Showing results by narrator "Robbie Macnab" in All Categories

Aristocrat, literary celebrity, ‘Rose Queen', devoted wife, lesbian, recluse, iconoclast - Vita Sackville-West was many things, but she was never straightforward. Her life is re-told here in a dazzling new biography. In this stunning portrait of Vita Sackville-West, Matthew Dennison traces the triumph and contradictions of Vita's extraordinary life.

Paul Ferris was one of Britain's most feared gangsters for 25 years. Now Ferris reveals for the first time the real inside story of the villains he met and worked with, the common thugs, and big-time players that surrounded him, and the world of violence and fear he lived in every day of his life.

I watched the mirror for a last view, for now, of the frozen mountains of Glen Coe. As the road bent, and the outline of Buachaille Etive Mor slid into sight, I did what I always did and always would. I felt for that flutter of awe and that indefinable, unmistakable quickening of the pulse. In the late eighteenth century, mountains shifted from being universally reviled to becoming the most inspiring things on Earth. Simply put, the monsters became muses - and an entire artistic movement was born.

Newly returned from an eventful mission to Scotland - and eager to be reunited with his family - Roger the Chapman is far from pleased when Timothy Plummer, Spymaster General to the King, commands him to undertake another mission. He is to accompany the beautiful but manipulative Eloise Gray on a special journey to Paris, pretending to be her husband.

In the summer of 1482, an English army, under command of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, invades Scotland. They plan to win back the border town of Berwick-on-Tweed and to put King James III's renegade young brother, the Duke of Albany, back on the throne. Roger the Chapman, called upon to be a member of Albany's personal bodyguard, finds himself, by royal decree, a part of the invading forces.

His name was Colin Lowrie. A tall, red-haired Scot; a man at 16, whose pride was the ancient clan pride of the Lowries. And when the clans were broken - massacred in a brutal revenge at Culloden Field - Colin Lowrie was forced to take flight on a journey half-way round the world.

It's 1860, and Inspector Faro has been transported back to one of the darkest moment of his career - the chase of notorious Macheath from Scotland to the Kent countryside. A chance encounter with an old friend leads to Faro's sojourn in William Morris's Red House while he continues his search. The tranquillity is disrupted by a burglary at a nearby mansion; the young maid who discovered the break-in has disappeared.

Returning to the Dundee of 1860 after years in the army, Robert Douglas finds employment with George Gilbride, a whaling-ship owner known as the Wizard. Drugged by sinister gangster John Wylie, Douglas wakens on board the steam-whaler Redgauntlet bound for the Artic, and discovers that his companions believe the ship is haunted and do not expect to return. After an initial clash, Douglas befriends the ship's mate, "Bully Houston", and together thay begin to unravel a year-old mystery.