Showing results by narrator "Mark Elstob" in All Categories

Athens presents one of the most recognisable and symbolically freighted panoramas of any of the world's cities: the pillars and pediments of the Parthenon - the temple dedicated to Athena, goddess of wisdom, that crowns the Acropolis - dominate a city whose name is synonymous for many with civilization itself. It is hard not to feel the hand of history in such a place. The birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy and theatre, Athens' importance cannot be understated.

After his sudden rise to power in the summer of 2019 amid the Brexit deadlock, Boris Johnson presided over the most dramatic period of British history in almost a century. From the controversial prorogation of Parliament in August 2019 to the historic landslide victory later that year, the agonising upheaval of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic—and the scandals unleashed by both—the Afghanistan crisis, and the conflict in Ukraine, Johnson's premiership was more turbulent than any other in living memory.

Anthony Shackleford had long been acquainted with the word duty. Indeed, since the moment he could walk, it had been drummed into him every Friday between the hours of two and four in the afternoon, accompanied by tea and apple cake. His mother had always been especially partial to apple cake. The essence of his obligation was this. The Duke of Blackmore could not be expected to keep his in-laws into their twilight years. Despite the fact that his sisters had all made extremely advantageous marriages, as the only son, it was his job to ensure his parents a comfortable dotage.

England, 1351. The Pestilence has ravaged the land. Villages lie abandoned but for crows and corpses. Highways are patrolled by marauders and murderers. In these dark and dangerous times, the wise keep to themselves. But Gerard Fox cannot afford to be wise. The young knight has been robbed of his ancestral home, his family name tarnished. To regain his lands and reputation, he sets forth to petition the one man who can restore them. Fate places Fox on the wrong road at the wrong time as he hurtles towards a chance encounter.

After being suspended and subsequently dismissed from her job in the National Crime Agency, Teddy Shackleford reluctantly takes refuge in the quaint town of Dartmouth at the behest of her uncle, retired Admiral Charles Shackleford. Since she holds him partly responsible for the ignominious ending of her career, Teddy thinks the least he can do is give her a temporary roof over her head. Expecting to spend the summer licking her wounds and keeping her head down, the last thing Teddy expects is to be recruited by an eccentric aristocrat to unravel a tangled web.

Liz Truss's disastrous premiership was the shortest and most chaotic in British history. In the space of just 49 days, Truss witnessed the death of the longest-reigning monarch, attempted to remould the economy, triggered a collapse in the value of Sterling and was forced on a series of embarrassing U-turns that ultimately led to her resignation. The aftershocks of her time in office are still felt today. How did she blow her opportunity so spectacularly?

In Kaput, Wolfgang Münchau argues that the weaknesses of Germany's economy have, in fact, been brewing for decades. The neo-mercantilist policies of the German state, driven by close connections between the country's industrial and political elite, have left Germany technologically behind over-reliant on authoritarian Russia and China—and with little sign of being able to adapt to the digital realities of the 21st century. It is an essential read for anyone interested in the future of Europe's biggest economy.

At thirty two, Victory Shackleford is arguably overweight, undeniably frumpish and the love of her life is a dog. She still lives at home with her father—an eccentric retired Admiral who she considers reckless, irresponsible, and totally incapable of looking after himself. Her father on the other hand thinks Victory is a boring nagging harpy with no imagination or sense of adventure and what's more, he's determined to get her married off. Unfortunately there's no one in the picturesque yachting town of Dartmouth that Tory is remotely interested in, despite her father's best efforts.

Kal Jerico returns to Hive Primus, chasing his biggest bounty yet: the maniacal preacher Desolation Zoon, racing downhive in a mining hauler bristling with stolen Guilder weaponry...but with a prize like this at stake, every other Venator worth the name will be hunting down the Redemptionist. Can Kal claim Zoon’s head, or will he find a rival’s knife in his back?

In the teeming underhive of Hive Primus, the de facto capital of Necromunda, untold billions clamour for scraps as they attempt to eke out something barely resembling an existence. While the gilded elite enjoy the trappings of luxury in the towering spires above and the lowest of the low barely survive, many turn to the streets and each other for survival, and these are some of their stories.

