the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya (don't ask). It's snowing. It's freezing. And if he can't make it through the forest to civilization, there's going to be a terrible war. But there are monsters on his trail. They're bright. They're fast. They're werewolves. And they're catching up.

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork - not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else.

Eric is the Discworld's only demonology hacker. Pity he's not very good at it. All he wants is his three wishes granted. Nothing fancy: to be immortal, to rule the world, and have the most beautiful woman in the world fall madly in love with him. The usual stuff. But instead of a tractable demon, Eric calls up Rincewind, the most incompetent wizard in the universe, and his extremely intractable and hostile travel accessory, the Luggage.

Shortlisted for the British Book Awards, Children's Book of the Year, 2007.
Tiffany Aching is a trainee witch now working for the seriously scary Miss Treason. But when Tiffany witnesses the Dark Dance, the crossover from summer to winter, she does what no one has ever done before: she leaps into the dance. And into the oldest story there is.

The first in a fantastically funny new history series from the acclaimed Tony Robinson, who takes you on a headlong gallop through time, pointing out all the most important, funny, strange, amazing, entertaining, smelly and disgusting bits about the Egyptians! It's history, but not as we know it!

Reality is all very well in small doses. It's a perfectly conventional and convenient way of neutralising the imagination. But sometimes when there's more than one reality at play, imagination just won't be neutralised, and the walls between realities come tumbling down. Unfortunately there's usually a damned good reason for there being walls between them in the first place. To keep things out. Things who want to make mischief and play havoc with the natural order.

"Look after the dead," said the priests, "and the dead will look after you." Wise words in all probability, but a tall order when you have just become the pharaoh of a small and penniless country whose largesse, and indeed treasury, is unlikely to stretch to the building of a monumental pyramid to honour your dead father. And particularly when your only visible means of support is a recently acquired qualification from the Guild of Assassins.

The most powerful men in the world were all together in a circle in the middle of the room. Drawing their daggers, they cut their right hands and, above the pile of gold, swore Odysseus’ vow: Helen could marry whom she liked, and the Princes would defend them both.… Everyone’s heard of the wooden horse of Troy, and of the beauty of Helen. Well this is the story as Odysseus saw it, from his boyhood in Ithaca to his participation in the bloody Trojan war itself.

It has taken ten long, bloody years for the Greeks to win the Trojan War and now Odysseus, their victorious leader, wants nothing more than to return home to his wife and son. But the only person who can tell him the way home is the prophet Tyresius, and he has been dead for hundreds of years….