Showing results by narrator "Tim Smith" in All Categories

You'll be awe-inspired by the heroic efforts of the crew of the Endurance, a ship that battled its way for six weeks through thousands of miles of pack ice while ironically only a day's sail from its destination.

Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard was made to look a fool in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Now he gets his own back, introducing 16 tales of detectives whose abilities rival that of the great Sherlock Holmes.

Anthony Trollope was one of Victorian England’s most popular and prolific authors. He worked for the Post Office while establishing himself as a writer, and is credited with introducing the pillar box to Britain. Best known for his ‘Barsetshire’ and ‘Palliser’ novels, he wrote over 50 works in total, including short stories, travel books, biographies and a posthumously published autobiography. Collected here are a selection of superb adaptations of his much-loved novels, as well as a fascinating documentary and an original radio play by Patricia Cumper.

An exploration of the British monarchy from the retreat of the Romans up until the modern day. The monarchy is one of Britain’s longest surviving institutions – as well as one of its most tumultuous and revered. In this masterful book, David Starkey looks at the monarchy as a whole, charting...

Brought to you by Penguin. A leak is traced to a small sub-section of the secret service, sparking off the inevitable security checks, tensions and suspicions. The sort of atmosphere, perhaps, where mistakes could be made? For Maurice Castle, it is the end of the line anyway, and time for him to...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a titanic among the world's great authors, and The Brothers Karamazov is often hailed as his finest novel. A masterpiece on many levels, it transcends the boundaries of a gripping murder mystery to become a moving account of the battle between love and hate, faith and despair, compassion and cruelty, good and evil.

The events of 1950-1999 are described by the people who saw them happen, from the Festival of Britain in 1951 through to the dawn of a new millennium at the end of 1999. In between are the eras of the Angry Young Men, the Teddy Boys and the Punk Rockers; the arrival of rock and roll and the permissive society; the advent of industrial strife in England and sectarian unrest in Northern Ireland; the rise to power of Margaret Thatcher; the miners' strike, three-day week and Winter of Discontent; the Queen's Silver Jubilee....

How far would you go to find yourself? The lyrical, life-affirming novel from the bestselling author of Private Peaceful. There were dozens of us on the ship, all ages, boys and girls, and we were all up on deck for the leaving of Liverpool, gulls wheeling and crying over our heads, calling...

Eyewitness accounts from the BBC Archive are at the heart of this unique history of the first half of the 20th Century, narrated by Tim Pigott-Smith. The events of 1900-1949 are described by the people who saw them happen, from the death of Queen Victoria and accession of Edward VII through the...

The RMS Titanic sailed from Southampton en route for New York on her maiden voyage with 2228 passengers and crew on board. On the 14th April at twenty minutes before midnight, sailing at almost full speed, she struck an iceberg and sank in just two and a half hours. Over 1500 lives were lost...

Anthony Trollope's series of witty, gently satirical stories of provincial life are set in the fictional town of Barchester and the surrounding county of Barsetshire. With a focus on the lives, loves and tribulations of the local clergy and rural gentry, the canvas is broad and colourful, with a set of iconic characters in whose lives we become intimately involved as they grow up, grow old, and fall in or out of love and friendship across the years.

Tim Piggot-Smith reads J. Meade Falkner's exciting tale of a boy who gets caught up in a dangerous adventure with smugglers and treasure. Orphaned John Trenchard is just 15 when his adventures begin... Growing up by the sea in the village of Moonfleet, John is captivated by the local legend of the ghostly Blackbeard, who rises on winter nights to search for his lost treasure.

The thrilling launch of David Starkey's new mammoth venture – MONARCHY: three books linked to 18 hours of television on the Kings and Queens of England. Volume 1 The Early Kings covers the retreat of the Romans from Britain in 410 to the fall of the House of Lancaster in the middle of the 15th...

Max Skinner, man about town and successful City slicker, finds himself suddenly redundant and instead of rejoining the rat race he has an opportunity to start a new life when he finds he has inherited an 18th century vineyard in Provence. It sounds ideal but life has a habit of surprising even...

Nine classic works by the Russian literary giant, adapted for BBC Radio Ivan Turgenev stands alongside Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as one of the three great Russian novelists of the 19th century. He was also a consummate short story writer, poet and playwright, and the first Russian author to become...

On 1 July 1916, Dauglas Haig's army launched the 'Big Push' that was supposed finally to bring the end to the stalemate on the Western Front. What happened next was a human catastrophe: scrambling over the top into the face of the German machine guns and artillery fire, almost 20,000 British and...

Rudyard Kipling's short stories of life in the British Raj began in 1888 as journalistic snippets written to supplement his more serious factual output when he was employed as the assistant editor, at the meagre age of 20, of the Lahori-based Civil and Military Gazette.

Five classic novelisations of TV adventures set in Earth’s history. In Doctor Who: The Aztecs the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan materialise in Mexico during the bloodthirsty Aztec civilisation. In Doctor Who and the Crusaders the First Doctor and his friends are embroiled in the 12th...

Visionary author and journalist George Orwell was the man behind two of the best-loved and most influential novels of the 20th century: Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. This collection celebrating his life and work features dramatisations of both these classic books, with stellar casts including Christopher Eccleston, Pippa Nixon, Tim Pigott-Smith, Tamsin Greig and Nicky Henson. 

The continuing story of Arthur, the second in a trilogy which began with THE WINTER KING. The novels bring Arthur and his world to vivid life. A man battling for his vision of the future in a brutal age, dragged down by suspicions and magics of the past, surrounded by intrigue, dependent on his...