Showing results by narrator "Ric Jerrom" in All Categories

Charles II returns from exile bringing with him unease to the Spanish Main. In this vivid description of seventeenth-century buccaneers, Ned Yorke, the leader and hero of the swashbuckling band are depended upon for the defense of Jamaica, fighting with captured Spanish guns. Daring raids on the Spanish seem inevitable, as Yorke sets out on the high seas to distant adventures on behalf of the King and his own honor.

Every generation has looked up from the Earth and wondered at the beauty of the moon. 50 years ago, a few Americans became the first to do the reverse - with the whole world watching through their eyes. In this short but wide-ranging book, Oliver Morton explores the history and future of humankind's relationship with the moon. A counterpoint in the sky, it has shaped our understanding of the Earth from Galileo to Apollo. Its gentle light has spoken of love and loneliness; its battered surface of death and the cosmic.

In this epic narrative, Frederic Raphael explores the most significant moments, ideas and figures that have shaped the world’s stage. He takes us on a journey through history: from the reigns of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, to Plato and Socrates and the origins of philosophy, the turning point of World War Two and the invention of the atom bomb, and, finally, the social and cultural divisions of modern day. It is often a story of conflict: the rise of anti-Semitism, the tensions between science and faith, progress and strife, comedy and ruthlessness.

Miss Tither, the village busybody, is not the best-loved resident of Hilary Magna. She has made many enemies: bombarding the villagers with religious tracts, berating drunkards, and informing the spouses of cheating partners. Her murder, however, is still a huge shock to the Reverend Ethelred Claplady and his parish. Inspector Littlejohn's understanding of country ways makes him Scotland Yard's first choice for the job.

In the winter of 1940, the Home Guard unearth a skeleton on the moor above the busy town of Hatterworth. Twenty-three years earlier, the body of a young textile worker was found in the same spot, and the prime suspect was never found but the second body is now identified as his. Soon it becomes clear that the true murderer is still at large. . .

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unique tales inspired by traditional literary forms appeared frequently in socialist-leaning British periodicals, such as the Clarion, Labour Leader, and Social Democrat. Based on familiar genres, these stories were meant to entertain readers of all ages - and some challenged the conventional values promoted in children’s literature for the middle class. Acclaimed critic and author Michael Rosen brings together more than 40 of the best and most enduring examples of these stories in one beautiful volume.

What lies beneath? Things are not right at Crowfield Abbey. The building has begun to crumble. And what Will finds beneath the floor of the side chapel is truly terrifying. Is this the end of Crowfield forever? Read by Ric Jerrom.

History in the House looks at the temperaments, ideas, imagination, prejudices, intentions and influence of a select and self-regulated group of men who taught modern history at Christ Church: Frederick York Powell, Arthur Hassall, Keith Feiling, J. C. Masterman, Roy Harrod, Patrick Gordon Walker, and Hugh Trevor-Roper (a Victorian radical, a staunch legitimist of the protestant settlement, a conservative, a Whig, a Keynesian, a socialist, and a contrarian).

In the 1660’s Jamaica was an uneasy island, occupied by Spain but settled by the English and French. When Admiral of the Brethren, Ned Yorke, a brave, loyal Buccaneer, learns that Spain is mounting a Caribbean fleet perhaps to protect the treasures of Spanish ships, or carry an army to Jamaica, he vows to find out the truth. Yorke’s audacious attacks on Spanish camps reveal all and the Buccaneers must fight a bloody, desperate battle to try and hinder them.

Britain, 55 BC: Julius Caesar’s invasion of the wild and mineral-rich land is becalmed, a stalemate exists between the forces of Rome and Britain. But the standard bearer of the Tenth Legion, Lucius Oppius, is about to display a depth of courage that will change the course of the invasion - and history. Encamped upon the south coast Caesar, admiring the courage and skill of his standard bearer, orders Oppius to accompany a native British archer and go behind enemy lines.

