Arts & Entertainment

Andy Kershaw truly has no off switch. As a teenager he was promoting major rock gigs. He was Billy Bragg's driver and roadie one day and presenting Whistle Test and Live Aid the next. A passionate music enthusiast, he is a man with an obsessive curiosity about the world. Over a 25 year career, he has worked for the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen, shared an office with John Peel, and amassed a record collection that weighs seven tons. He has won more Sony Radio awards than any other broadcaster. He has visited 97 countries and as a foreign correspondent, filed numerous reports for Radio 4.

When a Martian spacecraft lands on Woking Common, mankind is terrorised by aliens in tall, armoured capsules which stalk the countryside on three legs. The machines wreak havoc on London and the Southern Counties, and survivors are driven underground. Scientist John Nicholson (Paul Daneman) tells how he was plunged into a paralysing nightmare of stark terror, savage madness and utter destruction.

Included in this collection are major works by Matthew Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, William Blake, Rupert Brooke, Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Abraham Crowley, William Cooper, John Donne, Michael Drayton, John Dryden, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Hardy, Robert Herrick, Thomas Gray, Ben Johnson, John Keats, John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Alexander Pope, Sir Walter Raleigh, Christina Rossetti, Sir Walter Scott, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Southey and more!

Accompanies BBC2's major new TV series and The Story of Music in 50 Pieces on Radio 3. Music is an intrinsic part of everyday life, and yet the history of its development from single notes to multi-layered orchestration can seem bewilderingly specialised and complex. In his dynamic tour through 40,000 years of music, from prehistoric instruments to modern-day pop, Howard Goodall does away with stuffy biographies, unhelpful labels and tired terminology.