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Audiobooks Narrated by Richard Burnip
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Ten brief essays on how reading and meaningfully engaging with literature can help us live better, more purposeful lives.
How do we live successfully?
How do we live fully?
Identifying the meaning of life and where we are heading preoccupies all of us at some stage or another. Who better to help us articulate this sense of direction than the most articulate people among us? Writers and thinkers, Ben Hutchinson suggests in this sparkling new book, help us reflect on purpose.
Interweaving his own (mis-)adventures with those of major authors such as T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf and R.M. Rilke, Hutchinson proposes ten ways in which reading and writing encourage us to ask difficult questions, project our minds into the past and future, and see ourselves and others differently. Engaging and aphoristic, this book is for anyone who finds themselves wondering how to live more mindfully, more forcefully – more fully.
Mark Gregory Pegg’s history of the Middle Ages opens and closes with martyrdom, the first that of a young Roman mother in a North African amphitheater in 203 and the second a French girl burned to death beside the Seine in 1431. Both Vibia Perpetua and Jeanne la Pucelle died for their Christian beliefs, yet that for which they willingly sacrificed their lives connects and separates them. Both were divinely inspired, but one believed her deity shared the universe with other gods, and the other knew that her Creator ruled heaven and earth. Between them, across the centuries, lives were shaped by the ebb and flow of the divine and the human. Here is the story of people struggling in life and in death to understand themselves and their relationship to God.
Beatrice’s Last Smile interweaves vivid portraits of such individuals to offer a sweeping and immersive story. Some are of enduring renown—Augustine, Muhammad, Charlemagne, Heloise—and others are obscure. An Egyptian youth fighting demons in the desert as the first monk; a Briton becomes a holy man after enslavement in Ireland; an emperor in Constantinople watches as rioters torch the city; an old Syrian monk advises the English on sex; the soul of a Merovingian noble flies through the night sky to heaven; an Irish warrior surfs the waves like a dolphin as he flees the Vikings; a crusader’s boots squelch with blood on the streets of Jerusalem; a troubadour sings of love; a Muslim lord expresses admiration of the Templars; a pope proclaims that Christendom encompasses alltime and space; a barefoot Franciscan friar visits the Great Khan of the Mongols; a Parisian rabbi argues for the holiness of the Talmud; and a poet laments being alive amid the horror of the Black Death. Together, they take readers from the vastness of the Roman Empire to small communities between the Mediterranean and the North Sea, from the nomads of the Asian steppes to the triumphant Church of Latin Christendom.
Beatrice’s Last Smile offers a pulsating history of the West: the passionate belief in the old gods that yields to a cosmos shaped by one; the transition from a penitential culture to a confessional one; the universal obsession with imitating Christ. The book is named for the moment in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy when his long-dead love, Beatrice, smiles one final time at Dante in paradise before turning away to look eternally upon the face of God.
Mark Gregory Pegg’s epic narrative captures a millennium within that fleeting smile, in ways that modern readers will find illuminating and haunting.
Propelled to stardom at the age of 15, until his tragic death from cancer at the age of 53, this is the story of actor Jack Wild, in his own words – published for the first time.
Jack was just an ordinary young boy, whose talent was spotted by chance by a theatrical agent, and propelled onto the world stage through his performance in the 1968 film musical Oliver! It brought him an Oscar nomination and international stardom.
As his fame grew, Jack also began to battle with alcoholism, which eventually dominated most accounts of his life. After the glittery highs of the 60’s and 70’s came the “lost decade” of the 80’s; the lows of debts and sectioning under the Mental Health Act. The real story of this is here, in Jack’s own words.
But this isn’t a memoir of pity and darkness. Jack loved life, and loved his life. In the 90’s, and fully sober, Jack returned to the screen in films such as Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves. Even in the face of the tragic diagnosis of mouth cancer which eventually killed him, he remained resolutely optimistic about life.
His story contains vivid behind the scenes accounts of many great names he worked with, from British favourites such as Diana Dors and Ron Moody to international stars like Bing Crosby and Kevin Costner.
Completed by Jack’s widow Claire, the book is in Jack’s unique narrative voice with honesty, roguish charm and a breath-taking lack of self-pity.
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, practising psychiatrist Raj Persaud argues for simple, yet powerful, mental strategies to immunise individuals against the panic of the pandemic. For all the lip-service played to the importance of well-being, just why have the known strongest injections of inspiration remained shielded from the public? As well as a how-to guide, the author offers some fascinating insights into just what's been going on. Trump, Boris Johnson, and senior officials like Dominic Cummings appeared to act increasingly bizarrely. Did the strain infect the inner workings of governments around the world? Did those in command go a bit ‘corona crazy’? Exactly why did the UK Health Minister Matt Hancock cry on camera? Learn how to master boredom, loss, scams, excessive hand washing, intimate relationships, chronic worry and the media hype.