Reverend Augustus Shackleford's mission in life (aside from ensuring the collection box was suitably full every Sunday) was to secure advantageous marriages for each of his eight daughters. A tall order, given the fact that in the Reverend's opinion they didn't possess a single ladylike bone in the eight bodies they had between them. Quite where he would find a wealthy titled gentleman bottle headed enough to take any of them on remained a mystery and indeed was likely to test even his legendary resourcefulness.

Doom has come upon the Thousand Sons. A plague of fire and dust stalks the Legion across time and space, born from the sorcerous Rubric that saved them from annihilation and damned them for eternity. One by one, the spirits of the Rubricae are vanishing from the prisons of their armour—and one by one, living sorcerers are cursed to take their place. Driven by the obsessive need to save his Legion and find redemption, Ahzek Ahriman seeks the time-altering technology of the forgotten necrons to overwrite his past mistakes.

A little over a century ago, a young Albert Einstein presented his general theory of relativity to the world and utterly transformed our understanding of the universe. His theory changed the way we think about space and time, revealed how our universe has been expanding from a hot, dense state called the big bang and predicted black holes. Where the Universe Came From is a 13.8 billiion-year journey through the cosmos.

In this groundbreaking new biography of Justinian, Peter Sarris gives us an intimate insight into both the Emperor and the man. We meet a man who from the humblest beginnings, rose to become ruler of much of the known world achieving an almost god-like status. An emperor who infused even the most mundane tasks with spiritual and religious significance. A gifted administrator obsessed with detail. A middle aged lover who fell for a dancing girl and changed the law so he could marry her, ruling with Empress Theodora by his side for over twenty years.

A Journey Through the Universe is a grand tour of the most amazing celestial objects and how they fit together to build the cosmos. There's a whole universe out there.... Imagine you had a spacecraft capable of travelling through interstellar space. You climb in, blast into orbit, fly out of the solar system and keep going. Where do you end up, and what do you see along the way? The answer is: mostly nothing. Space is astonishingly, mind-blowingly empty.

Though David Hume (1711-1776) is now best known for his role as a prominent philosopher of the Enlightenment rather than an historian, it was his momentous six-volume The History of England that really brought him national attention during his lifetime. Not surprisingly, this volume covers the greatest number of years; the increasing availability of historical record allows for far greater detail. But Hume is still fascinating as he discusses the passage of time from Julius Caesar, through the advent of William the Conqueror and the Normans, to the death of King John in 1216.

The End of Money is an essential introduction to cryptocurrencies and the blockchain revolution, which has been hailed as the greatest advancement since the invention of the Internet. Murder for hire. Drug trafficking. Embezzlement. Money laundering. These might sound like plot lines of a thriller, but they are true stories from the short history of cryptocurrencies - digital currencies conceived by computer hackers and cryptographers that represent a completely new sort of financial transaction.

Ahriman languishes on the threshold of space and time, adrift in a sub-realm of unknowable dimension and aspect. He has found it at long last: the ancient device known to the necrons as the Key of Infinity. This should be his moment of triumph – but he is not the Ahriman he used to be. Betrayed and lost, he is a solitary sorcerer, bereft of allies, standing amongst the smashed and ruined ephemera of his grand designs.

Genghis Khan built a formidable land empire, but he never crossed the sea. Yet by the time his grandson Kublai Khan had defeated the last vestiges of the Song empire and established the Yuan dynasty in 1279, the Mongols controlled the most powerful navy in the world. How did a nomad come to conquer China and master the sea? Based on ten years of research and a lifetime of immersion in Mongol culture and tradition, Emperor of the Seas brings this little-known story vibrantly to life.

The story of how our ancestors made the first tentative steps towards becoming human, how we lost our fur but gained language, fire and tools, and how we strode out of Africa, invented farming and cities and ultimately created modern civilisation. Where did we come from? Where are we going? Homo sapiens is the most successful, the most widespread and the most influential species ever to walk the Earth.