Audiobooks narrated by Jake Urry

Charles Edward Montague was born in London on New Year’s Day, 1867 and educated at the City of London School and then Balliol College, Oxford.At university, Montague, a keen writer, wrote several literary reviews for the Manchester Guardian and was then invited for a month’s trial and, after impressing, to work there. Montague and the editor, C. P. Scott shared the same political views and between them they turned the Manchester Guardian into a vibrant and campaigning newspaper. They were for Irish Home Rule and against both the Boer War and the First World War.But, after the war had begun, Montague believed that it was important to give full and unequivocal support to the British government. Despite his age, 47, he was determined to serve.Montague was soon promoted to the rank of second lieutenant and with it a transfer to Military Intelligence. The war also brought about a crisis in his faith and it was suitable resolved by Montague temporarily putting it to one side and carrying on with the fighting.In November 1918 the war was over and Montague could now return home to his wife and family and also to the Manchester Guardian where he would continue to work until retirement in 1925. For Montague the war had been corrosive but it had given him much to write about, both for the paper and also for his books, which he now hoped to spend more time on. Among those to flow from his pen are the novels A Hind Let Loose and Rough Justice as well as collections of short stories, other essays and a travel book.He finally retired in 1925, and settled down to become a full-time writer in the last years of his life. Charles Edward Montague died in Manchester on May 28th, 1928 at the age of 61.

C E Montague (Author), Ghizela Rowe, Jake Urry (Narrator)

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The Time Machine

A Victorian scientist travels into the far future and discovers the descendants of humanity, the Eloi, living in apparent peace and tranquility. However, after his time machine goes missing, he discovers that humanity has in fact split into two distinct species, and the Morlocks are not quite so benign as the Eloi. The time traveller must arm himself and get his time machine back if he ever wants to return to his own era. In this new audio version, narrator Jake Urry vividly brings this classic H. G. Wells tale to life for 21st-century audiences.

H. G. Wells, H.G. Wells (Author), Jake Urry, Joanne Evans (credits) (Narrator)

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

First published as a 'shilling shocker', Robert Louis Stevenson's dark psychological tale explores the idea of the split personality. Respectable Dr. Jekyll's mysterious association with the notorious young Mr. Hyde culminates in a shocking revelation in the doctor's laboratory. In this new audio version, narrator Jake Urry vividly brings this chilling tale to life for 21st Century audiences.

Robert Louis Stevenson (Author), Jake Urry (Narrator)

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The Short Stories of William Pett Ridge

William Pett Ridge was born at Chartham, near Canterbury, Kent, on 22nd April 1859.His family’s resources were certainly limited. His father was a railway porter, and the young Pett Ridge, after schooling in Marden, Kent became a clerk in a railway clearing-house. The hours were long and arduous, but self-improvement was Pett Ridge’s goal. After working from nine until seven o’clock he would attend evening classes at Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institute and then to follow his passion; the ambition to write. He was heavily influenced by Dickens and several critics thought he had the capability to be his successor.From 1891 many of his humourous sketches were published in the St James's Gazette, the Idler, Windsor Magazine and other literary periodicals of the day.Pett Ridge published his first novel in 1895, A Clever Wife. By the advent of his fifth novel, Mord Em'ly, a mere three years later in 1898, his success was obvious. His writing was written from the perspective of those born with no privilege and relied on his great talent to find humour and sympathy in his portrayal of working class life.Today Pett Ridge and other East End novelists including Arthur Nevinson, Arthur Morrison and Edwin Pugh are being grouped together as the Cockney Novelists. In 1924, Pugh set out his recollections of Pett Ridge from the 1890s: “I see him most clearly, as he was in those days, through a blue haze of tobacco smoke. We used sometimes to travel together from Waterloo to Worcester Park on our way to spend a Saturday afternoon and evening with H. G. Wells. Pett Ridge does not know it, but it was through watching him fill his pipe, as he sat opposite me in a stuffy little railway compartment, that I completed my own education as a smoker”.With his success, on the back of his prolific output and commercial success, Pett Ridge gave generously of both time and money to charity. In 1907 he founded the Babies Home at Hoxton. This was one of several organisations that he supported that had the welfare of children as their mission. His circle considered Pett Ridge to be one of life's natural bachelors. In 1909 they were rather surprised therefore when he married Olga Hentschel. As the 1920’s arrived Pett Ridge added to his popularity with the movies. Four of his books were adapted into films. Pett Ridge now found the peak of his fame had passed. Although he still managed to produce a book a year he was falling out of fashion and favour with the reading public and his popularity declined rapidly. His canon runs to over sixty novels and short-story collections as well as many pieces for magazines and periodicals.William Pett Ridge died, on 29th September 1930, at his home, Ampthill, Willow Grove, Chislehurst, at the age of 71.He was cremated at West Norwood on 2nd October 1930.

