Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Europe

This intimate, personal biography of Queen Elizabeth II tells the story of her remarkable life, reign and times, from a perspective unlike any other. Gyles Brandreth writes the Queen's tale candidly with grace and sensitivity from the view of someone who met her, talked with her and kept a record of those conversations. Brandreth knew the Queen's husband well and knows the new King and Queen Consort.

Born in Chicago in 1897, 'Chips' Channon settled in England after the Great War, married into the immensely wealthy Guinness family, and served as Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea from 1935 until his death in 1958. His career was unremarkable. His diaries are quite the opposite. Elegant, gossipy and bitchy by turns, they are the unfettered observations of a man who went everywhere and who knew everybody.

As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent. The traumatic civil wars, regicide and a republican Commonwealth were followed by the floundering foreign-leaning rule of Charles II and his brother, James II, before William of Orange invaded England with a Dutch army and a new order was imposed.

Brought to you by Penguin. Get In is the definitive behind-the-scenes account of Labour’s brutal reinvention and dramatic return to power under Keir Starmer. From electoral wipeout in 2019 to landslide victory in 2024 and on into Labour’s first hundred days in government, Get In is a...

There are fewer than 5000 people who can genuinely claim to be members of the British aristocracy, and yet they loom large in the popular consciousness. We're fascinated by their houses and estates, their lives and loves, their foibles and eccentricities. And we entertain the strong suspicion that, while they may be fellow citizens, they are very far from being People Like Us. In Heirs and Graces Eleanor Doughty draws on her unparalleled access to a bewildering range of dukes, duchesses, earls and others to create a vivid picture of who they are and how they tick.

In Hope and Glory, Stuart goes in search of the places, people and events of the century we have just left behind that have shaped the look and character of modern Britain. From the death of Victoria to the demise of New Labour, he takes a single event from each decade of the 20th century that offers up a defining moment in our history and then goes in search of its legacy today.

Sometimes you come across a lofty railway viaduct marooned in the middle of a remote country landscape. Or a crumbling platform from some once-bustling junction buried under the buddleia. If you are lucky you might be able to follow some rusting tracks or explore an old tunnel leading to...well, who knows where? Listen hard. Is that the wind in the undergrowth? Or the spectre of a train from a golden era of the past panting up the embankment?

In 1936 anthropologist Tom Harrison, poet and journalist Charles Madge and documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings set up the Mass Observation Project. The idea was simple: ordinary people would record, in diary form, the events of their everyday lives. An estimated one million pages eventually found their way to the archive - and it soon became clear this was more than anyone could digest. Today, the diaries are stored at the University of Sussex, where, remarkably, most remain unread.

A Top 100 Book by the Schomburg Library “At once narrative history, family chronicle and personal memoir… [a] luminous work of investigation and introspection.” -Wall Street Journal National Humanities Medal recipient and two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize David Levering Lewis’s...

"Masterful . . . [A] painstakingly researched, astonishingly erudite study…Tooze has added his name to the roll call of top-class scholars of Nazism." —Financial Times An extraordinary mythology has grown up around the Third Reich that hovers over political and moral debate even today. Adam...

A naive young man, a railway enthusiast and radio buff, was caught up in the fall of the British Empire at Singapore in 1942. He was put to work on the 'Railway of Death' - the Japanese line from Thailand to Burma. Exhaustively and brutally tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio...

From the New York Times bestselling author, the incredible true story of the American archaeologists and classicists who went undercover as OSS spies during World War II to fight the Nazis and protect the world's most precious relics In 1942, as head of the newly formed OSS, Wild Bill Donovan...

When a young Mary McAleese told a priest that she planned to become a lawyer, the priest dismissed the idea: she knew no one in the law, and she was female. The reality of what she went on to achieve - despite those obstacles, and despite a sectarian attack that forced her family to flee their home - is even more improbable. In this luminous memoir, Mary McAleese traces that astonishing arc: from the tight streets of north Belfast, to a professorship in Dublin while still in her twenties, behind-the-scenes work on the peace process, and two triumphant terms as President of Ireland.

Written by the Officer Commanding and former Red 1 Team Leader, Wing Commander David Montenegro, and full of never-before-shared tales from pilots past and present, this thrilling history is both a faithful record and a fascinating account of not only what it takes, but what it means, to be a Red Arrow.

In this timely and provocative audiobook, Stuart Maconie tells Britain’s Welfare State story through his own history of growing up as a northern working class boy. What was so bad about properly funded hospitals, decent working conditions and affordable houses? And what was so wrong about student grants, free eye tests and council houses? And where did it all go so wrong? Stuart looks toward Britain’s future, making an emotional case for believing in more than profit and loss and championing a just, fairer society.

‘Oh my goodness - another girl, Mrs Swain!' Clara's normal iron composure broke, and she screamed, ‘No! That's not the bloody deal!' And that was how my nanna, Bertha Swain, entered the world. When Helen Batten's marriage breaks down, she starts on a journey of discovery into her family's past and the mysteries surrounding her enigmatic nanna's early life. What she unearths is a tale of five feisty redheads struggling to climb out of poverty and find love through two world wars.

This audio original from the acclaimed author of American Sherlock, and the host of multiple true-crime podcasts, including Wicked Words, tells the fascinating story of the supernatural, and the club that united some of the world's most illustrious thinkers. For more than a century, some of the...

Bertie Ahern, three times Irish Taoiseach, is often described as an enigma. The Old IRA man's son who delivered peace in Northern Ireland. A working class boy responsible for the Celtic Tiger. An ardent nationalist admired by European leaders. Now in this frank and revealing autobiography, Ahern gives his own account of a remarkable political life and the personal story that accompanies it.

Brought to you by Penguin. George Mikes's perceptive manual for everyone who longs to attain True Britishness provides a complete guide to the British Way of Life. Having been born in Hungary, he eventually spent more than forty years in the field, and the fruits of his labour include insights...

Following the success of Rees's best-selling Auschwitz, this substantially revised and updated edition of The Nazis - A Warning from History tells the powerfully gripping story of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. During a 16-year period, acclaimed author and documentary-maker Laurence Rees met and interviewed a large number of former Nazis, and his unique insights into the Nazi psyche and World War II received enormous praise.