After nearly two decades in England, Bill Bryson returned to live in the country he had left as a youth. Of course there were things that Bryson missed about Blighty, but any sense of loss was countered by the joy of rediscovering some of the forgotten treasures of his childhood. Gathered here are 18 months' worth of musings about the strangest of...

On 27 August 1883, a terrifying volcanic eruption occurred on the island of Krakatoa, five miles off the western tip of Java, Indonesia. The island was destroyed and almost 40,000 people were killed - ships sailing in the Red Sea were covered in ash; barometers went haywire in Washington and immense rafts of pumice floated to Africa. The recent com...

Joyce Grenfell was one of Britain's best-loved entertainers, immortalised in roles such as the gym mistress Miss Gossage in 'The Happiest Days of Your Life', and Ruby Gates in the 'St Trinian's' films. She achieved success as a writer and performer of songs and monologues on stage and radio at a time when it was unusual for a woman of her backgroun...

The sequel to 'Driving Over Lemons' rejoins the lives of Chris, Ana and their daughter Chloe, on their farm in Las Alpujarras as they get to grips with a misanthropic parrot who joins their home, Spanish school life, neighbours in love, journalists beating a path to their door - and the shock of discovering that their beloved valley might once more...

Everything you've always wanted to know about Marcel Proust but were afraid to ask! The author offers tongue-in-cheek ideas on how one's life can be 'improved' via Proust's work, including advice on 'How to Love Life Today', 'How to Suffer Successfully' and 'How to be Happy in Love'.

For seven decades, actress Katharine Hepburn played a leading role in the popular culture of the 20th century. She also remained one of the most private figures of her time. In 1982, at the age of 75, she shared for the first time details of her life, including her famous relationships with Spencer Tracy and Howard Hughes, her family and extraordin...

This sequel to 'The Road Less Travelled' addresses the issues of personal growth and spiritual development which affect us all. These include: blame and forgiveness; death and the meaning of life; sexuality and spirituality; togetherness and separateness in marriages and families; the problem of pain and addiction.

When John Thaw, star of 'Inspector Morse', died from cancer in 2002, a nation lost one of its finest actors and Sheila Hancock lost a beloved husband. In this unique double biography she chronicles their lives - personal and professional, together and apart. Theirs was a sometimes turbulent, always passionate relationship, and in this audiobook She...

This is a diary of Stephen Fry's trips to Peru tracking Paddington Bear's roots and more seriously, rescuing a young Spectacled bear, one of the world's endangered species. He also includes how a mate was found for the first bear while on a subsequent trip to Peru, as well as how a charitable foundation - Bear Rescue - was established for the purpo...

Volume Three of David Reynolds' award-winning BBC Radio 4 series runs from the origins of the Cold War to the inauguration of Barack Obama. This epic narrative tells the saga of the United States through the voices of those who lived it, exploring three abiding national themes: empire, liberty and faith. Empire and Evil, the final series of thirt...

On the 10th May 2002, author Nina Bawden and her husband, Austen Kark, boarded the 12.45 train from King's Cross en route to Cambridge for a friend's birthday party. A few minutes later the train derailed. Nina was gravely injured and Austen was killed instantly, along with seven others. In this powerful and poignant letter to her husband, Nina use...

Born in 1725 to Italian and Spanish parents, Giacomo Casanova was a scholar and adventurer, not to mention a notorious seducer of women, who lived a long and exciting life. This first volume of his memoirs charts his childhood and life as a young man in Venice and Italy.

Visiting the Hebridean island of Mull today, it's not long before someone mentions the steep decline in population that the Scottish highlands and islands suffered 150 to 200 years ago. And it was a depopulation that the crofters were powerless to do anything about-in a phrase that sounds a knell almost as chilling as today's 'ethnic cleansing', th...

In this episode taken from the BBC Radio 4 series, Melvyn Bragg visits Merthyr Tydfil to look at the plight of the miners in the Depression. The industrial communities of South Wales, built first on iron smelting in the 18th century, and coal in the 19th, had known great prosperity. Merthyr Tydfil was once the largest town in Wales, and in 1914, 25...

Robert Graves relates his time in the trenches. Robert Graves's writing is versatile and intense. Famous as a war poet, his prose works are on a stage of their own, especially this piece, which is an autobiographical account of Grave's school days and life as a soldier in the trenches in World War 1. Political as well as personal, the piece is imp...

Melvyn Bragg follows his long historical exploration of the Routes of English with Voices of the Powerless, the BBC Radio 4 series in which he explores the lives of the ordinary working men and women of Britain at critical moments across the last 1,000 years. The Peasants' Revolt began in the Essex village of Fobbing in May 1381. It started with t...

Melvyn Bragg follows his long historical exploration of the Routes of English with Voices of the Powerless, the BBC Radio 4 series in which he explores the lives of the ordinary working men and women of Britain at critical moments across the last 1,000 years. Ulster, one of the four ancient provinces of Ireland, remained largely independent of Eng...

More highlights from the BBC Radio series featuring Brian Johnston, selected by his son Barry Johnston. Down Your Way was one of the most popular programmes on BBC Radio from 1946 until 1992. Every week the presenter would visit a different city, town or village in the UK and interview six local people about its history, traditions and customs. B...

1911 saw the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the abdication of the last Emperor in China. 100 years on, Isabel Hilton describes how China coped with the collapse and looks for any lingering legacy in this BBC Radio 3 report originally broadcast as the 'Sunday Feature' on 23 January 2011. After living under the comparative stability of an Imperial sys...

When Walter took up his diary on January 1st 1939, he was looking forward to retirement with his beloved wife Alice Mary and their ageing dog Nell, and spending more time in his garden. Walter was too old to fight, but he organized his ARP fire-watch unit and, spurred on by the cry of 'Dig for victory!', grew mountains of vegetables for the war eff...

Melvyn Bragg follows his long historical exploration of the Routes of English with Voices of the Powerless, the BBC Radio 4 series in which he explores the lives of the ordinary working men and women of Britain at critical moments across the last 1,000 years. The Norman Conquest is his starting point, a time when William the Conqueror's 'harrying...