1981
Argentina is in the grip of a brutal military dictatorship.Inspector Joaqun Alzada's work in the Buenos Aires police force exposes him to the many realities of life under a repressive regime: desperate people, terrified people and - worst of all - missing people.Personally, he prefers to stay out of politics, enjoying a simple life with his wife Paula. But when his revolutionary brother Jorge is disappeared, Alzada will stop at nothing to rescue him.
TWENTY YEARS LATER...The country is in the midst of yet another devastating economic crisis and riots are building in the streets of Buenos Aires. This time Alzada is determined to keep his head down and wait patiently for his retirement. But when a dead body lands in a skip behind the morgue and a woman from one of the city's wealthiest families goes missing, Alzada is forced to confront his own involvement in one of the darkest periods in Argentinian history - a time of collective horror and personal tragedy.
"Repentance is an apt title for this very impressive debut... It is an evocative crime thriller with a likeable, self-aware protagonist, and also skillfully explores the darkest period in Argentina's modern history."- The Financial Times
"This is an astonishingly assured first novel, written in English by a Spanish lawyer, that is both funny and moving." - The Sunday Times Crime Club
"Aficionados of mysteries with a hard edge will welcome Inspector Alzada." - Publishers Weekly
"A dark political thriller guaranteed to satisfy fans of Andrea Camilleri, Donna Leon, and Leonardo Padura." - Booklist
In 1995, twelve-year-old Sidney Parsons was savagely murdered by two boys his own age. No reason was ever given for this terrible crime, and the 'Demonic Duo' who killed him were imprisoned until their release in 2002, when they were given new identities and lifetime anonymity. Online journalist Scott King investigates the lead-up and aftermath of the killing, uncovering dark and fanciful stories of demonic possession, and encountering a village torn apart by this unspeakable act. But soon King himself becomes a target, with secrets from his own past dredged up and threats escalating to a terrifying level. It becomes clear that whatever drove those two boys to kill is still there, lurking, and the campaign of horror has just begun. . .
Rising a kilometre out of the storm-scoured waters around Scotland’s Isle of Skye is a dark battlement of pinnacles and ridgelines: the Cuillin.
Plagued by ferocious weather and built from rock that tears skin and confounds compasses, a crossing of the Cuillin is the toughest mountaineering expedition in the British Isles. But the traverse is only part of its lure. Hewn from the innards of an ancient volcano, this mountain range stands like a crown on an island drenched in intrigue. While nineteenth-century climbers flocked to the Alps, the ridge lay untrodden and unyielding. When a generation of mountaineers did come, they found a remarkable prize: the last peaks of Britain to be climbed – peaks that would be named after those who climbed them. Along the way, many others, from artists and poets to mystics and wanderers, have been lured by the Cuillin’s haunting beauty and magic. Those who have been seduced by the deadly magic of these mountains attest to the complexity of humans’ relationship with the intrigue of our wildest, most dangerous places.
The Black Ridge is a journey through the history and into the heights of the Cuillin of Skye – from the ridge’s violent birth to the tales of its pioneers, its thrills, its myths and its monsters. From a night spent in a cave beneath its highest peak to the ascent of its most infamous pinnacle, this is an adventure on foot through all seasons across the most mesmerising mountain range in Britain.
This book must not be ignored. It really is our final warning.
Mark Lynas delivers a vital account of the future of our earth, and our civilisation, if current rates of global warming persist. And it’s only looking worse.
We are living in a climate emergency. But how much worse could it get? Will civilisation collapse? Are we already past the point of no return? What kind of future can our children expect? Rigorously cataloguing the very latest climate science, Mark Lynas explores the course we have set for Earth over the next century and beyond. Degree by terrifying degree, he charts the likely consequences of global heating and the ensuing climate catastrophe.
At one degree – the world we are already living in – vast wildfires scorch California and Australia, while monster hurricanes devastate coastal cities. At two degrees the Arctic ice cap melts away, and coral reefs disappear from the tropics. At three, the world begins to run out of food, threatening millions with starvation. At four, large areas of the globe are too hot for human habitation, erasing entire nations and turning billions into climate refugees. At five, the planet is warmer than for 55 million years, while at six degrees a mass extinction of unparalleled proportions sweeps the planet, even raising the threat of the end of all life on Earth.
These escalating consequences can still be avoided, but time is running out. We must largely stop burning fossil fuels within a decade if we are to save the coral reefs and the Arctic. If we fail, then we risk crossing tipping points that could push global climate chaos out of humanity’s control.
This book must not be ignored. It really is our final warning.
