Showing results by narrator "Michael Tudor Barnes" in All Categories

Full-cast BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of the first five Falco novels by Lindsey Davis, starring Anton Lesser as Marcus Didius Falco.

Sometimes you come across a lofty railway viaduct marooned in the middle of a remote country landscape. Or a crumbling platform from some once-bustling junction buried under the buddleia. If you are lucky you might be able to follow some rusting tracks or explore an old tunnel leading to...well, who knows where? Listen hard. Is that the wind in the undergrowth? Or the spectre of a train from a golden era of the past panting up the embankment?

Michael Williams has spent the past year travelling along the fascinating rail byways of Britain for this new collection of journeys. Here is the 'train to the end of the world' running for more than four splendid hours through lake, loch and moorland from Inverness to Wick, the most northerly town in Britain. He discovers a perfect country branch line in London’s commuterland, and travels on one of the slowest services in the land along the shores of the lovely Dovey estuary to the far west of Wales. Here is a unique travel companion celebrating the treasures of our railway heritage....

Stuck in a job he doesn't want - but can't afford to lose - as nominal Head of the Communications Department at Fenland University, Wilt is still subject to the whims of The Powers That Be, both in and outside of work. The demands of his snobbish wife Eva, and the stupendous school fees of his despicable quadruplet daughters cause him the biggest headaches...apart from the hangovers, that is. When Eva signs him up for a summer job, teaching the gun-toting idiot son of a lusty local aristocrat, Wilt is not amused.

North Africa, 1942. Dust, heat, thirst, flies. For those who liked that sort of thing, it was a good clean fight: nothing to harm but the sand, the enemy and yourself. Striking hard and escaping fast, Fanny Barton’s squadron play Russian roulette, flying their clapped out Tomahawks on ground-strafing forays. On the ground, the men of Captain Lampard’s SAS patrol drive hundreds of miles behind enemy lines to plant bombs on German aircraft.

A woman's naked body is found floating in the weeds of a lake near Bath by an elderly woman walking her Siamese cats. No one comes forward to identify her, and no murder weapon is found, but sleuthing is Superintendent Peter Diamond's speciality. A genuine gumshoe, practising door stopping and deduction: he is the last detective. Struggling with office politics and a bizarre cast of suspects, Diamond strikes out on his own, even when Forensics think they have the culprit.

On May 7th, 1915 a passenger ship crossing the Atlantic sank with the loss of 1200 lives. On board were some world-famous figures, including multimillionaire Alfred Vanderbilt. But this wasn’t the Titanic and there was no iceberg. The liner was the Lusitania and it was torpedoed by a German U-boat.Wilful Murder is the hugely compelling story of the sinking of the Lusitania. The first book to look at the events in their full historical context, it is also the first to place the human dimension at its heart.

Stepping over the threshold of a once happy family home, DCI Michael Thackeray faces a grim sight. In the kitchen lie the bloody bodies of a mother and her daughter. Outside, a trail of blood in the snow leads to another victim, a young girl barely alive. The father, Gordon Christie, and another child are missing. The police conclude that the scene is the result of a domestic row turned violent. But when journalist Laura Ackroyd tries to find out more about the missing man, she finds no traceable records of Gordon Christie.

Crete, May 1941. In the face of a German invasion, Sergeant Jack Tanner is embroiled in a deadly game of survival that will test his resolve more than ever before. Not only has he fallen out with his commander but he has mortally offended Alopex, a powerful local chieftain. As if that wasn't enough, Tanner and the rest of his battalion are caught in vicious close-quarter fighting against crack German paratroopers.

The year is 1794. Free from jail, John Pearce is not free from the smugglers whose boat he stole. While lying low, Pearce soon has other pressing concerns on his mind. Granted a commission by William Pitt, John Pearce evades his pursuers by undertaking a dangerous mission in France. As rebellious ambition turns to bloody disaster, Pearce must try to re-join Admiral Howe. Also serving with Howe is Ralph Barclay - who has somehow contrived to yet again press Pearce’s friends into his crew.

