Showing results by narrator "Tony Robinson" in All Categories

Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but that looks completely different. It plays by different rules. Certainly it refuses to succumb to the quaint notion that universes are ruled by pure logic and the harmony of numbers. But just because the Disc is different doesn't mean that some things don't stay the same.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse. And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, and a chase....

They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. There are some situations where the correct response is to display the sort of ignorance which happily and wilfully flies in the face of the facts. In this case, the birth of a baby girl...

All is not well within the Unseen University. The endemic politics of the place have ensured that it has finally got what it wished for: the most powerful wizard on the disc - which could mean that the death of all wizardry is at hand. And that the world is going to end, depending on whom you listen to. Unless, of course, one inept wizard can take the University's most precious artefact, the very embodiment of magic itself, and deliver it halfway across the disc to safety.

Finding himself alone on a desert island when everything and everyone he knows and loved has been washed away in a huge storm, Mau is the last surviving member of his nation. He's also completely alone - or so he thinks until he finds the ghost girl. She has no toes, wears strange lacy trousers...

A nightmarish danger threatens from the other side of reality . . . Armed with only a frying pan and her common sense, young witch-to-be Tiffany Aching must defend her home against the monsters of Fairyland. Luckily she has some very unusual help: the local Nac Mac Feegle – aka the Wee Free...

Koom Valley? That was where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs, or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. It was far away. It was a long time ago. But if he doesn't solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch is going to see it fought again, right outside his office. With his beloved Watch crumbling around him and war-drums sounding, he must unravel every clue, outwit every assassin, and brave any darkness to find the solution. And darkness is following him.

Set during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, we meet Max Carrados, the celebrated blind detective who can read a newspaper headline with the touch of his fingers and shoot a villain by aiming at the sound of his beating heart...and Norman Conquest, the fast talking, hard hitting adventurer with a nose for trouble and a hell-rake disregard for danger, who keeps up good cheer while he biffs the baddies...and not forgetting Ben, the chivalrous and perky non-descript little man, whose thumbs itch just before ‘something ‘orrible ‘appens’.

Brought to you by Penguin. William de Worde is the accidental editor of the Discworld's first newspaper. New printing technology means that words just won't obediently stay nailed down like usual. There's a very real threat of news getting out there. Now he must cope with the traditional perils...

A collection of suspenseful standalone radio thrillers by Edward Boyd Scottish writer Edward Boyd was well known for his TV and radio plays, including The Corridor People and The View from Daniel Pike, and he also penned several episodes of Z-Cars. He specialised in the thriller genre, and this...

In Sir Tony Robinson's Weird World of Wonders Greeks, Sir Tony Robinson takes you on a headlong gallop through time, pointing out all the most important, funny, strange, amazing, entertaining, smelly and disgusting bits about the Greeks! It's history, but not as we know it! Find out everything...

Throughout history, there's always been a perfectly good reason to start a war. Never more so if it is over a "strategic" piece of old rock in the middle of nowhere. It is, after all, every citizen's right to bear arms to defend what they consider to be their own. Even if it isn't. And in such pressing circumstances, you really shouldn't let small details like the absence of an army get in the way of a righteous fight with all the attendant benefits of out-and-out nationalism.

"Look after the dead," said the priests, "and the dead will look after you." Wise words in all probability, but a tall order when you have just become the pharaoh of a small and penniless country whose largesse, and indeed treasury, is unlikely to stretch to the building of a monumental pyramid to honour your dead father. And particularly when your only visible means of support is a recently acquired qualification from the Guild of Assassins.

'Just because you can't explain it, doesn't mean it's a miracle.' Religion is a controversial business in the Discworld. Everyone has their own opinion, and indeed their own gods. Who come in all shapes and sizes. In such a competitive environment, there is a pressing need to make one's presence...

Brought to you by Penguin. Dodger is a tosher – a sewer scavenger living in the squalor of Dickensian London. Everyone who is nobody knows Dodger. Anyone who is anybody doesn’t. But when he rescues a young girl from a beating, suddenly everybody wants to know him. And Dodger’s tale of...

There's nothing like the issue of evolution to get under the skin of academics. Especially when those same academics are by chance or bad judgement deposited at a critical evolutionary turning point when one wrong move could have catastrophic results for the future. Unfortunately, in the hands of such an inept and cussed group of individuals, the sensitive issue of causality is, sadly, only likely to receive the same scant respect that they show to one another.

Tiffany Aching put one foot wrong, made one little mistake . . . And now the spirit of winter is in love with her. He gives her roses and icebergs, says it with avalanches and showers her with snowflakes - which is tough when you're 13, but also just a little bit . . . cool. And just because the...

Brought to you by Penguin. Eric is the Discworld's only demonology hacker. Pity he's not very good at it. All he wants is his three wishes granted.Nothing fancy - to be immortal, rule the world, have the most beautiful woman in the world fall madly in love with him, the usual stuff. But instead...

In Sir Tony Robinson's Weird World of Wonders World War I Tony Robinson takes you on a headlong gallop through time, pointing out all the most important, funny, strange, amazing, entertaining, smelly and disgusting bits about World War I. It's history, but not as we know it! Find out everything...

Norman is an idealistic, Beethoven-loving revolutionary. Max is a boring but cheerful timeshare salesman who won't stop talking. Fellow passengers on a flight to the Moon, they're thrown together to become reluctant companions after the lunar shuttle's toilet cubicle explodes, crash-landing them both on the desert sands of a distant alien planet. They are rescued by the friendly Oblivions, who could not be more delighted to see them.