William Pett Ridge (Author), David Shaw-Parker, Ghizela Rowe, Jake Urry (Narrator)

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The Short Stories of Thomas Burke

Thomas Burke was born Sydney Thomas Burke on November 29th, 1886 in Eltham, London (at the time it was part of Kent).An author in the early years of the century who brought his skills of pen and eye to parts of London, specifically the Limehouse district of the East End and wrote with drive and vigour about the characters he met and the places that he knew. Whether he turned that material into fiction or nonfiction he words seep quality. His work ranged from these wonderful vignettes of down at heel London to writings on homosexuality and the English Countryside.Thomas Burke died in the Homeopathic Hospital in Queens Square, Bloomsbury on 22 September 1945.Now sadly neglected we hope that the reprinting of his earlier works might once again give him the prominence and respect his talents deserve. This volume comes to you from Miniature Masterpieces, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single authors, themes, and many compilations.

Thomas Burke (Author), Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Short Stories of Stacy Amounier

Stacy Aumonier was born at Hampstead Road near Regent's Park, London on 31st March 1877.He came from a family with a strong and sustained tradition in the visual arts; sculptors and painters.On leaving school it seemed the family tradition would also be his career path. In particular his early talents were that of a landscape painter. He exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy in the early years of the twentieth century.In 1907 he married the international concert pianist, Gertrude Peppercorn, at West Horsley in Surrey. A year later Aumonier began a career in a second branch of the arts at which he enjoyed a short but outstanding success-as a stage performer writing and performing his own sketches.The Observer newspaper commented that "...the stage lost in him a real and rare genius, he could walk out alone before any audience, from the simplest to the most sophisticated, and make it laugh or cry at will."In 1915, Aumonier published a short story 'The Friends' which was well received (and was subsequently voted one of the 15 best stories of 1915 by the Boston Magazine, Transcript).Despite his age in 1917 at age 40 he was called up for service in World War I. He began as a private in the Army Pay Corps, and then transferred as a draughtsman in the Ministry of National Service.By now he had four books published-two novels and two books of short stories-and his occupation is recorded with the Army Medical Board as 'author.'In the mid-1920s, Aumonier received the shattering diagnosis that he had contracted tuberculosis. In the last few years of his life, he would spend long spells in various sanatoria, some better than others.Shortly before his death, Stacy Aumonier sought treatment in Switzerland, but died of the disease in Clinique La Prairie at Clarens beside Lake Geneva on 21st December 1928. He was 55. This volume comes to you from Miniature Masterpieces, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single authors, themes, and many compilations.

Stacy Aumonier (Author), Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Short Stories of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Trinity College and then at Oxford. Wilde then moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles. With his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day.His only novel, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with ‘Salome’ in 1891. His society comedies were enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London.Whilst his masterpiece, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, was on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency. He was convicted and imprisoned for two years hard labour. It was to break him.On release he left for France. There he wrote his last work, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ in 1898. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six sipping champagne a friend had brought with the line ‘Alas I am dying beyond my means’.

