Showing results by narrator "Richard Attlee" in All Categories

Nigel Farage is arguably one of the most influential British politicians of the 21st century. His campaign to take the UK out of the EU began as a minority and extreme point of view, but in June 2016 it became the official policy of the nation after a divisive referendum. In Michael Crick's brilliant new biography, One Party After Another, we find out how he did it despite never once managing to get elected to Parliament.

We are endlessly fascinated by the French. We are fascinated by their way of life, their creativity, sophistication and self-assurance, and even their insistence that they are exceptional. But how did France become the country it is today, and what really sets it apart? Journalist and historian Peter Watson sets out to answer these questions in The French Mind, a dazzling history of France that takes us from the 17th century to the present day through the nation’s most influential thinkers.

Professor Richard Fortey has been a devoted field mycologist all his life. He has rejoiced in the exuberant variety and profusion of mushrooms since reading as a boy of nuns driven mad by ergot (a fungus). Drawing on decades of experience doing science in the woods and fields, Fortey starts with the perfect ‘fungus day’ – eating ceps in Piedmont. He introduces brown rotters and the white, earthstars and death caps; fungal annuals and perennials, dung lovers and parasites, even fungi that move through the trees like mycelial monkeys.

The Bible is the world's best-known text. Yet, it is a book that never was - its original form does not exist and likely never did. What we have is the inheritance of generation after generation of Christians who have sought to hear God speak. Available in over 3,000 languages and taking innumerable forms, each version is a revelation, evolving as a reflection of its own culture and moment.

2024 marks both the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, and the 150th anniversary of the birth of Churchill himself. This book brings together General Lord Dannatt, one of Britain's most respected contemporary military leaders, and former head of the British Army, with Allen Packwood, one of the world's foremost Churchill experts, the archivist responsible for the holdings at the landmark Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge. Together they take us through the decision-making for the planning and execution of D-Day.

Catesby is a spy with an antiestablishment chip on his shoulder. Loathed by the Americans and trusted by the Russians, he is sent to Havana and Washington to make clandestine contacts. London has authorised Catesby to offer Moscow a secret deal to break the Cuban Missile Crisis deadlock. But then Catesby meets the Midnight Swimmer, who has a chilling message for Washington.... Merging fact and fiction, sleaze and high politics, this white-knuckle thriller sees a superpower standoff played out against a backdrop of honey-trap blackmail, Mafia contracts, assassination and Vatican scandal.

Bremen, 1951. An MI6 officer, haunted by an SS atrocity, kills a Nazi war criminal in the ruins of a U-boat bunker. The German turns out to be a CIA asset being rat-lined to South America. Britain, 1947. A young cabinet minister negotiates a deal with Moscow trading Rolls-Royce jet engines for cattle fodder and wood. The fates of the two men become entwined as one rises through MI6 and the other to Downing Street where, in the mid-1970s, a secret plot unfolds on both sides of the Atlantic to overthrow the prime minister. Can MI6 officers Catesby and Bone prevent it?

The UK referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU was a political showdown the British PM, Jeremy Hartley, thought he couldn’t lose. But the next morning both he and the rest of the country woke in a state of shock. America meanwhile has its own unlikely presidential candidate, the brash showman Ronald Craig, a man that nobody thought could gain office. Throw into the mix the cunning Russian President Igor Popov, with his plans to destabilise the West, and you have a brilliant alternative account of the events of 2016 that led to Brexit and America welcoming its own new leader.

London, 1956. A generation of British Spies are haunted by the ghost of friends turned traitors. Henry Bone, a Mandarin spymaster, is convinced that a man code-named Butterfly is an aristocratic pervert whose political tastes are as ugly as his sexual preferences. Worst of all, Butterfly has the ability to identify each traitor!

London, 1900. Hester Stanmore watches in disbelief as the jury declares her attacker 'not guilty', and the courtroom erupts into chaos. The man in the dock is being congratulated as if he were a hero, but she has seen the madness in his eyes when he had attacked her and left her for dead. It was only Hester's strength that allowed her to survive. Hester was determined to bring him to justice, but what would happen now? As she endeavours to pick up the pieces of her life, Hester meets the mysterious Daniel Hansen, and perhaps she will find the happy ending she justly deserves.

In a grand old mansion in the middle of the Sussex countryside, seven people have seen more than they should. James Ritchie was looking forward to a boys' day out with his son, Wilbur—even if he was a little late picking him up from the home of his ex-wife, Anna. Annoyed by his late arrival, and competing for their son's attention, Anna leaves the two of them to their day with the promise of a roast dinner when Wilbur returns. But Anna will never see her family again. That afternoon, James and Wilbur are found dead, the victims of a double stabbing on the beach.

In this compelling investigation, Michael Smith explores the critical moment in a spy's life: that split-second decision to embrace a double life.

The setting is 1950s London, at the height of the Cold War. Kit Fournier is ostensibly a senior diplomat at the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, but is actually CIA bureau chief in London. The Arms Race informs much of the action in this fast-paced story which sees Kit go undercover to meet a dissident KGB agent, lose a loved one, have a crisis of soul and get blackmailed into becoming a double agent for M16....

When Colin discovers his son is on a murder charge in France, he trails his small boat, The Dragonfly, across the Channel to help. There he meets his granddaughter - the irrepressible Delphine - for the first time. They embark on a boat journey through the picturesque French canals, heading south through Burgundy, 'until the butter melts'. Along the way, they catch up with Tyler, a spirited American, and land big fish, cultivate new loves and uncover a burning secret. But can Colin help his son get off the hook?