Audiobooks narrated by Richard Burnip

A stunning Dr Watson thriller perfect for all fans of Sherlock. The year is 1917 and Doctor John Watson is held in a notorious POW camp deep in enemy Germany, there as Medical Officer for the British prisoners. With the Allied blockade, food is perilously short in the camp and when a new prisoner is murdered all assume the poor chap was killed for his Red Cross parcel. Watson, though, isn't so sure. Something isn't quite what it seems and a creeping feeling of unease tells Watson there is more to this than meets the eye. And when an escape plot is apparently uncovered in his hut and he is sent to solitary confinement, he knows he has touched a nerve. If Watson is to reveal the heinous crimes that have occurred at the camp, he must escape before he is silenced for good. All he needs is some long-distance help from his old friend, Sherlock Holmes… 'Robert Ryan is the key heir apparent to Conan Doyle' Barry Forshaw, Financial Times

Robert Ryan, Teddy Canez (Author), Richard Burnip (Narrator)

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Armada

The author of the Masters of the Sea series, is back with a standalone battle book that will blow all others out of the water.1587. Two nations are locked in bitter conflict. One strives for dominance, the other for survival.After decades of religious strife, Elizabeth sits on the throne of England. The reformation continues. Catholic revolts have been ruthlessly quashed, and Elizabeth has ordered the execution of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. On the continent bloody religious wars rage, but England stands apart, her surrounding seas keeping her safe from the land armies of her would-be enemies. Only at sea do the English show their teeth. Sea captains and adventurers, hungry for the spoils of trade from the Spanish Main, regularly attack the gold-laden galleons of Catholic Spain. They are terriers nipping at the feet of war-horses but their victories disrupt the treasury of Spain, England's greatest threat, and Elizabeth's refusal to rein in her sea-captains further antagonises Philip II.Thomas Varian is a captain in Drake's formidable navy, rising quickly through the ranks. But he guards a secret - one for which he would pay with his life if discovered: he is a Catholic. He is about to find his conflicting loyalty to his religion, to his Queen, and to his country tested under the most formidable of circumstances: facing the mighty Armada. Unknown to Varian, he will also be facing his long-estranged father, who is fighting on the side of the Spanish enemy...

John Stack (Author), Richard Burnip (Narrator)

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Beatrice's Last Smile: A New History of the Middle Ages

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.

Mark Gregory Pegg (Author), Richard Burnip (Narrator)

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Behind the Scenes at the Museum of Baked Beans: My Search for Britain's Maddest Museums

I am fascinated by people turning their daft dreams into a reality. How did they do it and why?'Driven by his own passion for collecting Hunter Davies has packed his notepad and set off in search of Britain's maddest museums. As he explores these hidden gems he soon discovers that they are everywhere and that they celebrate just about everything, from lawnmowers in Southport to pencils in Keswick.But as Hunter travels up and down the country he comes to realise that it isn't only the collections that are fascinating, it's also the people who have put them together. Whether they're a man who loves his Heinz so much he's changed his name to Captain Beany or a kleptomaniac Vintage Radio buff, these eccentric collectors are Britain's finest and could live in no other country in the world.Once you discover these museums and get to know their curators, Great Britain won't look quite the same again...

Hunter Davies (Author), Richard Burnip (Narrator)

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Black Water

John Harper is in hiding in a remote hut on a tropical island. As he lies awake at night, listening to the rain on the roof, he believes his life may be in danger. But he is less afraid of what is going to happen than of what he's already done. In a nearby town, he meets Rita, a woman with her own tragic history. They begin an affair, but can they offer each other redemption? Or do the ghosts of the past always catch up with us in the end? Flashing back from late 1990s Indonesia to Cold War Europe, Harper's childhood in civil rights-era California, and Indonesia during the massacres of 1965 and the subsequent military dictatorship, Black Water explores some of the darkest events of recent history through the story of one troubled man. In this gripping follow-up to Apple Tree Yard, Louise Doughty writes with the intelligence, vivid characterization, and moral ambiguity that make her fiction resonate in the reader's mind long after the final page.

Louise Doughty (Author), Louise Doughty, Richard Burnip (Narrator)

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Bomber

The classic novel of the Second World War that relates in devastating detail the 24-hour story of an allied bombing raid.Bomber is a novel of war. There are no victors, no vanquished. There are simply those who remain alive, and those who die.Bomber follows the progress of an Allied air raid through a period of twenty-four hours in the summer of 1943. It portrays all the participants in a terrifying drama, both in the air and on the ground, in Britain and in Germany.In its documentary style, it is unique. In its emotional power it is overwhelming.Len Deighton has been equally acclaimed as a novelist and as an historian. In Bomber he has combined both talents to produce a masterpiece.