The Franco-Prussian War started in 1870 when Otto von Bismarck engineered a war with the French Second Empire under Napoleon III, as part of his plan to unite Prussia with the southern German states as a new Germany. Stephen Badsey examines the build-up, battles, and impact of the war, which was an overwhelming Prussian victory with massive consequences.

During the long 18th century, Europe's travelers, scholars, and intellectuals looked to Asia in a spirit of puzzlement, irony, and openness. In this panoramic book, author Jürgen Osterhammel tells the story of the European Enlightenment's nuanced encounter with the great civilizations of the East, from the Ottoman Empire and India to China and Japan. A momentous work by one of Europe's most eminent historians, Unfabling the East takes listeners on a thrilling voyage to the farthest shores, bringing back vital insights for our own multicultural age.

It was Tuesday the second of December 1947 when Jenny the Spiddler walked into my office: almost a month before they nationalised my mother. Jack Wenlock is the last of the Railway Goslings: that fabled cadre of railway detectives created at the Weeping Cross Railway Servants' Orphanage, who trod the corridors of the GWR trains in the years 1925 to 1947.

In 1897, a young and untested cavalry lieutenant named Winston Churchill, more than a little keen to see action, got himself attached as a press correspondent to an expeditionary force newly formed to restore order on the North West Frontier of India. His dispatches to the London Daily Telegraph were later expanded into this audiobook.

Ryunosuke Akutagawa was one of Japan’s great writers - author of the stories Rashomon and In a Bamboo Grove, most famously - who lived through Japan’s turbulent Taisho period of 1912 to 1926, including the devastating 1923 Earthquake, only to take his own life at the age of just 34 in 1927. These are the stories of Patient X in one of our iron castles. He will tell his tales to anyone with the ears and the time to listen. Inspired and informed by Akutagawa’s stories, essays and letters, David Peace has fashioned a most extraordinary novel of tales.

Andrew Taylor's Roth Trilogy has just been made in to a three-part TV adaptation for ITV called Fallen Angel.
It is 1970. David Byfield, a widowed parish priest with a dark past, brings home a new wife to Roth. Soon the murders and blasphemies begin. But does the responsibility lie in the present or the past? And can Byfield, a prisoner of his own passion, break through to the truth before the final tragedy destroys what he most cherishes?

Josephine Short was a woman with a secret or two. When her great-nephew’s wife, Janet Wakefield, gets a call from the Berebury Nursing Home, she’s taken aback. Not only does it come as a surprise to hear that her husband’s estranged great aunt has passed away, but more surprising is the fact she had been living locally for some years. Janet is sure that her husband Bill was the last of Josephine’s close family. But then a young man approaches her at the funeral and introduces himself as Josephine’s grandson....

When a light aircraft crashes into the Thames at Shepperton, the young pilot who struggles to the surface minutes later seems to have come back from the dead. Within hours everything in the dormitory suburb is surreally transformed into a reality more akin to a dreamscape. Vultures invade the rooftops, luxuriant tropical vegetation overruns the quiet avenues, and the local inhabitants are propelled by the young man’s urgent visions through ecstatic sexual celebrations towards an apocalyptic climax.

With reference to the ideas of a Yale professor who first identified the theory and to the writings of George Orwell from whose ‘newspeak’ the word was adapted, Booker sheds new light on the remarkable – and worrying – effects of ‘groupthink’ and its influence on our society. Booker defines the three rules of groupthink: the adoption of a common view or belief not based on objective reality; the establishment of a consensus of right-minded people, an ‘in group’; and the need to treat the views of anyone who questions the belief as wholly unacceptable.

This ambitious and fascinating history considers why, in the space of sixty years between 1850 and 1910, football grew from a marginal and unorganised activity to become the dominant winter entertainment for millions of people around the world. The book explores how the world’s football codes—soccer, rugby league, rugby union, American, Australian, Canadian and Gaelic—developed as part of the commercialised leisure industry in the nineteenth century.