Showing results by narrator "Bill Wallis" in All Categories

Victor Maskell has been betrayed. After the announcement in the Commons, the hasty revelation of his double life of wartime espionage, his photograph is all over the papers. His disgrace is public, his position as curator of the Queen’s pictures terminated… Maskell writes his own testament, in an act not unlike the restoration of one of his beloved pictures, in order for the process of verification and attribution to begin.

A. A. Milne is most prominently remembered as the author of the well-known Winnie-the-Pooh tales, written for his son, Christopher Robin. Milne was born in London and raised in his father's private school, Henley House, after which he attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, to study mathematics. By 1925 he had published 18 plays and 3 novels, including The Red House Mystery (1922).

In 1920s Leicester, Lewis Eliot must escape the drudgery of a council clerk's office and his provincial lower class background to begin his decades-long rise to power. As the years pass, and Lewis progresses to successful London lawyer, to Cambridge don, to wartime service in Whitehall, to senior civil servant and finally retirement, he faces in his own life and the lives of those around him collapsing marriages, terrible illness, the politics of academia, Nazism, nuclear weapons, the price of power and the ever-present realities of war.

Rumpole isn't particularly fond of Christmas; he finds it has a horrible habit of dragging on as he and She Who Must Be Obeyed go through the usual rituals in Froxbury Mansions. After the exchange of presents (lavender water for her, a tie for him) they settle down to a supermarket turkey with all the trimmings, followed by a glass of port. The only excitement comes in deciding whether to stand for the national anthem after the Queen's Speech.

Is the Greek alphabet all Greek to you? Is geometry your Achilles heel and does your knowledge of Homer have more to do with The Simpsons than the Sirens? From engineering and architecture to drama and democracy, the world around us is founded on the principles and discoveries of the Ancient World, yet our understanding of it is episodic at best. But it's never too late to learn.

Polish-born author and mariner Joseph Conrad is widely regarded as one of the greatest English novelists. His 16 years in the merchant navy profoundly shaped his fiction, giving him transformative experiences of adventure and exotic places, and a unique insight into the human psyche. Included here are adaptations of six of his best works, brought together for the first time and collected in chronological order, plus one fascinating bonus programmes exploring his life and art.

Following the best-selling Summer of a Dormouse, Sir John Mortimer - playwright, novelist, octogenarian, and erstwhile QC - offers up more lessons in living and growing old disgracefully. What would we like to leave to our descendants? Not a third-rate painting or our PEPS, according to Sir John, but a love of Shakespeare, a taste for alcohol, the ability to defeat boredom, the importance of never locking the lavatory door, and so on.

When the middle-class Empsons move from London to picturesque Winterleaf Gunner, they find themselves totally unprepared for country life - and utterly reliant on Winston. Handyman, village poacher, scholar, gentleman romantic and out-and-out rogue, Winston transforms their lives, fixing up their dilapidated house, introducing them to the works of Kingsley Amis - and giving Nancy a lesson in love.

Award-winning author Lynne Reid Banks is perhaps best known for her classic children's book The Indian in the Cupboard. But it was her groundbreaking debut novel for adults, The L-Shaped Room, that made her name. First published in 1960, it was an instant success and has been in print ever since. This collection contains both The L-Shaped Room and sequel The Backward Shadow, as well as two stories specially written for BBC radio and a bonus edition of Bookclub.

We last left Rumpole in his hospital bed after his sudden collapse in court. Now our hero finds himself in the Primrose Path nursing home - or a hospice as he persists in describing it. Things aren't looking good for Rumpole - until suddenly he begins to sense there's something wrong with the place, and all his intelligence and formidable insight into human behaviour come to the fore again.

Major Ernest Pettigrew (Ret’d) is not interested in the frivolity of the modern world. Since his wife Nancy’s death, he has tried to avoid the constant bother of nosy village women; his grasping, ambitious son; and the ever-spreading suburbanisation of the English countryside, preferring to lead a quiet life upholding the values that people have lived by for generations. But when his brother’s death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs Ali, the widowed village shopkeeper of Pakistani descent, the Major is drawn out of his regimented world.

Just before dawn one late-summer morning, Captain Bruno Courrèges is roused from sleep by the wail of the town siren atop the Mairie, summoning the volunteer firemen of St Denis. Bruno, the only policeman in the small Périgord town, follows the fire engines towards the site of a large barn, now engulfed in flames, the surrounding fields ablaze. Everything points to arson. A Californian wine maker is planning to buy up half the valley to create a huge wine-producing operation.

France’s Périgord region is the home of the black truffle and at five thousand euros a kilo, the exquisite ‘Black Diamond’ is a treasured local asset. When reports come in that this unique delicacy is being adulterated with a cheaper Chinese version, Captain Bruno Courrèges is asked to investigate the scam. But matters take a much darker turn when a horrific murder occurs, and Bruno has his work cut out to find the connection between present crimes and long-buried ones that are linked to France’s colonial past.

ASBOs may be the pride and joy of New Labour, but they don't cut much ice with Horace Rumpole - he takes the old-fashioned view that if anyone is going to be threatened with a restriction of their liberty then some form of legal proceeding ought to be gone through first. When one of the Timson children is given an ASBO for playing football in the street, Rumpole soon realizes something fishy is going on.

The irrepressible, audacious defence barrister Horace Rumpole is back with seven marvelous stories by John Mortimer. The much loved stories were adapted from his scripts for the hugely popular TV series of the same name.

An anthology of over 50 classic poems, read by some of our finest actors. This collection contains a selection of the very best poems, from verses inspired by love to war poetry, nature poems and children's rhymes.

Charlie and his friends are back in danger, and the balance of power between the Children of the Red King has never been more dangerous. In a dark laboratory deep within Bloor’s Academy, Manfred and Ezekiel are brewing up a very nasty kind of trouble for Charlie Bone...The fifth fantastic story in the Charlie Bone series, from acclaimed author Jenny Nimmo.

Are you a day-dreamer? A bad loser? A nose-picker? Nothing wrong with that, you might think. But just see how GRIZZLY these things can get! Includes 'Revenge of the Bogeyman', 'The Upset Stomach' and 'Bunny Boy'. More horribly enjoyable short stories from bestselling author Jamie Rix.

Alexander Cleave, actor, has left his career and his family behind and banished himself to his childhood home. He wants to retire from life, but finds this impossible in a house brimming with presences, some ghostly, some undeniably human. Memories, anxiety for the future, and more particularly, for his beloved but troubled daughter, conspire to distract him from his dreaming retirement.

During his time as an inspector with the Paris Sûreté, Monsieur Pamplemousse had been 'in at the death' on more than one occasion, but even he had to admit that the phrase took on an entirely new meaning when he was present at the spectacular ending to Cuisine de Chavignol, France's premier television cookery programme.