Len Deighton (Author), Richard Burnip (Narrator)

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Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker

With the publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, hailed as the man who "discovered evolution," was propelled into the pantheon of great scientific thinkers, alongside Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton. Eminent writer A. N. Wilson challenges this long-held assumption. Contextualizing Darwin and his ideas, he offers a groundbreaking critical look at this revered figure in modern science.In this beautifully written, deeply erudite portrait, Wilson argues that Darwin was not an original scientific thinker, but a ruthless and determined self-promoter who did not credit the many great sages whose ideas he advanced in his book. Furthermore, Wilson contends that religion and Darwinism have much more in common than it would seem, for the acceptance of Darwin's theory involves a significant leap of faith.Armed with an extraordinary breadth of knowledge, Wilson explores how Darwin and his theory were very much a product of their place and time. The "survival of the fittest" was really the survival of middle class families like the Darwins-members of a relatively new economic strata who benefited from the rising Industrial Revolution at the expense of the working classes. Following Darwin's theory, the wretched state of the poor was an outcome of nature, not the greed and neglect of the moneyed classes. In a paradigm-shifting conclusion, Wilson suggests that it remains to be seen, as this class dies out, whether the Darwinian idea will survive, or whether it, like other Victorian fads, will become a footnote in our intellectual history.Brilliant, daring, and ambitious, Charles Darwin explores this legendary man as never before, and challenges us to reconsider our understanding of both Darwin and modern science itself.

A. N. Wilson (Author), Richard Burnip (Narrator)

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Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine

Brought to you by Penguin. Throughout history, the concept of command -- as both a way to achieve objectives and as an assertion of authority -- has been essential to military action and leadership. But, as Sir Lawrence Freedman shows, it is also deeply political. Military command has been reconstructed and revolutionized since the Second World War by nuclear warfare, small-scale guerrilla land operations and cyber interference. Freedman takes a global perspective, systematically investigating its practice and politics since 1945 through a wide range of conflicts from the French Colonial Wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bangladesh Liberation War to North Vietnam's Easter Offensive of 1972, the Falklands War, the Iraq War and Russia's wars in Chechnya and Ukraine. By highlighting the political nature of strategy, Freedman shows that military decision-making cannot be separated from civilian priorities and that commanders must now have the sensibility to navigate politics as well as warfare. © Lawrence Freedman 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Lawrence Freedman (Author), Richard Burnip (Narrator)

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Dead Man's Land

Deep in the trenches of Flanders Fields, men are dying in their thousands every day. So one more death shouldn't be a surprise. But then a body turns up with bizarre injuries, and Sherlock Holmes' former sidekick Dr John Watson - unable to fight for his country due to injury but able to serve it through his medical expertise - finds his suspicions raised. The face has a blue-ish tinge, the jaw is clamped shut in a terrible rictus and the eyes are almost popping out of his head, as if the man had seen unimaginable horror. Something is terribly wrong. But this is just the beginning. Soon more bodies appear, and Watson must discover who is the killer in the trenches. Who can he trust? Who is the enemy? And can he find the perpetrator before he kills again? Surrounded by unimaginable carnage, amidst a conflict that's ripping the world apart, Watson must for once step out of the shadows and into the limelight if he's to solve the mystery behind the inexplicable deaths.

Robert Ryan (Author), Richard Burnip (Narrator)

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Demon

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. . .

Matt Wesolowski (Author), Anne Dover, David Thorpe, John Telfer, Julie Maisey, Kitty Kelly, Mark Milligan, Richard Burnip, Simon Mattacks (Narrator)

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Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass

Brought to you by Penguin. In the summer of 1964, a reclusive young professor at the University of Edinburgh wrote two scientific papers which have come to change our understanding of the most fundamental building blocks of matter and the nature of the universe. Peter Higgs posited the existence an almost infinitely tiny particle - today known as the Higgs boson - which is the key to understanding why particles have mass, and but for which atoms and molecules could not exist. For nearly 50 years afterwards, some of the largest projects in experimental physics sought to demonstrate the physical existence of the boson which Higgs had proposed. Sensationally, confirmation came in July 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. The following year Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. One of the least-known giants of science, he is the only person in history to have had a single particle named for them. This revelatory book is 'not so much a biography of the man but of the boson named after him'. It brilliantly traces the course of much of twentieth-century physics from the inception of quantum field theory to the completion of the 'standard model' of particles and forces, and the pivotal role of Higgs's idea in this evolution. It also investigates the contested history of Higgs's responsibility for the breakthrough when there were others close by, and explains why the boson is named for him alone. Competition between institutions and states, Close shows, then played as much of a role in creating Higgs's fame as his work itself. Drawing on conversations with Higgs over a decade (a figure generally as elusive as his particle) this is a superb study of a scientist and his era - and of how scientific knowledge advances. © Frank Close 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Frank Close (Author), Richard Burnip (Narrator)

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Jack Wild: It's a Dodger's Life

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.

Claire Harding-Wild, Jack Wild (Author), Claire Harding-Wild, Richard Burnip (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Richard Burnip