Showing results by narrator "John Telfer"

Walk a day in a Roman's sandals. What was it like to live in one of the ancient world's most powerful and bustling cities - one that was eight times more densely populated than modern-day New York? In this entertaining and enlightening guide, best-selling historian Philip Matyszak introduces us to the people who lived and worked there. In each hour of the day, we meet a new character - from emperor to slave girl, gladiator to astrologer, medicine woman to water-clock maker - and discover the fascinating details of their daily lives.

Geoffrey Staddon turned his back on the best things in his life. He turned his back on the beautiful house Clouds Frome, his finest achievement as an architect. He turned his back on the woman he loved, Consuela Caswell, and who loved him in return. Twelve years later, amidst the tatters of his career and marriage, he is forced to contemplate the remorse and shame of his betrayal. But when he reads that Consuela has been charged with murder, he knows instinctively that she cannot be guilty....

There's only one book that ever truly got inside the Beatles, and this is it. During 1967 and 1968, Hunter Davies spent 18 months with the Beatles at the peak of their powers as they defined a generation and rewrote popular music. As their only-ever authorised biographer, he had unparalleled access - not just to John, Paul, George, and Ringo, but to friends, family, and colleagues. He collected a wealth of intimate and revealing material that makes this the classic Beatles book - the one all other biographers look to.

Berlin, 1940. The city is paralysed by fear. But one man refuses to be scared.Otto, an ordinary German living in a shabby apartment block, tries to stay out of trouble under Nazi rule. But when he discovers his only son has been killed fighting at the front he's shocked into an extraordinary act of resistance, and starts to drop anonymous postcards attacking Hitler across the city. If caught, he will be executed.

John Morris' new book is an investigation into the Clydach murders in South Wales in 1999 in which Mandy Power, her mother and her two daughters were battered to death. Dai Morris was tried twice for these cruel murders and finally convicted in 2006. Yet John Morris, a legal specialist, is certain that Dai Morris is innocent. No fingerprint evidence or DNA connected Morris to the crime; his conviction was based on the lack of a solid alibi, the presence of his gold chain in Power's house and the lies he initially told the police in explanation. 

Tristram Abberley was an acclaimed English poet of the 1930s whose legendary reputation was sealed when he died fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Nearly 50 years later, his sister Beatrix is brutally murdered in her seaside cottage. Her family are stunned by the crime - especially Beatrix's niece, Charlotte Ladram. But Charlotte has little time to mourn her aunt as 50 years of secrets begin to unravel.

George Best is considered the greatest footballer of our time. No other imposed himself so completely on to the romantic imagination. No other was so emblematic of the era during which he flourished. And no other will ever be as memorable as George Best. On the field Best's skills were sublime and almost other-worldly. Off it, he had a magnetic appeal. He was treated like a pop icon and a pin-up; a fashion-model and a sex-symbol. Every man envied him and every woman adored him.

Brought up in a vicarage, Freddy Spencer Chapman acquired a love of nature and became 'fascinated by danger' during childhood. Thirty years later, as an SOE-trained guerilla soldier, the orphan boy would prove to be one of the British army's deadliest agents.

One fateful summer evening, businessman Robin Timariot meets a strikingly beautiful woman while out walking. They exchange only a few words, but those words prove to be unforgettable. A few days later, the newspapers are full of the rape and murder of Lady Louise Paxton - and to his horror, Timariot realises that this was the woman he met just hours before her death. A man is swiftly charged and convicted of the crime, but a series of bizarre events begin to convince Timariot that all is not what it seems.

It should have been an idyllic day for the Turner family - until a dying man, beaten beyond all recognition, arrives at their home, uttering the words 'help me'. Rob and Wendy Turner and their children try to explain away the horrific scene as being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but in the days that follow, their lives are threatened in ways they could never imagine. The family is unaware that they are being watched by someone with their own terrifying agenda, who will stop at nothing to fulfil their own twisted desires.

As a powerful insurgent army closes on Liberia's capital, London is forced to act, and HMS Beaufort is dispatched to West Africa to pull British nationals from the teeth of encroaching danger. But when the volatile situation ashore unravels, the frigate's crew must draw deep on reserves of skill, ingenuity and sheer bloody-mindedness to save it. And with time running out, Beaufort's Captain makes the decision to take his ship upriver....

The first volume of Parade's End introduces the central characters: Christopher Tietjens, a brilliant, unconventional mathematician; his dazzling but unfaithful wife Sylvia; and the young Suffragette Valentine Wannop. It starts with the cataclysmic meeting of Tietjens and Valentine: a weekend whose violence prefigures the coming war.

A crippled cargo ship drifts helplessly in the face of an oncoming hurricane-force storm. On board, a passenger whose presence means the world is watching. Only the skill, determination and raw courage of a lifeboat crew and the British military forces despatched to save them offer any hope of survival. But set against the savagery of the Atlantic even that might not be enough....

Estranged from his family for most of his adult life, Chris Napier is persuaded to return home for his niece's wedding. At the reception, he is shocked to recognise a dishevelled intruder as his childhood friend Nicky Lanyon, whose presence is a chilling reminder of a murder and subsequent trial that Chris has tried hard to forget. When Nicky hangs himself, Chris is compelled to revisit the tragic events of 34 years ago and the apparent justice that was served.

When Belize is invaded by a powerful neighbour, it's Britain that must spring to the defence of this old outpost of empire. But intervening in distant Central America will test the limits of the former colonial power. And in the end the outcome will turn on the skill, boldness and heart-bursting bravery of a handful of British forces already in country....

Much has been written about the Knights Templar in recent years. A leading specialist in the history of this legendary medieval order now writes a full account of the Knights of the Order of the Temple of Solomon, to give them their full title, bringing the latest findings to a general audience. Putting many of the myths finally to rest, Nicholson recounts a new history of these storm troopers of the papacy, founded during the crusades but who got so rich and influential

When a group of missionaries get caught up in bloody African civil war, London is forced to act. For the men of 40 Commando, Royal Marines, it should be a quick in and out. A nice clean operation. But what awaits them will test them like never before. And, facing overwhelming odds, this time the skill and raw courage of these legendary fighting men may not be enough....

Voted the greatest English cricketer of the 20th century by the fans, Sir Ian Botham is the English game’s one true living legend, and his story, both on and off the pitch, reads like a Boy’s Own rollercoaster ride. Born with a natural genius for the game, Botham began breaking records with bat and ball from a young age and soon became the man English cricket expected most from. After a troubled period as captain, Botham rose once again to become a national hero with his display in the Miracle Ashes of 1981.

When Tom Cutter hires Constantine Shaklin as an engineer in his air-freight business, he little realises the extraordinary gifts of his new recruit. Shaklin possesses a religious power which inspires everyone he meets to a new faith and hope for humanity. As Cutter’s business grows across Asia, so does Shaklin’s fame, until he is widely regarded as a unifying deity. Though he struggles to believe Shaklin is indeed divine, Cutter too finds solace in his friend’s teachings, and commits to passing on his message.

A groundbreaking historical study, Norman Stone's The Eastern Front 1914-1917 was the very first authoritative account of the Russian Front in the First World War to be published in the West. In this now-classic history he dispels the myths surrounding a still relatively little-known aspect of the war, showing how inefficiency rather than economic shortage led to Russia's desperate privations and eventual retreat.

He also interprets the connection between the war and the chaos that followed, arguing that although fighting had almost ceased by the end of 1916, Russia was still in turmoil.