Europe Audiobooks | Travel

A Short History of Ireland, 1500-2000

A brisk, concise, and readable overview of Irish history from the Protestant Reformation to the dawn of the twenty-first century. Five centuries of Irish history are explored in this informative and accessible volume. John Gibney proceeds from the beginning of Ireland's modern period and continues through to virtually the present day, offering an integrated overview of the island nation's cultural, political, and socioeconomic history. This succinct, scholarly study covers important historical events, including the Cromwellian conquest and settlement, the Great Famine, and the struggle for Irish independence. Gibney's book explores major themes such as Ireland's often contentious relationship with Britain, its place within the British Empire, the impact of the Protestant Reformation, the ongoing religious tensions it inspired, and the global reach of the Irish diaspora. This unique, wide-ranging work assimilates the most recent scholarship on a wide range of historical controversies, making it an essential addition to the library of any student of Irish studies.

John Gibney (Author), Gerard Doyle (Narrator)

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A Short History of London: The Creation of a World Capital

Brought to you by Penguin. LONDON: a settlement founded by the Romans, occupied by the Saxons, conquered by the Danes and ruled by the Normans. This unremarkable place - not even included in the Domesday Book - became a medieval maze of alleys and courtyards, later to be chequered with grand estates of Georgian splendour. It swelled with industry and became the centre of the largest empire in history. And rising from the rubble of the Blitz, it is now one of the greatest cities in the world. From the prehistoric occupants of the Thames valley to the preoccupied commuters of today, Simon Jenkins brings together the key events, individuals and trends in London's history to create a matchless portrait of the capital. Based in part on his own witness of the events that shaped the post-war city, and with his trademark colour and authority, he shows above all how London has taken shape over more than two thousand years. This is narrative history at its finest, from the most ardent protector of our heritage.

Simon Jenkins (Author), Anthony Howell (Narrator)

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A Small Town in Ukraine: The place we came from, the place we went back to

Brought to you by Penguin. Decades ago, the historian Bernard Wasserstein set out to uncover the hidden past of the town forty miles west of Lviv where his family, especially his grandfather Berl, originated: Krakowiec (Krah-KOV-yets). In this book he recounts its dramatic and traumatic history. 'I want to observe and understand how some of the great forces that determined the shape of our times affected ordinary people.' Wasserstein traces the arc of history across centuries of religious and political conflict, as armies of Cossacks, Turks, Swedes and Muscovites rampaged through the region. In the Age of Enlightenment, the Polish magnate Ignacy Cetner built his palace at Krakowiec and, with his vivacious daughter, Princess Anna, created an arcadia of refinement and serenity. Under the Habsburg emperors after 1772, Krakowiec developed into a typical shtetl, with a jostling population of Poles, Ukrainians and Jews. In 1914, disaster struck. 'Seven years of terror and carnage' left a legacy of ferocious national antagonisms. During the Second World War the Jews were murdered in circumstances harrowingly described by Wasserstein. After the war the Poles were expelled and the town dwindled into a border outpost. Today, the storm of history once again rains down on Krakowiec as hordes of refugees flee for their lives from Ukraine. In the lives of Wasserstein's own family and the many others he has rediscovered, the people of Krakowiec become a prism through which we can feel the shocking immediacy of history. Original in conception and brilliantly achieved, A Small Town in Ukraine is a masterpiece of recovery and insight. ©2023 Bernard Wasserstein (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Bernard Wasserstein (Author), Steve John Shepherd (Narrator)

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A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

