Showing results by narrator "Philip Bird" in All Categories

Somerset Maugham's success as a writer enabled him to indulge his adventurous love of travel, and he recorded the sights and sounds of his wide-ranging journeys with a unique urbane, wry style. The Gentleman in the Parlour is an account of the author's trip through what was then Burma and Siam, ending in Haiphong, Vietnam. Whether by river to Mandalay, on horse through the mountains and forests of the Shan States to Bangkok, or onwards by sea, Maugham's vivid descriptions bring a lost world to life.

“What the skeleton is to anatomy, the peasant is to history, its essential hidden support.” For over the past century and a half, and still more rapidly in the last seventy years, the world has become increasingly urban, and the peasant way of life—the dominant way of life for humanity since agriculture began well over 6,000 years ago—is disappearing. In this new history of peasantry, social historian Patrick Joyce aims to tell the story of this lost world and its people, and how we can commemorate their way of life.

How did Shakespeare sound to the audiences of his day? For the first time, this audio offers listeners the chance to hear England's greatest playwright performed by a company of actors using the pronunciation of his time. Under the guidance of Ben Crystal, actor, author of Shakespeare on Toast, and an expert in original Shakespearian pronunciation, the company performs some of Shakespeare's best-known poems, solo speeches, and scenes from the plays.

From the beginning of the eighteenth century to the high water mark of the Victorian era, the world was transformed by a technological revolution the like of which had never been seen before. Inventors, businessmen, scientists, explorers all had their part to play in the story of the Industrial Revolution and in this Brief History Thomas Crump brings their story to life, and shows why it is a chapter in English history that can not be ignored.

Two terrible events, without obvious connection, shake Fjällbacka to its core. A famous photographer is found brutally murdered in a showroom. Henning Bauer, the Nobel prize winner in literature, suffers from a violent act on the small island where he is writing the 10th book in his world famous series. While Patrik Hedström and his colleagues at Tanumshede police station struggle to investigate the cases, Erica Falck researches a murder on a trans man in Stockholm in the 1980’s.

On Christmas Eve, a party of friends descends on a purportedly haunted country retreat, charged with the task of discovering evidence of the supernatural. Sequestered in their rooms for the holiday, the friends reconvene on Twelfth Night at a great feast and share their stories of spectral encounters.

The Pelletiers are a prominent French family living in Beirut. The patriarch, Louis, has built a successful business that he hopes to pass on to his eldest son. With no head for management, Jean nearly runs the company into the ground, then marries a materialistic young woman who insists they emigrate to Paris and join high society. But there's another reason Jean must leave—he has committed a terrible crime.

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 - 6 October 1892) was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language. He was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, a rector's son and fourth of 12 children and reportedly a descendant of King Edward III of England.

Welcome to the bizarre and dangerous world of Victorian London, a city teetering on the edge of revolution. Its people are ushering in a new era of technology, dazzled each day by new inventions. Airships soar in the skies over the city, whilst ground trains rumble through the streets and clockwork automatons are programmed to carry out menial tasks in the offices of lawyers, policemen and journalists. But beneath this shiny veneer of progress lurks a sinister side.

This audiobook is a faithful reproduction of one of Jerome K Jerome's first successes, a humorous autobiographical look at his early career in the theatre, published in 1885. The modest success of this book opened the door to further plays and essays, leading on to 'Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow' in the following year.

Visible Gods is an imaginary dialogue between Socrates and four fictitious modern-day characters. Socrates' worldview is of a living cosmos with man only half-way up the hierarchy of all beings; above him reign suprahuman beings of great majesty and power - the visible gods. The moderns with whom Socrates converses disdain his ancient Greek cosmos as primitive and false.

In this current context of desperate geopolitical upheaval, there is no better time to address oneness, reconciliation and a statement of otherness beyond the limitations of contemporary media. The Holy Land: Contemporary Visions and Scriptures seeks dialogue with ancient lands and sacred spaces along with modern visions of the people who inhabit them and the burgeoning contradictions of their daily lives.

Four of the greatest Greek legends produced in one magnificent collection - read and performed by Philip Bird, Keith Barron, Duncan Law, Stephanie Pack, and Kate Gielgud. Their outstanding performances introduce these timeless classics to a younger generation in a new and exciting way.

In the frozen lands of the North gods, men and giants battle in a ceaseless round of adventure. The mighty sagas of the Norsemen are brought vividly to life in another classic recording.

The stories of the Old Testament have the great virtue of being both simple and challenging at the same time. The stories themselves are easy to follow but the moral questions that they raise remain central to our lives, whether we are five years old or seventy-five. Adapted for this recording by popular children's author Nigel Forde, and narrated by Philip Bird with a strong supporting cast this is a thrilling and evocative account of the central tales of the Old Testament.

The first English publication of Georges Simenon's compelling novel about summer escape and elusive obsessions. 'The island itself. Its throbbing heat as if in a bell jar under the sun, the scorpion in his son's bed, the deafening sound of cicadas.' During his first holiday on the island of Porquerolles, Dr Mahé caught a glimpse of something irresistible. As the memory continues to haunt him, he falls prey to a delusion that may offer an escape from his conventional existence - or may destroy him.

Our hero learns more life lessons and experiences the first disconcerting flutters of his heartstrings.

A completely charming rediscovered collection of ten short stories, four by Dickens himself, others by Chalres Allston Collins , Arthur Locker, John Oxenford and Julia Cecelia Stratton. Together they gradually uncover the identity of the owner of the lost luggage.

A Victorian family gathers round the hearth, and one by one they tell each other their Winter's tales. Charles Dickens begins 'the round of stories they were to relate, as they sat in a goodly circle by the Christmas fire', and then hands over to Elizabeth Gaskell, Samuel Sidney and other respected contributors to the Christmas 1852 number of Household Words.

A wonderfully amusing account of the escapades of a naïve student at Oxford, c. 1850.