Showing results by narrator "Cyril Taylor-Carr" in All Categories

Ben-Hur is a story of two very different heroes. Judah Ben-Hur, a prince of Jerusalem, is involved in an accident to the Roman procurator which is taken to be intentional. He is seized and sent to the fleet as a galley-slave, while his family is imprisoned and the family goods confiscated. When Ben-Hur saves the fleet captain from drowning after his ship is sunk in a fight with pirates, that officer adopts him as son and heir.

The Rough Riders was a nickname given to the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, one of three such regiments raised in 1898 for the Spanish-American War and the only one to see combat. The United States Army was small, understaffed, and disorganized in comparison to its status during the American Civil War roughly thirty years prior. Following the sinking of USS Maine, President William McKinley needed to muster a strong ground force swiftly, which he did by calling for 125,000 volunteers to assist in the war.

The Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stone) is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of China, and considered the greatest of them all. Almost 40 main characters and some 500 minor characters tell the fortunes of the Chia family; the book details mainly the life of Chia Pao-yü, the heir apparent, who is described as very intelligent, but also as carefree and self-indulging. The already wealthy Chia family rises to new heights when Pao-yü's elder sister becomes an imperial consort.

Astral projection is a term used in esotericism to describe an intentional out-of-body experience that assumes the existence of a soul called an "astral body" that is separate from the physical body and capable of traveling outside it throughout the universe. Here is the definitive classical Theosophical audiobook on a subject which has enthralled humankind since near the beginning of time.

Portrait of a Lady is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine in 1880-81 and then as a book in 1881. It is one of James's most popular novels and is regarded by critics as one of his finest.

'Thoughts On Art and Life' by Leonardo Da Vinci is a fascinating collection of writings from the great polymath of the Italian Renaissance. There are sections covering the great man's thoughts on life, art, and science. The translator, Maurice Baring trawled the available manuscripts to distil da Vinci's writings on these subjects into a single, accessible tome, which will be of interest to students of da Vinci, the Renaissance, and the history of both art and science.

Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirizes the social and economic conditions of the era. Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is by far the shortest of Dickens's novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead, the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town.

Marx started work on this book in January 1847, as can be judged from Engel's letter to Marx on January 15, 1847. By the beginning of April 1847, Marx's work was completed in the main and had gone to the press. On June 15, 1847, he wrote a short foreword. Published in Paris and Brussels in 1847, the book was not republished in full during Marx's lifetime. Excerpts from section five of Chapter Two appeared in different years, mostly between 1872-1875 in papers such as La Emancipacion, Der Volksstaat, Social-Demokrat, and others.

An outbreak of plague in London forces a gentleman, Lovewit, to flee temporarily to the country, leaving his house under the sole charge of his butler, Jeremy. Jeremy uses the opportunity given to him to use the house as the headquarters for fraudulent acts. He transforms himself into "Captain Face", and enlists the aid of Subtle, a fellow conman and Dol Common, a prostitute. In The Alchemist, Jonson unashamedly satirizes the follies, vanities and vices of mankind, most notably greed-induced credulity. People of all social classes are subject to Jonson's ruthless, satirical wit.

Abraham Lincoln was born into poverty in a log cabin and was raised on the frontier primarily in Indiana. He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and U.S. Congressman from Illinois. In 1849, he returned to his law practice but became vexed by the opening of additional lands to slavery. He reentered politics in 1854, becoming a leader in the Republican Party, and reached a national audience in the 1858 debates against Stephen Douglas.

The Ramsey family, with house guests, visit the Isle of Skye at least twice. The plot is not at all the point though, as this is a book about how people think and feel and relate. There’s insight into the world of childhood thought and emotion, and a variety of views of adult care and perceptions. I hope this doesn’t make it sound ‘difficult’, it doesn’t need to be–just let the sentences flow and make your own sense of the words. It’s perhaps as close as a novel can come to the highly individual experience of looking at a painting.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born September 29, 1547, was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his novel Don Quixote, a work often cited as both the first modern novel and one of the pinnacles of world literature. Much of his life was spent in poverty and obscurity, many of its details are disputed or unknown, and the bulk of his surviving work was produced in the three years preceding his death.

Sherlock Holmes was created by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science, and logical reasoning that borders on the fantastic, which he employs when investigating cases for a wide variety of clients, including Scotland Yard. Holmes first appeared in print in 1887's A Study in Scarlet, the character's popularity became widespread with the first series of short stories in The Strand Magazine, beginning with "A Scandal in Bohemia" in 1891.

Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution is one of the most important of Lenin's early writings. It was written in June and July 1905, while the Russian Revolution of 1905 was taking place. Lenin's preface poses these questions: "in educating and organizing the working class;...where should we place the main political emphasis in this work of education and organization? On the trade unions and legally existing associations, or on an insurrection, on the work of creating a revolutionary army and a revolutionary government?"

First published in 1850, David Copperfield begins with avid the tragedy of David's brother dying when David is just a boy. After this episode, he is sent by his step-father to work in London for a wine merchant. When conditions worsen he decides to run away and embarks on a journey by foot from London to Dover. On his arrival, he finds his eccentric aunt, Betsey Trotwood, who becomes his new guardian. Being witness to the formation of David's character is quite fascinating. David begins as a strong child whose only aspiration is a better life.

Crime and Punishment is the second of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's full-length novels following his return from 5 years of exile in Siberia, and is considered the first great novel of his "mature" period of writing. The novel focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in St. Petersburg who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her cash.

This classic work, written by Theosophist W. Scott-Elliot, this book goes into detail about the lost city of Atlantis. The information came from C. W. Leadbeater, who said he received his information from astral clairvoyance. Scott-Elliot provides info on the people of Atlantis, such as their religion, races, different periods money, education, and much more.

“The Iliad“ is an epic poem by the ancient Greek poet Homer, which recounts some of the significant events of the final weeks of the Trojan War and the Greek siege of the city of Troy (which was also known as Ilion, Ilios or Ilium in ancient times). Written in the mid-8th Century BCE, “The Iliad" is usually considered to be the earliest work in the whole Western literary tradition, and one of the best known and loved stories of all time.

Wuthering Heights is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's adopted son, Heathcliff. It was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction.

Jefferies' novel can be seen as an early example of "post-apocalyptic fiction." After some sudden and unspecified catastrophe has depopulated England, the countryside reverts to nature, and the few survivors to a quasi-medieval way of life. The first part of the book, "The Relapse into Barbarism", is the account by some later historian of the fall of civilization and its consequences, with a loving description of nature reclaiming England. The second part, "Wild England", is an adventure set many years later in the wild landscape and society.