Master storyteller Ben Macintyre's most ambitious work to date brings to life thetwentieth century's greatest spy story. Kim Philby was the greatest spy in history, a brilliant and charming man who rose to head Britain's counterintelligence against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War-while he was secretly working for the enemy. And nobody thought he knew Philby like Nicholas Elliott, Philby's best friend and fellow officer in MI6. The two men had gone to the same schools, belonged to the same exclusive clubs, grown close through the crucible of wartime intelligence work and long nights of drink and revelry. It was madness for one to think the other might be a communist spy, bent on subverting Western values and the power of the free world. But Philby was secretly betraying his friend. Every word Elliott breathed to Philby was transmitted back to Moscow-and not just Elliott's words, for in America, Philby had made another powerful friend: James Jesus Angleton, the crafty, paranoid head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton's and Elliott's unwitting disclosures helped Philby sink almost everyimportant Anglo-American spy operation for twenty years, leading countless operatives to their doom. Even as the web of suspicion closed around him, and Philby was driven to greater lies to protect his cover, his two friends never abandoned him-until it was too late. The stunning truth of his betrayal would have devastating consequences on the two men who thought they knew him best, and on the intelligence services he left crippled in his wake. Told with heart-pounding suspense and keen psychological insight, and based on personal papers and never-before-seen British intelligence files, A Spy Among Friends is Ben Macintyre's best book yet, a high-water mark in Cold War history telling. From the Hardcover edition.

Ben Macintyre (Author), John Lee (Narrator)

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A Summer with Montaigne: On the Art of Living Well

Michel de Montaigne embodies the humanist ideal-curious, measured, contemplative yet not unworldly, witty, free of prejudice, and urbane. But what does this French Renaissance philosopher have to tell us about how to think and live today? In forty short, erudite, and lively chapters written over a single summer, Antoine Compagnon seeks answers to that question. In A Summer with Montaigne, Compagnon invites his readers to join him as he strolls through Montaigne's key contributions to our understanding of what is good and worthwhile in life. This engaging book, then, serves as both an introduction to Montaigne for readers unfamiliar with his work and a refresher for those who are already acquainted with his unique brilliance, vitality, and timeliness. Montaigne's Essays deal with themes that remain relevant today, from the problems posed by religion, war, power, and friendship to the absurdity of our fixations and peccadillos. Accompanying readers through the Essays, Compagnon never pontificates and is never austere. Rather, he approaches Montaigne with a sense of humor, admiration, and joy.

Antoine Compagnon (Author), Fred Stella (Narrator)

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A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel has sold over 200 million copies making it the bestselling novel of all time. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralised by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same period. It follows the lives of several characters through these events.

Charles Dickens (Author), Bob Neufeld (Narrator)

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A Thing of Beauty

LONGLISTED FOR THE ANGLO-HELLENIC LEAGUE RUNCIMAN AWARD 2022 What do the Greek myths mean to us today? It's now a golden age for these tales - they crop up in novels, films and popular culture. But what's the modern relevance of Theseus, Hera and Pandora? Were these stories ever meant for children? And what's to be seen now at the places where heroes fought and gods once quarrelled? Peter Fiennes travels to the sites of some of the most famous Greek myths, on the trail of hope, beauty and a new way of seeing what we have done to our world. Fiennes walks through landscapes - stunning and spoiled - on the trail of dancing activists and Arcadian shepherds, finds the 'most beautiful beach in Greece', consults the Oracle, and loses himself in the cities, remote villages and ruins of this storied land. 'Peter Fiennes's road trip around Greece [is] engagingly described' Mary Beard, TLS 'Fiennes is a brilliant and generous guide through Greece' Observer 'A wonderful book by a wonderful writer.' Tom Holland 'A wonderful... really profound meditation on what it means to hope... a gorgeous excursion into Greece and across the centuries on an environmental quest' BBC Radio 4 Open Book BOOK OF THE YEAR choice by Anita Roy 'Immensely pleasurable...takes you on an adventure around Greece and the myths that the ancients told there. But what really stayed with me were the reflections on storytelling, joy, and hope. Essential for our pandemic and pollution ravaged times.' Helen Morales, author of Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths

Peter Fiennes (Author), Peter Fiennes (Narrator)

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A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World Through Medieval Eyes

Brought to you by Penguin. From the medieval souks of Tabriz, to the mysterious island of Caldihe, where sheep were said to grow on trees, Anthony Bale brings history alive in A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages, inviting the reader to travel across a medieval world punctuated with miraculous wonders and long-lost landmarks. Journeying alongside scholars, spies and saints, from western Europe to the Far East and the Antipodes, this is no ordinary travel guide. From profane pilgrim badges and Venetian laxatives to encounters with bandits and trysts with mysterious medieval witches, this book mixes fact and folklore to offer an entertaining encyclopaedia of wondrous stories and peoples. Using previously untranslated contemporary accounts from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, Armenia, north Africa, and Russia, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages blurs the distinction between real and imagined places, offering the reader a vivid and unforgettable insight into how medieval people understood their world. ©2023 Anthony Bale (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Anthony Bale (Author), Esh Alladi (Narrator)

