Showing results by narrator "Richard Burnip" in All Categories

1066 – Senlac Ridge, England. William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, defeats Harold Godwinson, King Harold II of England, in what will become known as the Battle of Hastings. But England will not be conquered easily, the Anglo-Saxons will not submit meekly to Norman rule. Although his heroic deeds will nearly be lost to legend, one man unites the resistance. His name is Hereward of Bourne. His honour, bravery and skill at arms will change the future of England.

Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, has lived through Henry II’s reign and has witnessed the terrifying civil war between Henry II’s mother, the Empress Matilda, and her cousin, Stephen; a time so traumatic that it becomes known as the Anarchy. The greatest letter writer of the 12th Century, Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, gives an intimate account of one of England’s most troubled eras. Central to his account is the life of a knight he first met over 50 years earlier, Harold of Hereford.

Leah, a young woman who has found herself 'ambitioned' out of London, is now aimlessly adrift in Paris. Tired of odd jobs in cafés and teaching English to unresponsive social media influencers, her heart skips a beat when she spots an advert for a writer seeking an assistant. Michael was once the bright young star of the London literary scene, now a washed-up author with writer's block. He doesn't place much hope in the advert, but after meeting Leah is filled with an inspiration he hasn't felt in years.

At 10.41am on a Tuesday morning in September, Mark Mason boards the number 1A bus at Land’s End in Cornwall. Forty-six buses and eleven days later he disembarks at John O’Groats in Scotland. Move Along Please is his account of that gruelling 1100-mile odyssey; a paint-by-bus-numbers portrait of Britain. Along the way he visits everywhere from the village where the internet enters Britain to the urban sprawl of Birmingham (inspiration for the Two Towers in Lord of the Rings).

The author of the Masters of the Sea series is back with a standalone battle book that will blow all others out of the water.1587. Two nations are locked in bitter conflict. One strives for dominance, the other for survival.After decades of religious strife, Elizabeth sits on the throne of England. The reformation continues. Catholic revolts have been ruthlessly quashed, and Elizabeth has ordered the execution of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots.

In The Line, Dr Freeman reveals the medical principles and practices that helped lead these athletes to success - ideas that we now consider commonplace, but many of which were in fact the Doc's own innovations. And in a sport where there's an ethical line as well as a finishing line, Dr Freeman gives a frank and open account in response to allegations of misuse of medical treatment to enhance performance.

King Henry II reigns over a vast empire, but he is aging, and his ambitious sons are restless. Henry’s third son, Richard of Aquitaine, is developing a fearsome reputation as a ruthless warrior and he earns the name Richard Lionheart for his bravery and brutality on the battlefield. After the deaths of his brothers, Richard’s impatience to take the throne leads him to form an alliance with France. And so, Richard begins his bloody quest to return the Holy Land to Christian rule.

1072: England is firmly under the heel of its new Norman rulers. The few survivors of the English resistance look to Edgar the Atheling to overthrow William the Conqueror. Years of intrigue and vicious civil war follow and in the face of chaos and death, Edgar and his allies form a secret brotherhood, pledging to fight for justice and freedom. But soon they are called to fight for an even greater cause: the plight of the Holy Land.

‘I am fascinated by people turning their daft dreams into a reality. How did they do it and why?’ Driven by his own passion for collecting Hunter Davies has packed his notepad and set off in search of Britain’s maddest museums. As he explores these hidden gems he soon discovers that they are everywhere and that they celebrate just about everything, from lawnmowers in Southport to pencils in Keswick.

For all the horrifying statistics of the number infected by COVID-19, multiply by a factor of 20 to approximate how many worldwide are suffering stress, depression, relationship breakdown, and even suicide as a direct consequence of Coronavirus. In this straight-talking, pragmatic, but hard-hitting exposé, practicing psychiatrist Raj Persaud argues for simple yet powerful mental strategies to immunize individuals against the panic of the pandemic.

On a beach in southern England a dog returns to its owner with a human hand in its mouth. The Hand belongs to Henry, the homeless eccentric who has been wandering south west England for the last 30 years. A local policeman and his colleague, in piecing together his movements prior to his death, uncover an extraordinary life. But as their investigations also shed lights on their town, the story of Henry, and those who tell it, begins to affect the policeman's own life in ways he never expected.

Pavel Richter, a decommissioned GI, finds himself at odds with a rogue British Army colonel and a Soviet general when an American friend deposits a dead Russian spy in his frozen apartment. The race to take possesion of the dead spy's secert soon begins and threatens Pavel's friendship with a street orphan named Anders and his budding love for his upstairs neighbour, Sonia.

Vienna 1770: Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen unveils an amazing invention, The Mechanical Turk, an unbeatable chess playing automaton. Hailed as the greatest innovation of the century, the chess machine is really a brilliant illusion, secretly operated from inside by the Italian dwarf Tibor. But when a beautiful and seductive countess dies mysteriously in the presence of the automaton, the machine and its inventor become the target of espionage, persecution, and intrigue.

When English soldier Hal strikes up a conversation with German Lieutenant Wilhelm during the ceasefire in no-man's-land on Christmas Day 1914, he has no idea the impact this chance meeting will have. Wilhelm is in love with an English woman, Sam, and presses a photograph into Hal's hand - if he makes it home, Hal must promise to find Sam and give her this token of affection. Hal does make it home, though the war rages on - but the moment he sees Sam he is in trouble....

Life for Jonathan Leech is on the verge of taking a toe-curling turn for the worse. Or is it? He's about to discover his family's darkest secret. Grandad! But that's not all. Jonathan makes some unusual new friends who are going to teach him a few bloodcurdling things about himself, too... Meet Jonathan and the grisly neighbours of Goolish in the first of a brand new series about the Fang Gang.

An order is issued. A population may not meet, or touch or speak to each other. They stay inside, and the reality of a few streets in a capital city emerges. An underground river is discovered; an urban grove of pomeloes emerges. The imagination reaches out, and makes sense of the world. By the sea, two men walk into a future of uncertain violence. There is time now to see the human dramas within a hundred yards; to wait for the weather to change; to understand that what lies underneath this part of the city are seasonally wet pastures and woodlands.

When he built two shacks to see greengrocery and knitting wool to housewives in Holloway, all Bernard Lewis wanted was to make a decent living.

In the Full Light of the Sun follows the fortunes of three Berliners caught up in a devastating scandal of 1930s Germany. It tells the story of Emmeline, a wayward young art student; Julius, an anxious middle-aged art expert; and a mysterious art dealer named Rachmann, who are at the heart of Weimar Berlin at its hedonistic, politically turbulent apogee and are whipped up into excitement over the surprising discovery of 32 previously unknown paintings by Vincent van Gogh.

In this spellbinding collection, Sara Paretsky showcases her extraordinary talents with 14 short stories, including one new V.I. story and seven other classics featuring the indomitable detective. In 'Miss Bianca' a young girl becomes involved in espionage when she befriends a mouse in a laboratory that is conducting dark experiments. Ten-year-old V.I. Warshawski appears in 'Wildcat', embarking on her very first investigation to save her father.

Monica Jones was Philip Larkin's partner for more than four decades and was arguably the most important woman in his life. She was cruelly immortalised as Margaret Peel in Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim and widely vilified for destroying Larkin's diaries and works in progress after his death. She was opinionated and outspoken, widely disliked by his friends and Philip himself was routinely unfaithful to her. But Monica Jones was also a brilliant academic and an inspiring teacher in her own right.