'I was anxious to fight. Hitler was the bastard who had started all this and he needed sorting out. We were under threat. Everything we stood for: our country, our families and our way of life was being attacked by this maniac. He could not be allowed to win. So for me and many, many others like me, there was no alternative. We were in a pickle and something had to be done.’ Johnny Johnson is 92 years old and one of very few men who can recall first-hand the most daring and ingenious air raid of all time.

In these two series, set on selected dates in January 1895 and December 1896, we follow the day-to-day shenanigans of Bridgford station master Joe Braddock and his staff, along with a motley crew of passengers and passers-by. Each episode is a self-contained drama, as well as telling the ongoing story of the crises and challenges tackled by the team, and their rivalries, enmities, friendships and burgeoning romances.

In the small hours of a Sunday morning in the city of Bath a policeman on beat duty is shot dead by an unseen gunman - the third killing of an officer in Somerset in a matter of weeks. The emergency services are summoned. Ambitious to arrest the Somerset Sniper, the duty inspector, Ken Lockton, seals the crime scene, which is confined by the river on one side and a massive retaining wall on the other. He discovers the murder weapon in a garden - and is himself attacked and left for dead.Enter Peter Diamond, Bath's burly CID chief.

1325: in the gilded cage that is the Palace of Westminster, Isabella, Queen of England, is troubled by court intrigue. Her jealous husband, Edward II, has removed all her privileges, her regal status and even her children. When Isabella is dispatched to France to negotiate peace with the French King, Sir Baldwin de Furnshill travels with her to ensure her safety. But it seems that no one can be trusted, not least the queen’s own retinue.

On 3 May 1961, after a trial conducted largely in secret, a man named George Blake was sentenced to an unprecedented 42 years in jail. By his own confession he was a Soviet spy, but the reasons for such a severe punishment were never revealed. To the public, Blake was simply the greatest traitor of the Cold War. Yet his story touches not only the depths of treachery, but also the heights of heroism.

Just as the bidding gets exciting in a Bath auction house, three armed men stage a hold-up and attempt to steal Lot 129, a medieval carving of the Wife of Bath. The highest bidder, appalled to have the prize snatched away, tries to stop them and is shot dead. Peter Diamond, head of the murder squad, soon finds himself sharing an office with the stone wife - until he is ejected. To his extreme annoyance the lump of stone appears to exert a malign influence over him and his investigation.

Doctors, nurses, medics and stretcher-bearers must venture wherever someone is injured and the cry for assistance goes up. Their job is to put themselves in the heart of danger – to risk their own lives as they try to save the dying. War at its rawest is their domain, an ugly place of shattered bodies, severed limbs and death. They fulfil society’s vital pledge to its warriors that they will not be abandoned on the battlefield. Yet, more often than not, what they do goes unnoticed – except by those who survive because of their extraordinary courage and skill.

Peter Diamond, ex-CID and notoriously difficult to work with, is sacked from his latest job as a security guard in Harrods. Doggedly he turns his sleuthing skills to unraveling the mystery of a little Japanese girl abandoned in London. Naomi, as she is known, exhibits the classic symptoms of an autistic child. Diamond regards her first as a challenge and soon as someone he cares passionately about and devotes himself to communicating with the child.

When the mutilated body of midwife and healer Agatha Kyteler is discovered in a hedge one frozen wintry morning, it seems at first that a lack of clues will render the crime impossible to solve. Then a frightened local youth inexplicably flees his village, and a hue and cry is raised in his wake. Sir Baldwin Furnshill, once a Knight Templar, has doubts about the boy's guilt. He enlists his friend Simon Puttock, bailiff of Lydford Castle, in the hunt for a murderer.

Winner of the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger and shortlisted for the Edgar Award. The summons comes at night. Two policemen collect Peter Diamond from his West London flat and drive him to Bath. Once head of the murder squad there, he is now out of touch in his retirement, unaware of an audacious escape from Albany Prison. Four years previously, Diamond headed the investigation of the bizarre murder of a Swedish woman journalist, her mouth stuffed with red roses.