Showing results by narrator "Tony Britton" in All Categories

Philip Nore is nearing the end as a jockey. George Millace is finished in photography. The differnce is, Millace is dead, and Nore has discovered his secret: a set of files which would blow the top off the racing world. Hated by a dying grandmother he has never known and abused by a trainer he knows only too well, Nore is no stranger to shabby morals. And when he begins to decipher the dead man's photographs, he uncovers corruption on a scale he had never imagined.

Tim Ekaterin's merchant bank, like all banks, only invests in sure things. Now he's about to involve it in ₤5 million of prime horseflesh, a stallion called Sandcastle. Top breeders reckon it's the safest bet in racing. But racing doesn't just attract the money men of the city. It's riddled with all kinds of dubious dealmakers. People who don't think twice about breaking bones. People to whom no bet is safe until it's paid in blood, Ekaterin's blood.

Malcolm Pembroke never expected to make a million pounds without making enemies. Nor did he expect his latest wife to be brutally murdered. All the clues suggest the killer comes from close to home, but after five marriages and nine children, that still leaves the field wide open. When he find his own life in danger, Pembroke entrusts his safety to his estranged son, Ian, an amateur jockey; and through him discovers a compulsive new outlet for his financial expertise.

Valentine, a blind, confused old man on his deathbed, seeking his peace with God, makes his last confession to a visiting friend, Thomas Lyon, mistaking him for a priest. This puts Thomas in a moral dilemma. Wild horses wouldn't drag from a priest the secrets of the confessional. Engaged in directing a film set in the world of racing, Thomas finds that the solution to this quandary could mean the difference between life and death.

When he wakes in a pitch-black room with his hands bound, Roland Britten – accountant and champion steeplechase jockey – knows he’s entered a nightmare of someone else’s making. Wracking his brain to figure out who’s out to get him and why, he comes up empty, but somehow manages a death-defying escape. It isn’t long, though, before he’s recaptured.

The night before the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket sees the great and the good of the horse-racing community gathered for a black-tie gala dinner, cooked by Max Moreton. However, Max's food is soon suspected of putting 24 guests in hospital with food poisoning.

When Kit Fielding, champion steeplechase jockey, finds out that his chief patron, Princess Casilia, is facing an increasingly serious threat, he goes unhesitatingly to her aid. Neither realises that his instinctive support is the first step towards a frightening battle involving violent risk, with the honour of the princess's family as the prize and Kit's own destruction as the forfeit.

It’s the classic law of the invader. Get to the strongest guy and smash him, then watch the weaker ones fall like ninepins. Which is just what a vicious gang of horse dealers decides to do when their little kickback scam is threatened with a spot of old-fashioned honesty. But they haven’t reckoned with bloodstock agent Jonah Dereham, a man who belies his quiet exterior with a steely and implacable resolve. They can threaten him, try to burn down his home, even attempt to kill him. But they’ll soon wish they hadn’t.

Gene Hawkins, investigator by trade, was expert at arranging events so that they appeared accidental to all involved. Therefore, when he himself witnessed an ‘accident’ his curiosity flared up bright, and he insisted on looking into what he regarded as a work of art. A quarter of a million pounds worth of Derby-winning stallion had vanished into the Blue Grass of Kentucky... and a young man and a girl spent a dangerous afternoon in a punt on the River Thames.

A beautiful Italian girl driving home in an open top sports car, a little boy playing on a South Coast beach and the senior steward of the Jockey Club on his way to a press reception in Baltimore. One after the other they suffer the same nightmare ordeal - kidnapping. But there is one thing connecting these particular cases. For the Italian girl is a jockey, and the little boy an only son of a racehorse owner.

The pleasure of a day at Sandown is spoiled for Steven Scott when he sacks his trainer, a one-time friend whom he suspects is a crook. Racing may have its rewards, but as Scott finds out not all of them are innocent, or legal.

When jockey Martin Stukely dies following a fall in a steeplechase at Cheltenham races, he accidentally embroils his friend Gerard Logan in a perilous search for a stolen videotape. Gerard Logan is a glass-blower on the verge of widespread acclaim for his work.

When the horse that wins a race gallops in with frothing mouth and popping eyes, what is more natural than to suspect that someone slipped a booster into his oats? With 11 steeplechasers hurtling over the finish line in this pepped up states and all the dope tests conclusively negative, the Earl of October had something of a problem if he wanted to preserve the health of his favorite sport.

On the first day of Royal Ascot, the crowd rejoices in a string of winning favourites. Ned Talbot has worked all his life as a bookmaker - taking over the family business from his grandfather - so he knows not to expect any sympathy from the punters as they count their winnings, and he counts his losses. He’s seen the ups and downs before - but, as the big gambling conglomerates muscle in on small concerns like his, Ned wonders if it’s worth it any more.

What is life on the run really like? Featuring never-before heard interviews, this ground-breaking audio original gets you closer to the reality than ever before. Join Nick Reynolds as he explores the reality of the life of a fugitive. Using his own experiences of growing up on the run with the Great Train Robbers in Central America, Nick talks with some infamous fugitives and their families as they share their extraordinary experiences.

At nearly 18, easy-going Benedict Juliard has no stronger ambition than to ride in steeplechases as an amateur jockey. His father, George, driven towards a life of public service and politics, asks his son to enter into a pact that neither of them will commit any act that could destroy the father's growing reputation and career.

Peggy Ashcroft and Tony Britton star in this 1971 BBC Radio production of Noël Coward’s classic comedy about a disastrous weekend house party. Judith Bliss is a famous actress who, after a string of successful roles, has retired to her country retreat. Missing the adulation of her public, she has has invited a fan over for a weekend of uninterrupted adoration - unaware that the rest of her family has company arriving too.

Computer whiz-kid Peter Keithly, asked to transfer a betting formula onto computer tape, dies shortly afterwards. An old friend of his, Jonathan Perry, finds himself in possession of the tapes, and also discovers that there are greedy, desperate men who will do anything to get their hands on the lucrative software. The evil, bull-faced Angelo goes too far and ends up in jail. Fourteen years later he's free, and very keen not only to get hold of the tapes, but also Jonathan Derry.

The unexpected arrival of a new apprentice jockey at his father's racing stables heralds the beginning of a series of dark happenings for Neil Griffon. First his father suffers a grisly accident, then Neil is brutally assaulted and abducted. The price for his freedom will mean the betrayal and deception of those who trust Griffon most. But he has no choice: a no-compromise crime czar has made an ultimatum - that his own 18-year-old son be hired by Griffon's stables to ride the superstar horse, Archangel, in the Derby.

Perry Stuart is a TV meteorologist who routinely works before the cameras. His life calm and ordered, his face familiar to every British household, Stuart's profound weather knowledge and accuracy have given him high status among forecasters, but no physical baptism by storm. Not, that is, until a fellow forecaster offers him a Caribbean hurricane-chasing ride in a small aeroplane.