Showing results by narrator "John Sackville" in All Categories

Fractured skulls. Gas masks. Brain buckets. Vats of acid. Pickled body parts. Not the usual tools of trade, but for chief forensic medical scientist Derek and forensic secretary Pauline they were just part of a normal day in the office inside the world-famous Department of Forensic Medicine at Guy's Hospital in London. Derek has played a pivotal role in investigating some of the UKs most high-profile mass disasters and murder cases.

How are chefs and companies planning to transform our dining experiences, and what can we learn from their cutting-edge insights to make memorable meals at home? These are just some of the ingredients of Gastrophysics, in which pioneering Oxford professor Charles Spence shows how our senses link up in the most extraordinary ways and reveals the importance of all the off-the-plate elements of a meal: the weight of cutlery, the placing on the plate, the background music and much more.

Ten years ago, Sebastian Croll was found not guilty of murdering his playmate. Criminal solicitor Daniel Hunter defended the 11-year-old in a trial that gripped the nation, but the past is unearthed when Daniel gets a call from his old client. Sebastian's university professor has been brutally murdered, and everyone who knew her is in the frame. As Daniel steps in to represent Sebastian for the second time, rumour of his client's identity spreads like wildfire.

The eight-year-old boy had vanished from the car and, as if by slick, sick magic, had been replaced by a note on the steering wheel reading, "You don't love him." At the height of summer, a dark shadow falls across Exmoor; more children are stolen, each disappearance marked only by the same brutal accusation. No explanations, no ransom demands, and no hope.

It was only by accident that Peter as a child discovered that his father, Fred Bradley, was in fact born Fritz Brandes. And it was only after his father’s death in 2004 that Peter was able to begin to piece together the family’s story and set out on the journey—literally and figuratively—that forms the basis of his book.

Penguin presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of Turner by Franny Moyle, read by John Sackville. J. M. W. Turner is Britain's most famous landscape painter. Yet beyond his artistic achievements, little is known of the man himself and the events of his life: the tragic committal of his mother to a lunatic asylum, the personal sacrifices he made to effect his stratospheric rise and the bizarre double life he chose to lead in the last years of his life.

Listen to the definitive narrative history of the people, politics, and events of the Second World War - the conflict that shaped the modern world. From the build-up to the fighting, through to the reverberations still felt in the aftermath, this is a compelling, accessible, and immediate history of the war, perhaps the most complex, frightening, and destructive event in world history.

In a hugely ambitious study that crosses continents, languages, and almost a century, Gregory Woods identifies the ways in which homosexuality has helped shape Western culture. Extending from the trials of Oscar Wilde to the gay liberation era, this book examines a period in which increased visibility made acceptance of homosexuality one of the measures of modernity.

Since the beginning of civilization, humans have built cities to wall nature out, then glorified it in beloved but quite artificial parks. In Urban Jungle Ben Wilson—the author of Metropolis, a seven-thousand-year history of cities that the Wall Street Journal called “a towering achievement”—looks to the fraught relationship between nature and the city for clues to how the planet can survive in an age of climate crisis.

Luke Craven is convinced that the world is against him; his once-happy life hasn’t been the same since he lost both of his parents and his wife in quick succession, and his everyday has become more about existing than living. But he is forced to reconsider his glass-half-empty outlook when he narrowly escapes a freak accident with his life - pushed to safety by a stranger, who isn’t so lucky.

Giacomo Casanova arrives in England in the summer of 1763 at the age of 38, seeking a respite from his restless travels and liaisons. But the lure of company proves too hard to resist and the dazzlingly pretty face of young Marie Charpillon even harder. Casanova's pursuit of this elusive bewitcher drives him from exhilaration to despair and to attempt to reinvent himself in the roles of labourer, writer and country squire.

Direct democracy can no longer be thought of as something that belongs to the future.... This is the scarcely believable story of how, in just over three years, a political dotcom grew to become one of the most powerful forces in the affairs of a country of 60 million people. At the general election in Italy this year, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, which has its headquarters on a website, took a quarter of the vote - more than Silvio Berlusconi’s party.

At the dawn of the Enlightenment, James Dyer is born unable to feel pain. A source of wonder and scientific curiosity as a child, he rises through the ranks of Georgian society to become a brilliant surgeon. Yet as a human being he fails, for he can no more feel love and compassion than pain. Until, en route to St Petersburg to inoculate the Empress Catherine against smallpox, he meets his nemesis and saviour.

It's New Year's Eve. A major terrorist cell is planning a series of attacks across London over the next 48 hours. The government has surveillance on the group, a man undercover, and prepare to move in, to take out the terrorists before they can strike. But they lose contact with their inside man. And the cell vanishes into thin air, dispersing into the streets, armed and intent on completing their assault on London. The best counterterrorist teams in the country are told to take them down before it's too late.

Set entirely on a London bus travelling from Hoxton to Highbury and taking place over just 36 minutes, the events of The 392 unfold through a cast of charismatic characters coming from very different worlds. On the 392 are all the familiar faces you might expect to see on any bus ride through inner-city London in the grip of gentrification; delinquent school kids, the high-flyers, the weird, the wonderful and the homeless. These Londoners share two things: a bus journey and a threat. A threat which is ready to blow apart everything they know.

From the people who brought you the bestselling Confessions of a GP. From stampeding nudes to inebriated teenagers, young nurse Michael Alexander never really knew what he was getting himself into.

In 2014 it is possible that Israel, backed by the United States, will launch an attack on Iran. This would be a catastrophic event, risking war, bloodshed, and global economic collapse. In this passionate, but rationally argued essay, the author's attempt to avert a potential global catastrophe by showing that the grounds for war do not exist, that there are no Iranian nuclear weapons, and that Iran would happily come to a table and strike a deal.

Brinley Knight has a photographic memory. Bored with his mundane job, he accepts an offer from MI5 to become a full-time spy in a shadowy world of espionage. As Britain stands at the edge of war, Brin learns to his cost that "defending the realm" means duty before family. Hitler’s fifth columnists in Britain emerge from the darkness as Germany’s military might eyes new territories east of the Rhine. German spies and fascists operate in opulent dining rooms and in the back alleys of London’s East End. Menacing predators, they hunt for information that could aid the Führer.

Noticing society's creeping descent into infantilisation is one thing, however understanding the roots and causes of the phenomenon is not quite so easy. But in this topical and vitally important new work, cultural theorist and academic, Dr Keith Hayward, exposes the deep social, psychological and political dangers of a world characterised by denuded adult autonomy.

Narcoball uncovers the incredible story of Colombian football during the early 1990s - shaped by drug lords, rivalries, and ambition. It uncovers a football empire backed by cartels - where victory was a currency of its own, and defeat, a matter of life and death. This is a different story of Pablo Escobar and his rivals.