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A Very Private School

In this poignant memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the trauma of being sent away from home at age eight to attend a boarding school. A Very Private School offers a clear-eyed, firsthand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Spencer attended in his youth and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding system. Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, he reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt aged eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all. Exploring the long-lasting impact of his experiences, Spencer presents a candid reckoning with his past and a reclamation of his childhood.

Charles Spencer (Author), Charles Spencer, TBD (Narrator)

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A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism

New from the author of Travellers in the Third Reich - the Sunday Times Top Three bestseller and Waterstones Book of the Month: a stunningly evocative portrait of Hitler's Germany through the people of a single village. Oberstdorf is a beautiful village high up in the Bavarian Alps, a place where for hundreds of years ordinary people lived simple lives while history was made elsewhere. Yet even here, in the farthest corner of Germany, National Socialism sought to control not only people's lives but also their minds. Drawing on archive material, letters, interviews and memoirs, A Village in the Third Reich is an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Germany under Hitler, of the descent into totalitarianism and of the tragedies that befell all of those touched by Nazism. In its pages we meet the Jews who survived - and those who didn't; the Nazi mayor who tried to shield those persecuted by the regime; and a blind boy whose life was thought 'not worth living'. It is a tale of conflicting loyalties and desires, of shattered dreams, despair and destruction - but one in which, ultimately, human resilience triumphs. These are the stories of ordinary lives at the crossroads of history. Praise for Travellers in the Third Reich: 'Compelling' Daily Telegraph 'Thought-provoking reading' Literary Review 'Fascinating' Spectator 'Absorbing and stimulating' Mail on Sunday

Angelika Patel, Julia Boyd (Author), Julie Teal (Narrator)

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A Visitor's Companion to Tudor England

Brought to you by Penguin. Join historian Suzannah Lipscomb as she reveals the hidden secrets of palaces, castles, theatres and abbeys to uncover the stories of Tudor England. From the famous palace at Hampton Court where dangerous court intrigue was rife, to less well-known houses, such as Anne Boleyn's childhood home at Hever Castle or Tutbury Castle where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned, follow in the footsteps of the Tudors in the places that they knew. In the corridors of power and the courtyards of country houses we meet the passionate but tragic Kateryn Parr, Henry VIII's last wife, Lady Jane Grey the nine-day queen, and hear how Sir Walter Raleigh planned his trip to the New World. This lively and engaging book reveals the rich history of the Tudors and paints a vivid and captivating picture of what it would have been like to live in Tudor England. © Suzannah Lipscomb 2012 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Suzannah Lipscomb (Author), Suzannah Lipscomb (Narrator)

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A Visitor's Guide to Georgian England

'The author has done an outstanding job of making the colorful Georgian world come alive in all its contradictory, bawdy, and utterly fascinating glory.' -Britain Express Could you successfully be a Georgian? Find yourself immersed in the pivotal world of Georgian England, exciting times to live in. Everything was booming-the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the nascent Empire-in an era inhabited by Mary Shelley, the Romantic poets, and their contemporaries. Find everything you need to know in order to survive as a time traveler from today, undetected among the ordinary people: how to dress, behave yourself in public, earn a living, and find somewhere to live. Just as importantly, you will be given advice on how to stay on the right side of the law, and how to avoid getting seriously ill. Monica Hall creatively evokes this bygone era, filling this book with all aspects of daily life within the period, calling upon diaries, illustrations, letters, poetry, prose, eighteenth century laws, and archives. This detailed account intimately explores the ever-changing lives of those who lived through Britain's imperial prowess, the birth of modern capitalism, and the upheaval of the industrial revolution, major political reform, and class division.

Monica Hall (Author), Anne Flosnik (Narrator)

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Europe Audiobooks in Travel