Showing results by narrator "Mark Elstob" in All Categories

After almost a decade and a half of Tory rule, the 2024 General Election saw the Conservatives suffer their worst-ever defeat: they received 7.14 million fewer votes than in 2019; 23.7 per cent is their lowest ever vote share; and their current 121 MP contingent is their smallest since 1832...

THE BESTSELLING AND CONTROVERSIAL BIOGRAPHY Britain's leading investigative writer and biographer, Tom Bower turns the full beam of his formidable powers on one of the most controversial figures of present day: Mohamed Al Fayed. Owner of Harrods, bereaved father of Dodi and instigator of the...

Liz Truss's disastrous premiership was the shortest and most chaotic in British history. In the space of just 49 days, Truss witnessed the death of the longest-reigning monarch, attempted to remould the economy, triggered a collapse in the value of Sterling and was forced on a series of embarrassing U-turns that ultimately led to her resignation. The aftershocks of her time in office are still felt today. How did she blow her opportunity so spectacularly?

Geography comes before history. Islands cannot have the same history as continental plains. The United Kingdom is a European country, but not the same kind of European country as Germany, Poland or Hungary. For most of the 150 centuries during which Britain has been inhabited it has been on the edge, culturally and literally, of mainland Europe.

The Roman empire shaped the culture of the Western world against which all other great powers are compared. Stretching from the north of Britain to the Sahara, and from the Atlantic coast to the Euphrates, it imposed peace and prosperity on an unprecedented scale. However, the exception lay in the east, where the Parthian and then Persian empires ruled over great cities and the trade routes to mysterious lands beyond. This was the place Alexander the Great had swept through, creating a dream of glory and conquest which tantalized Greeks and Romans alike. 

*EBRD LITERATURE PRIZE FINALIST* *LOCUS FINALIST FOR BEST TRANSLATED NOVEL 2026* A Trans-Siberian odyssey through political, criminal, scientific, philosophical and amorous intrigues, and into an endless winter to confront something utterly alien. 14th July 1924: In a Warsaw buried under feet of...

Brought to you by Penguin. While staying closely aligned with Hitler, Mussolini remained carefully neutral until the summer of 1940. Then, with the wholly unexpected and sudden collapse of the French and British armies, Mussolini declared war on the Allies in the hope of making territorial gains...

Bloomsbury presents The Rise and Fall of the British Army, 1975 - 2025 by Ben Barry, read by Mark Elstob. A new study of a critical period in the history of the British Army. The last half century has seen society, technology, the character of conflict and the British Army itself all change...

Bloomsbury presents Athens and Sparta by Adrian Goldsworthy, read by Mark Elstob. Two great cities. One fierce rivalry. Countless untold stories. Athens and Sparta were the two big players in Ancient Greece. United, they helped lead the Greeks in defeating the great Persian invasion. Divided...

After his sudden rise to power in the summer of 2019 amid the Brexit deadlock, Boris Johnson presided over the most dramatic period of British history in almost a century. From the controversial prorogation of Parliament in August 2019 to the historic landslide victory later that year, the agonising upheaval of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic—and the scandals unleashed by both—the Afghanistan crisis, and the conflict in Ukraine, Johnson's premiership was more turbulent than any other in living memory.

In Nero's Rome, ambition is a dangerous thing... Agricola has won renown for his military exploits in Britannia. Now returned to Rome with his new family, he seeks to rise further—but life in the greatest city on earth proves more difficult than he expected. Roman politics are on a knife-edge—often literally. The Emperor Nero is unpredictable, the manner of his rule unstable.

'I recommend our diplomats and ministers read this book: it will provide them with an intellectual backbone. On the big calls [Bootle] has a spectacularly good record.' - The Sunday Times 'Bootle is right on every count.' - The Guardian The Extensively Revised 5th Edition of this Highly...

Bloomsbury presents… Emperor of the Seas: Kublai Khan and the Making of China by Jack Weatherford, read by Mark Elstob Control the sea, and you control everything...a gripping tale of naval warfare, dynastic rivalry, and technical innovation, from the author of the classic work Genghis Khan...

The latest book in Alexander McCall Smith's entertaining and hilarious Professor von Igelfeld series Professor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld is not just any German professor - he is the author of that great work of scholarship, Portuguese Irregular Verbs. His eminence in language studies is widely...

The story of how our ancestors made the first tentative steps towards becoming human, how we lost our fur but gained language, fire and tools, and how we strode out of Africa, invented farming and cities and ultimately created modern civilisation. Where did we come from? Where are we going? Homo sapiens is the most successful, the most widespread and the most influential species ever to walk the Earth.

In the teeming underhive of Hive Primus, the de facto capital of Necromunda, untold billions clamour for scraps as they attempt to eke out something barely resembling an existence. While the gilded elite enjoy the trappings of luxury in the towering spires above and the lowest of the low barely survive, many turn to the streets and each other for survival, and these are some of their stories.

First in a fast-paced historical adventure series from New York Times bestselling author Boyd Morrison and expert medievalist Beth Morrison. England, 1351. The Pestilence has ravaged the land. Villages lie abandoned but for crows and corpses. Highways are patrolled by marauders and murderers. In...

The definitive life story of the Roman Emperor who shaped modern times. In this groundbreaking new biography of Justinian, Peter Sarris gives us an intimate insight into both the Emperor and the man. We meet a man who from the humblest beginnings, rose to become ruler of much of the known world...

Bloomsbury presents Korea: War Without End by Richard Dannatt and Robert Lyman, read by Mark Elstob A ground-breaking history of this global conflict including the errors and miscalculations made on both sides. Korea: War Without End examines the stand-off between East and West in Korea that...

As the eldest daughter of the Earl of Cottesmore, Lady Mercedes Stanhope didn't expect to be still without a husband at the start of her third season. And neither did she expect to be the target of a kidnapping attempt on her journey home from Scotland. But most of all, she didn't expect to experience such an emotional connection to the man who came to her rescue…