Showing titles in Historical

A gripping BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation based on the second novel in C. J. Sansom's best-selling Tudor crime series. Summer, 1540. It has been three years since the terrible events at Scarnsea monastery, and lawyer-detective Matthew Shardlake is living a quiet life in London - until a summons from Cromwell sees him embarking on another dangerous secret assignment.

Rosalind Lang has encountered the worst possible fate for a national spy: she's been exposed. With the media storm camped outside her apartment for the infamous Lady Fortune, she's barely left her bedroom in weeks, plotting her next course of action after Orion was taken and his memories of Rosalind wiped. Though their marriage might have been a sham, his absence hurts her more than any physical wound. She won't rest until she gets him back. But with her identity in the open, the task is near impossible.

Winston Churchill called it Britain’s finest hour. The Royal Navy evacuated 330,000 soldiers from Dunkirk. But more than 200,000 were left behind. On the beaches, Jeremy Littlefield hides for his life. His path home will draw him through the iron will and the unbreakable heart of the French Resistance. Only a few miles away, his brother, Lance, rallies fellow soldiers to start a trek that will take them across Europe, sabotaging the Germans in a mission tantamount to suicide.

In 1066, 16-year-old Saxon Cerdic lives with his elder brother, Unferth, and his father, Rothgar, Earl of Ripon, in Swaledale. As the younger brother, he studies for the priesthood while Unferth trains to take on the mantle of earl one day. When news arrives that the King of Norway, Harald Hardraada, is invading northern England with the treacherous Tostig Godwinson, Earl Rothgar joins the northern nobles to repel them.

Flashman must choose - politcs in London or slave trading in Africa - not that it matters really in this hilarious third installement of the Flashman Papers. When Flashman was inveigled into a game of pontoon with Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck, he was making an unconscious choice about his own future - would it lie in the House of Commons or the West African slave trade? Was there, for that matter, very much difference?

From the rough highlands of Scotland to the crumbling majesty of Constantinople, a gripping historical novel written and read by TV historian and broadcaster Neil Oliver. In 15th century Constantinople, young Prince Constantine, heir to the Byzantine throne, is left permanently crippled when he saves the beautiful Princess Yaminah from falling to her death in the Hagia Sofia.

Alan Le May’s Western novels are widely considered classics in the genre, and the movie adaptation of The Searchers was named AFI’s Greatest Western Movie of All Time. When Martin Pauley and Amos Edwards return to their Texas homestead to find a burning ruin, they set out to find Amos’ missing daughter - and exact revenge on the Comanche responsible for the attack.

Project Guiding Light is NATO's biggest secret. A system to take long-range bombers deep into the Soviet Union, undetected. There's just one problem, and veteran engineer Chris Milford has found it. A lethal flaw that means the aircrew will pay a terrible price. Undermined and belittled by a commanding officer who values loyalty over safety, Milford is forced down a dangerous, subversive path. Even his closest friend, Rob May, the youngest test pilot on the project, has turned his back on him. Until the crash that changes everything.

Paris, 1585: Giordano Bruno has come to Paris, a city on the edge of catastrophe. Alone and near destitute, Bruno turns to old friend and zealous preacher Paul Lefevre. But when the priest is murdered, Bruno is pulled into a dangerous world. If Bruno can't uncover the truth, not only is the future of the de Valois monarchy threatened - but his own life will be the forfeit.

After four trips to the Sahara and extensive historical research, David Ball crafted this sweeping adventure novel spanning two continents and 15 years. Set against a backdrop of the crumbling French Empire’s attempts to colonize the Sahara Desert, Empires of Sand follows the lives of two cousins who are raised as brothers but destined to become enemies. It is 1870, and France is at war with Prussia.

England, 1586. Giordano Bruno returns to England to bring shocking new intelligence to Sir Francis Walsingham. A band of Catholic Englishmen are plotting to kill Queen Elizabeth and spring Mary Queen of Scots from prison to take the English throne in her place. Bruno is surprised to find that Walsingham is aware of the plot, led by the young, wealthy noble Anthony Babington and is allowing it to progress. His hope is that Mary will put her support in writing - and condemn herself to a traitor's death.