Oscar Wilde (Author), David Shaw-Parker, Jake Urry (Narrator)

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The Short Stories Of Mary Cholmondeley

Mary Cholmondeley was born in Hodnet near Market Drayton in Shropshire on June 8th 1859, the third of eight children. Her father was appointed rector in 1874 in succession to his father. Much of the first 30 years of her life was taken up with helping her sickly mother run the household, her father with his parish work, and mitigating the effects of her asthma.Mary began writing in her teens. She wrote in her journal in 1877, "What a pleasure and interest it would be to me in life to write books. I must strike out a line of some kind, and if I do not marry (for at best that is hardly likely, as I possess neither beauty nor charms) I should want some definite occupation, besides the home duties."Mary began by publishing her stories in The Graphic and her first novel 'The Danvers Jewels' a detective story followed in 1887. Thereafter came, amongst others, 'Sir Charles Danvers' (1889) and 'Diana Tempest' (1893).After her father retired in 1896, she moved with him and her sister Diana to Condover Hall before a move to Albert Gate Mansions in Knightsbridge, London.Mary wrote the best seller 'Red Pottage' in 1899. It satirised religious hypocrisy and the conceit of country life. It was denounced as immoral. It also explored female sexuality.During the war she did clerical work in the Carlton House Terrace Hospital. The sisters moved in 1919 to 4 Argyll Road, Kensington, where Mary died, on 15th July 1925.

Mary Cholmondeley (Author), Ghizela Rowe, Jake Urry (Narrator)

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The Short Stories of John Buchan

John Buchan was born on August 26th 1875. After a brief career in the legal profession he began a twin career as writer and politician. He was a prodigious writer not just of fiction but of such acclaimed works as a 24 volume history of World War I. It was during the war, where, as a sideline writing propaganda he wrote his most famous works 'The Thirty Nine Steps'. Its hero, Richard Hannay, continues his story in other Buchan novels, most notably Greenmantle (1916) and Mr Standfast (1919). After the war he became a Member of Parliament and in 1935 was appointed as Governor General of Canada. This title was added to his other very impressive collection: 1st Baron Tweedsmuir PC GCMG GCVO CH. He occupied the post of Governor General and continued to write until his death on February 11th 1940. In all he wrote 100 works including 30 novels, short stories, poems, biographies and many volumes about military history. This volume comes to you from Miniature Masterpieces, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single authors, themes, and many compilations.

John Buchan (Author), Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Short Stories of Herman Cyril McNeile writing as Sapper

Herman Cyril McNeile, MC was born on September 28th, 1888 in Bodmin, Cornwall. His education was rounded off with military training and from there he was given a posting to Aldershot Garrison then Canterbury and then Malta.With the beginning of the War he was sent to France. It was from here that he 'out of sheer boredom' began to write and was soon publishing short stories in the Daily Mail. As a soldier McNeile saw action at the First and Second Battles of Ypres, he was gassed at the second, and the Battle of the Somme. In 1916 he was awarded the Military Cross and mentioned in dispatches. In November that year he was gazetted to acting major.During the course of the war, he had spent a total of 32 months in France. Even with the War in full sway about him his literary output from 1915 to 1918 was in the order of 80 stories. But his greatest success was about to be published and become a world wide phenomenon. "Demobilised officer ... finding peace incredibly tedious, would welcome diversion. Legitimate, if possible; but crime, if of a comparatively humorous description, no objection. Excitement essential." This was the advertisement placed in The Times by Drummond in Bulldog Drummond. It is a brilliant summing up of the man's quest for adrenaline. The book was published in 1920 and the eponymous hero became his best-known creation. Further Drummond books followed together with other works and these continued successes ensured that he was one of the most successful British authors of the inter-war period.In 1937 McNeile was working with Fairlie on the play Bulldog Drummond Hits Out and received a diagnosis from his doctor that he had terminal throat cancer. Herman Cyril McNeile aka Sapper died on 14 August 1937 at his home in West Chiltington, West Sussex. This volume comes to you from Miniature Masterpieces, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single authors, themes, and many compilations.

