Showing results by narrator "Greg Wagland" in All Categories

Raconteurs Audio and Spoken Realms team up once again to bring this second collection of short stories by H. G. Wells to audio. Written between 1894 and 1902, this anthology of 13 stories delves into botany, flying machines, travel, distant lands and customs, virology, magic, taxidermy, journalism - and there’s even a ghost story.

Alan Knightley is an expert in crimes too strange for Scotland Yard to handle, but four years ago the unexplained finally caught up with him - and he fell into a mysterious coma. His son Darkus is determined to follow in his father’s footsteps and find out what really happened. But when Alan suddenly wakes up, his memory is wonky and he needs help. The game is afoot for Knightley & Son - with a mystery that gets weirder by the minute, a best-selling book that makes its listeners commit terrible crimes, and a sinister organisation known as the Combination....

In fading light on the Thames Estuary near London, as Charles Marlow and his companions relax on deck, waiting for the turn of the tide, he tells of the time he turned ‘freshwater sailor’ on the River Congo. His perilous journey upriver in a little steamboat with a band of white colonialists and a group of cannibals takes him closer to the coveted ivory, closer to Kurtz the rogue agent, closer to certain unspeakable rites and the heart of darkness.

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise attributed to Sun Tzu. This version by Magpie Audio offers the original 13 chapters in their entirety. Stripped of all notes and commentary, it adopts the classic translation by Lionel Giles, dispenses with the numbering of paragraphs, and is read by British narrator and actor, Greg Wagland.

A Christmas Carol is a work of power and beauty. It has delighted and enthralled readers since it was first published in 1843. Perhaps Charles Dickens’ best-loved work, the story follows the trials and tribulations of Ebenezer Scrooge, man of business and notorious skinflint even by the City’s stringent standards, who is taken on a journey of self-discovery by his late business partner, the spirit Jacob Marley, with the help of three supernatural apparitions: the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Yet to Come.

From birth to death and through the exploration of topics such as disease, sex, mind, eating and drinking, Burch tracks the future of medicine by looking at what is already possible today. Weaving in insights from literature, art and history, The Shape of Things to Come considers the cultural complexity surrounding medicine as well as its impact on the humanities. As a specialist in geriatric medicine Burch writes with a keen understanding of the medical profession.

A fascinating tour through the curious history of Western civilization told through its most emblematic invention–the book.

While staying at a friend’s house in an apparently humdrum London suburb, the sceptical Hugh Grainger sees and then converses with an unsettling stranger from his bedroom window in the very dead of night. But what could be the meaning of this curious visitation? ‘Hold very tight, please!’ E. F. Benson is well known for his Mapp and Lucia novels but his ghost and supernatural stories are marvellous jewels, combining elegant writing and moments of blood-curdling horror. Here Greg Wagland narrates one of the best of them, for Magpie Audio.

Paradise Lost Book IX by John Milton is read by Greg Wagland for Magpie Audio. Satan having come past the Earth, with meditated guile returns as a mist by Night into Paradise, enters into the Serpent sleeping. Adam and Eve in the Morning go forth to their labours, which Eve proposes to divide in several places, each labouring apart: Adam consents not, alleging the danger, lest that Enemy, of whom they were forewarned, should attempt her found alone....

Following many years of war with Rome, Carthage is exhausted. Yet the trouble is not yet over. As mercenaries land in Carthage to claim payment for services rendered, they do not receive what they expect. Lacking a shared culture, structure and even language, this band of warriors has taken up residence in Carthage and is becoming increasingly angry.... Meanwhile, veteran Roman sailor and prefect Atticus Perennis is fighting pirates in the seas around Sicily. Perpetually an outsider due to his Greek heritage, Atticus is a fine Roman warrior with several points to prove.

It’s a trip that agent Paul Chavasse will never forget. His destination: the isolated republic of Albania on the Adriatic coast, at a time when the regime is at its most repressive and the people live in daily fear of the ruthless secret police. His job: to find a double agent whose cover has been blown and put him out of commission, permanently. But what Chavasse doesn’t know is that deep within the twisting channels of the perilous coastal marshes, someone has set a trap for him - someone who holds the keys of hell.

Published in 1841 it is a stylish and comprehensive dissection of the witch mania which beset much of Europe in the 16th and 17th century. In his easygoing journalistic style Mackay describes in some detail many celebrated outbreaks of this hysteria including the trials of Dr. Fian and Gellie Duncan in Scotland, the progress of Matthew Hopkins through East Anglia as the self-styled Witch-Finder General, and further episodes in New England, Wurzburg and Geneva. Herein are speeches made from the dock, the scaffold, from the foot of the ‘bonnie fire’ itself, gruesome accounts of the many tortures endured and several chilling spells and incantations.

His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, KG, KT, OM, GBE has been at the forefront of British public life since he married Princess Elizabeth in 1947. In the 70 years since, his wit (and the occasional 'gaffe') has continued to endear him to the nation, as he travelled the world taking his unique and charmingly British sense of humour to its far-flung corners. In the year in which the Prince has stepped down from his royal duties, this joyous and timely book celebrates his wry humour and supremely wicked wit.

Poems was published in 1920. The poems of that work are included here and are as follows: Strange Meeting; Greater Love; Apologia pro Poemate Meo; The Show; Mental Cases; Parable of the Old Man and the Young; Arms and the Boy;

The Prince, Machiavelli's 'little book', was written in 1513 and is dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici. It remains a compelling and controversial treatise on politics, dispensing often cynical, sometimes brutal advice on gaining power and retaining it. Essential listening for our masters perhaps, but most certainly for those of us who would not be mastered. The text used here is the unabridged and classic translation by W. K. Marriott.

Can DCI Dan Hellier decipher the twisted mind behind the ritualised burning of homeless men on Devon’s beaches before more people are sacrificed? When images from the burning appear all over social media, Hellier realises that he is dealing with a cult and a mystery that will lead back to the Irish Troubles. Hellier is forced to battle a bitter man who has plotted revenge for more than 20 years, without a care for the lives he will destroy.

The First Men in the Moon, published in 1901, is the gripping tale of man's first journey to the moon, undertaken by one Mr. Bedford, a bankrupt businessman; and the eccentric scientist Mr. Cavor. Here they discover a sophisticated civilization, dominated by an insectlike race they call the Selenites. It is exciting, funny, profound and tragic by turns: a beautifully written scientific romance, in fact. It is read by Greg Wagland.

The Island of Doctor Moreau is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1896. It recounts the adventures of shipwrecked Edward Prendick, who is rescued only to be set adrift near the volcanic, tropical island of Doctor Moreau, an obsessive vivisectionist who 'artistically' carves human beings from animals.

Right Ho, Jeeves is considered by many to be P. G. Wodehouse's finest comic novel. Many of the Jeeves and Wooster regulars are quickly embroiled in the extraordinary goings-on at Brinkley Court. Bertie Wooster arrives in the two-seater with the laudable intention of doing a spot of matchmaking, feeling that Jeeves has lost his spark. Chaos ensues.

H. G. Wells' classic science fiction work, first serialized in 1897, is one of many invasion narratives prevalent in British literature towards the end of the 19th century. However, The War of the Worlds not only introduces the extraterrestrial element of brutal Martian forces on the rampage but also explores many other contemporary issues and themes.