Scotland,1893. Nineteen-year-old Evelyn Ballantyre, the daughter of a wealthy landowner, has rarely strayed from her family's estate in the Scottish Borders. She was once close to her philanthropist father, but his silence over what really happened on the day a poacher was shot on estate land has come between them. An invitation to accompany her father to Canada is a chance for Evelyn to escape her limited existence.

Spring, 1941. France has fallen but the Free French naval forces are in no mood to surrender. Royal Navy Sub-Lieutenant Harry Gilmour is also ready for action, despite the horrors of his first taste of submarine warfare. When he is appointed as British Navy Liaison Officer aboard the Free French submarine Radegonde, he finds it anarchic, disorientating - and very French. Within its claustrophobic confines, suspicion and misunderstanding are rife.

Only she knows the truth. Only he can tell the world. Vienna, 1946. A brilliant German scientist spirited out of the ruins Nazi Europe in search of a new life. Moscow, 1964. A rising star of the British diplomatic service whose job is not what it seems. London, the present day. A once promising academic offered an opportunity to seal his place in history. Their stories, their lives, and the fate of the world, are bound by a single document: The Scarlet Papers. The devastating secrets contained within teased by a brief invitation: Tomorrow 11AM. Take a cab and pay in cash. Tell no one.

Berlin, 1928, the height of the Weimar Republic. Bernie is a young detective working in Vice when he asked to investigate the Silesian Station killings: four prostitutes murdered in as many weeks, and in the same gruesome manner. Bernie hardly has time to acquaint himself with the case files before another murder occurs. Until now, no one has shown much interest in these victims—there are plenty in Berlin who'd like the streets washed clean of such degenerates.

Exploring her beloved forest, young Princess Chibuike “Chi” encounters a man unlike any she has seen. His skin is as pale as the moon that watches over the Queendom of Kana, a land where women rule fiercely and freely. But outside the comforting embrace of her homeland, a disturbing change blows with the wind. Ten dry seasons later, in 1619, Chi, now a seasoned warrior in the Kanaian army, and preparing for her own future as queen, faces a mystery that threatens the existence of Kana.

1785 – es brodelt in Frankreich. Aus anfänglicher Verehrung des Volkes für die schöne Königin Marie-Antoniette wird zunehmend Hass, je schlechter es den Menschen geht. Eine undurchsichtige Doppelgängerin sorgt ebenso für die Schädigung ihres Rufes wie Gerüchte über ein sagenhaft teures Collier, das zum Zeitpunkt höchster finanzieller Not angefertigt wurde. Im Hintergrund zieht der Magier Cagliostro die Fäden. Fortsetzung des Geschichtspanoramas Erinnerungen eines Arztes.

Who exactly is Danziger? He's a writer of letters for illiterate immigrants on Manhattan's Lower East Side - "a steadfast practitioner of concealing and forgetting" for his clients, and perhaps for himself: He hints at a much worldlier past. What and whoever he really is or has been, he has a seemingly boundless knowledge of the city and its denizens. And he knows much more than the mere identity of the floating corpse.

At The Mercury Theatre in London's West End, rumours are circulating of a curse. It is said that the lead actress Lilith has made a pact with Melpomene, the tragic muse of Greek mythology, to become the greatest actress to ever grace the stage. Suspicious of Lilith, the jealous wife of the theatre owner sends dresser Jenny to spy on her, and desperate for the money to help her family, Jenny agrees.

On a chilly early morning walk in Berlin, Emil Grimm finds the body of his neighbor, a fellow Stasi officer named Lothar, with a gunshot wound to the temple and a pistol in his right hand. Despite appearances, Emil suspects murder, and now, as East Germany disintegrates, being a Stasi colonel is more of a liability than an asset. More troubling still is that Emil and Lothar were involved in a final clandestine mission, one that has clearly turned deadly. Now Emil must finish the job alone, on uncertain ground where old alliances seem to be shifting by the day.