Herman Cyril Mcneile (Author), Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Short Stories Of Henry W. Nevison

Henry Woodd Nevinson was born on October 11th, 1856.Nevinson was schooled at Shrewsbury School and at Christ Church, Oxford. John Ruskin influenced his time at Oxford. Fascinated by German Culture he spent some time at Jena before publishing, in 1884, Herder & His times, a study on Johnann Gottfried Herder.In 1897 he became the Daily Chronicle's reporter for the Greco-Turkish War. He was also noted for his reporting on the Second Boer War.During the 1880s Nevinson had attached his politics to Socialism and by 1889 had joined the Social Democratic Federation.In 1904, he was hired by Harper's Monthly Magazine to report on a supposed trade in slaves from Angola to the cocoa plantations of São Tomé. He produced evidence of people being trafficked to settle debts or seized by Portuguese agents and taken in shackles to the coastal towns. Once there he wrote that Portuguese officials "freed" them and continued the charade by declaring they were now voluntary workers who agreed to go to São Tomé for five years. Despite severe ill health he continued to follow the slaves to São Tomé. He found plantation conditions so appalling that one in five workers died each year. His account was serialised from August 1905 and then published as 'A Modern Slavery' in 1906.He was also a suffragist, being one of the founders in 1907 of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage.In 1914 he co-founded the Friends' Ambulance Unit and later in World War I, as a war correspondent, was wounded during the infamous Gallipoli campaign.E. M. Forster described Nevinson's book, 'More Changes, More Chances' in 1925 as "exciting", and that "He has brought to the soil of his adoption something that transcends party-generosity, recklessness, a belief in conscience joined to a mistrust of principles".A committed Socialist Nevinson could see, during the 20s and 30s, the foundations of a titanic struggle began to gather its forces. He would later state "I detest the cruel systems of persecution and suppression now existing under Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Stalin in Russia".Nevinson married Margaret Wynne Jones and, after her death in 1933, he married his long-time lover, and fellow suffragist, Evelyn Sharp.Henry W. Nevinson died on November 9th, 1941.

Henry W. Nevinson (Author), Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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The Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5th, 1850 near Dieppe in France. Maupassant's early life was badly torn when at age 11 (his younger brother Hervé was then five) his mother, Laure, a headstrong and independent-minded woman, risked social disgrace in order to obtain a legal separation from her husband.After the separation, Laure kept custody of her two boys. With the father now forcibly absent, Laure became the most influential and important figure in the young boy's life. Maupassant's education was such that he rebelled against religion and other societal norms but a developing friendship with Gustave Flaubert began to turn his mind towards creativity and writing.After graduation he volunteered for the Franco-Prussian war. With its end he moved to Paris to work as a clerk in the Navy Department. Gustave Flaubert now took him under his wing. Acting as a literary guardian to him, he guided the eager Maupassant to debuts in journalism and literature. For Maupassant these were exciting times and the awakening of his creative talents and ambitions.In 1880 he published what is considered his first great work, 'Boule de Suif', (translated as as 'Dumpling', 'Butterball', 'Ball of Fat', or 'Ball of Lard') which met with a success that was both instant and overwhelming. Flaubert at once acknowledged that it was 'a masterpiece that will endure.' Maupassant had used his talents and experiences in the war to create something unique. This decade from 1880 to 1891 was to be the most pivotal of his career. With an audience now made available by the success of 'Boule de Suif' Maupassant organised himself to work methodically and relentlessly to produce between two and four volumes of work a year. The melding of his talents and business sense and the continual hunger of sources for his works made him wealthy.In his later years he developed a desire for solitude, an obsession for self-preservation, and a fear of death as well as a paranoia of persecution caused by the syphilis he had contracted in his youth. On January 2nd, 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat. Unsuccessful he was committed to the private asylum of Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris. It was here on July 6th, 1893 that Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant died at the age of only 42. This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing. Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

Guy De Maupassant (Author), Ian Holm, Jake Urry, Richard Mitchley (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Jake Urry