Showing results by narrator "Roy" in All Categories

Oliver Ryan is a handsome and charismatic success story. He lives in the suburbs with his wife, Alice, who illustrates his award-winning children's books and gives him her unstinting devotion. Their life together is one of enviable privilege and ease - enviable until, one evening after supper, Oliver attacks Alice and beats her into a coma. In the aftermath, as everyone tries to make sense of his astonishing act of savagery, Oliver tells his story.

Flown to Japan as a 16-year-old exchange student, Roy Dean entered the world of fighting through the art of Judo. Returning to the USA, he pursued even more intense study, becoming an apprentice to a Japanese jiu jitsu and aikido master in Monterey, California. This is a recollection of transformative events, his introduction to the art of Brazilian jiu jitsu, and the lessons you can only learn by living in a dojo.

If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press. When the economy grew, it was credited to the Fed. When the economy imploded in 2008, the Fed got credit for rescuing us.

Starting life on BBC TV, Whack-O! transferred to radio in 1961 and ran for three series on the Light Programme until 1963. Collected here are those rediscovered episodes, featuring scholastic scheming and academic anarchy at Chiselbury School. An old-established seat of learning for the ‘sons of gentlefolk’, Chiselbury is presided over by whack-happy Headmaster Professor James Edwards, who runs rings around his fellow masters and never misses a trick when it comes to exploiting the pupils and their parents.

When someone hacks into the systems of eight self-driving cars, their passengers are set on a fatal collision course. The passengers are: a TV star, a pregnant young woman, a disabled war hero, an abused wife fleeing her husband, an illegal immigrant, a husband and wife - and parents of two - who are travelling in separate vehicles and a suicidal man. Now the public have to judge who should survive but are the passengers all that they first seem?

E.F. Benson (1867-1940) is probably best known today for his sparkling, comic Lucia novels. In his own day, it was his ghost stories which were his most popular works. This collection of 10 stories exemplifies Benson's fine literary style and his ability to create the most frightening of ghostly and macabre tales.

January 1972: the tiny outpost of British Honduras is threatened with imminent invasion by battle-hardened, US-trained Guatemalan paratroopers. Britain's response must be immediate and decisive. But there is only one deterrent the government can offer: HMS Ark Royal, once the navy's most powerful warship, now a white elephant on the verge of being scrapped. To save the small colony, she must launch a pair of Buccaneer fighter bombers on an unprecedented long-range mission. But first the old carrier must make a high-speed 1,500-mile dash across the Atlantic.

Charles Dickens saw his fictional work in print for the first time in 1833 when he was only 21. It was a story called "Mr Minns and his Cousin" and was published in the Morning Chronicle. He wrote more tales and sketches for newspapers and magazines, which were collected and published in book form in two series in 1836 as Sketches by Boz. Here are nine of them.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Vulcan 607 by Rowland White, read by Roy McMillan. It was to be one of the most ambitious operations since 617 Squadron bounced their revolutionary bombs into the dams of the Ruhr Valley in 1943.... When Argentine forces invaded the Falklands in the early hours of 2 April 1982, Britain's military chiefs were faced with a real-life Mission Impossible.

Featuring the hilarious exploits of the bumbling bureaucrats of the General Assistance Department, the show starred Wilfrid Hyde-White and later Deryck Guyler as the hapless ‘Number One’, with Richard Murdoch as his hare-brained sidekick ‘Number Two’. Together, they muddled their way through Whitehall, creating chaos with their mix-ups, misunderstandings and mismanagement – to the consternation of their boss, the self-serving Permanent Under-Secretary Sir Gregory Pitkin (Roy Dotrice and Ronald Baddiley).

One December, in midsummer South Africa, Tim Dee was watching swallows. They were at home there, but the same birds would soon begin journeying north to Europe, where their arrival marks the beginning of spring. Greenery recounts how Tim Dee tries to follow the season and its migratory birds, making remarkable journeys in the Sahara, the Straits of Gibraltar, Sicily, Britain, and finally, by the shores of the Arctic Ocean in northern Scandinavia. On each adventure, he is in step with the very best days of the year - the time of song and nests and eggs, of buds and blossoms and leafing.

One of the most important and influential Russian writers of the 19th century, Fyodor Dostoevsky is admired worldwide for his great realist novels, exploring questions of morality, philosophy and the nature of existence. This compilation contains the BBC radio productions of his four most famous novels - as well as three lesser-known works and two bonus documentaries - collected together for the first time.

In early 1461, a teenage boy won a battle on a freezing morning in the Welsh marches and claimed the crown of England. He was Edward IV, first king of the usurping house of York. The country, crippled by economic crisis, insurgency, and a corrupt and bankrupt government, was in need of a new hero. Charismatic, able and ruthlessly ambitious, Edward and his two younger brothers, George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, became the figureheads of a spectacular ruling dynasty which laid the foundations for a renewal of English royal power.

This is a spectacular story of error and innovation, a wild ride from a vision to the realization of an iconic cultural landscape. It reflects the park’s uniqueness, but just as strongly that of the man who built it with a watchmaker’s precision, an artist’s conviction, and the desperate, high-hearted recklessness of a riverboat gambler.

Designing Terry Pratchett's Discworld takes listeners behind the scenes of the amazing partnership between Sir Terry Pratchett and artist Paul Kidby. It shows how the Discworld was brought to visual life - from the earliest sketches to the final magnificent masterpieces - and how Terry and Paul absorbed influences from art and pop culture, fusing them into the Discworld landscape.

Meet Hinge and Bracket, the delightful double act brought to sublime life by George Logan and Patrick Fyffe. Lifelong companions and musical collaborators, they enjoy nothing more than performing around the piano together, and trading light-hearted banter spiced with comic innuendo and a double entendre or two. Collected here are the very best of their radio appearances, including the pilot episode and first series of The Enchanting World of Hinge and Bracket.

On a beautiful summer's day, at a remote lake in the middle of Dartmoor, three members of the Fowler family take a dinghy out onto the water, leaving mother Sarah at the shore. Less than sixty seconds later, she checks to see where they are. The boat is drifting in the middle of the lake. It's empty. Sarah's family have completely vanished.

As one of just a few judges licensed to try murder cases at the Old Bailey, the author has presided over many of the high-profile cases that all too often grab our attention in dramatic media headlines—for every unlawful death tells a story. But, unlike most of us, a judge doesn't get to turn the page and move on. Nor does the defendant, or the family of the victim, nor the many other people who populate the court room. Peeling apart six dramatic murder and manslaughter cases, Unlawful Killings removes this distinction between 'them' and 'us'.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Secret Life of the Owl by John Lewis-Stempel, read by Roy McMillan. 'Dusk is filling the valley. It is the time of the gloaming, the owl-light. Out in the wood, the resident tawny has started calling, hoo-hoo-hoo-h-o-o-o.' There is something about owls. They feature in every major culture from the Stone Age onwards. They are creatures of the night, and thus of magic. They are the birds of ill-tidings, the avian messengers from the Other Side.

How to Get Rich is a distillation of his business wisdom. Primarily concerned with the step-by-step creation of wealth, it ruthlessly dissects the business failures and financial triumphs of 'a South London lad who became rich virtually by accident'. Part manual, part memoir, part primer, this book is a template for those who are willing to stare down failure and transform their lives.