Showing results by narrator "Bill Wallis" in All Categories

The irrepressible, audacious defence barrister Horace Rumpole continues to juggle the vagaries of the law, the ambiguities of crime, and the contradictions of the human heart. The much loved stories were adapted from his scripts for the hugely popular TV series of the same name.

Horace Rumpole - cigar-smoking, claret-drinking, Wordsworth-spouting defender of some unlikely clients - often speaks of the great murder trial which revealed his talents as an advocate and made his reputation down at the Bailey when he was still a young man. Now, for the first time, the sensational story of the Penge Bungalow Murders case is told in full: how, shortly after the war, Rumpole took on the seemingly impossible task of defending young Simon Jerold.

ASBOs may be the pride and joy of New Labour, but they don't cut much ice with Horace Rumpole - he takes the old-fashioned view that if anyone is going to be threatened with a restriction of their liberty then some form of legal proceeding ought to be gone through first. When one of the Timson children is given an ASBO for playing football in the street, Rumpole soon realizes something fishy is going on.

London, 1889. Oscar Wilde, celebrated poet, wit, playwright, and raconteur is the literary sensation of his age. All Europe lies at his feet. Yet when he chances across the naked corpse of sixteen-year-old Billy Wood, posed by candlelight in a dark stifling attic room, he cannot ignore the brutal murder. With the help of fellow author Arthur Conan Doyle he sets out to solve the crime - but it is Wilde's unparalleled access to all degrees of late Victorian life, from society drawing rooms to the underclass, that will prove the decisive factor in their investigation....

Murder comes in two familiar forms. Whether as a crime of passion with high emotions or a cold dispassionate plot to take life in order to gain in some way, the act strikes us all as somehow inhuman. Beneath us as civilised beings. But however we cloak our animal instincts the need to remove a human being and gain relief from abuse or gain from money, the term is just the same – MURDER. Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, J M Barrie, W W Jacobs and many others bring their literary heft to bear in as calculating a way as any killer could.

The year is 1931. The new and luxurious transatlantic liner Empress of Britain is on her eastward passage. Among the first-class passengers on board are two English confidence tricksters, making a discreet exit from a little awkwardness they have left behind them in the United States.

A BBC Radio 3 full-cast dramatisation of Shakespeare’s classic ‘Cymbeline’, starring Bill Wallis. Originally broadcast in December 2006 as part of the ‘Drama on 3’ collection.Shakespeare's play, set during the Roman invasion of Britain, centres around the banishment of the man who has incurred the wrath of the king by secretly marrying his daughter. Confusion follows in an intricate plot in which nobody is quite who they seem to be.

During his time as an inspector with the Paris Sûreté, Monsieur Pamplemousse had been 'in at the death' on more than one occasion, but even he had to admit that the phrase took on an entirely new meaning when he was present at the spectacular ending to Cuisine de Chavignol, France's premier television cookery programme.

Throughout John Mortimer's career, he established profound friendships with people accused of various crimes. He also indulged his passion for writing, penning Paradise Postponed and a series of stories about Rumpole, for whom he was often mistaken. With wit, wisdom and tenderness, he has written the story of his life.

Award-winning author Lynne Reid Banks is perhaps best known for her classic children's book The Indian in the Cupboard. But it was her groundbreaking debut novel for adults, The L-Shaped Room, that made her name. First published in 1960, it was an instant success and has been in print ever since. This collection contains both The L-Shaped Room and sequel The Backward Shadow, as well as two stories specially written for BBC radio and a bonus edition of Bookclub.

One of the 21st century's most celebrated authors, Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize twice: for 2009's Wolf Hall, the first in her phenomenally successful Thomas Cromwell trilogy, and its 2012 sequel Bring Up the Bodies. The third novel in the series, 2020's The Mirror and the Light, won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. This collection includes three of her best works of contemporary fiction, ranging from the Gothic to the blackly comic.

In 'Rumpole and the Boy', Rumpole has recently concluded a blackmail case when he finds himself babysitting a small boy. Edmund turns out to have a keen interest in criminal cases and he throws some unexpected light on the case Rumpole has just tried. Bill Wallis reads this special seasonal story starring Horace Rumpole, scourge of all QCs and friend of the criminal classes.

These four stories test Father Brown in many ways, creating headaches a plenty. However, Father Brown is nothing if not redoubtable and whilst Chesterton's stories are, in his own words, "very slight and improbable", his method is all his own. Bill Wallis captures perfectly the mood and tone of Father Brown in this collection.

These five classic mysteries offer chilling darkness, drama, and intrigue. Includes: "Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe; "Silver Blaze" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; "The Secret of the Growing Gold" by Bram Stoker; "The Honour of Israel Gow" by G. K. Chesterton; and "The Signal-Man" by Charles Dickens.

Spoiled, arrogant, filthy rich, and breathtakingly beautiful, the young Lady Godiva Dacre is exiled from the court of Good Queen Bess (who can't abide red-haired competition) to her lonely estate in distant Cumberland, where she looks forward to bullying the peasantry and getting her own imperious way.

An anthology of over 60 classic love poems, read by some of our finest actors. Love has always been the supreme inspiration for poets, whether romantic or platonic, reciprocated or unrequited. This collection contains a range of the very best love poems, including Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress", Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" and Byron's "So We'll Go No More A-Roving" - as well as several sonnets from the master himself, William Shakespeare.

The expansion of the congestion charge zone, prices going up on the Underground, bendy buses - all ideas brought about to try to make the traffic situation in our capital city run more smoothly. Surely there must be a better way? In fact there is. In Roman times, when the streets were even more crowded, Caesar decreed that all vehicles (except those involved in building work) were banned from the City, while Nero took advantage of a major fire to broaden the streets to improve access.

Charlie and his friends are back in danger, and the balance of power between the Children of the Red King has never been more dangerous. In a dark laboratory deep within Bloor’s Academy, Manfred and Ezekiel are brewing up a very nasty kind of trouble for Charlie Bone...The fifth fantastic story in the Charlie Bone series, from acclaimed author Jenny Nimmo.

Edward Enfield came to his three quarters of an acre knowing nothing about growing anything, and this book is an account of his horticultural successes and failures, inventions and frustrations, discoveries and developments. With wry humour, he leads us through the thorny subject of roses, counts the blessings of keeping chickens, and exposes the perfidy of gardening copywriters, while offering wise and witty tips on how best to enjoy the fruits of your labour.

Alexander Cleave, actor, has left his career and his family behind and banished himself to his childhood home. He wants to retire from life, but finds this impossible in a house brimming with presences, some ghostly, some undeniably human. Memories, anxiety for the future, and more particularly, for his beloved but troubled daughter, conspire to distract him from his dreaming retirement.