Showing 211 to 231 of 263 results:
Author: Peter Whitfield
Format: Stream / Download
Author Peter Whitfield
Narrator Sebastian Comberti
Duration 5h 14m
What is art? Why do we value images of saints, kings, goddesses, battles, landscapes or cities in eras utterly remote from our own? This history of art shows how painters, sculptors and architects have expressed the belief systems of their age-religious, political and aesthetic. From the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece to the...
View BookAuthor: Matthew Sweet
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Author Matthew Sweet
Narrator Christopher Oxford
Duration 13h 2m
It's the Second World War and the Savoy, the Dorchester and Claridge's teem with those determined not to allow Hitler to impact on their way of life. Spies: Meet Marie-Jacqueline Lancaster, the woman from M15 who has the gravy browning licked from her legs by Dylan Thomas. Royals: Meet Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia, born in a suite at Clarid...
View BookThe Prime Ministers, Series 1, Episode 1
Author: Nick Robinson
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Author Nick Robinson
Narrator Nick Robinson
SeriesThe Prime Ministers Series 1, Book 1
Duration 13m
From the BBC Radio 4 series presented and written by Nick Robinson that explores how prime ministers have used their power and responded to the great challenges of their time and how they made the job what it is today. This episode features Sir Robert Walpole, the first and longest-serving prime minister.
View BookAuthor: David George Haskell
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Author David George Haskell
Narrator The Author, Cassandra Campbell
Duration 10h 26m
David Haskell's award-winning The Forest Unseen won acclaim for eloquent writing and deep engagement with the natural world. Now, Haskell brings his powers of observation to the biological networks that surround all species, including humans. Haskell repeatedly visits a dozen trees around the world, exploring the trees' connections with webs of fun...
View BookAuthor: Leanda Le Lisle
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Author Leanda Le Lisle
Narrator Sandra Duncan
Duration 16h 11m
The Tudors are a national obsession; they are our most notorious family in history. But, as Leanda de Lisle shows in this gripping new history, beyond the well-worn headlines is a family still more extraordinary than the one we thought we knew. The Tudor canon typically starts with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, before speeding on to Henry VIII an...
View BookAuthor: Christopher Hibbert
Format: MP3 CD + Stream / Download
Author Christopher Hibbert
Narrator Zulema Dene
Duration 9h
Hibbert charts the French Revolution from its beginnings as an impromptu meeting on an indoor tennis court at Versailles in 1789, through to the coup d'etat of 1795 that brought Napoleon to power.
View BookClassics: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Mary Beard
Format: MP3 CD
Author Mary Beard
Narrator Tim Bentink
Duration 3h 42m
This demystifying and enthusiastic Very Short Introduction to Classics links a haunting temple on a lonely mountainside to the glory of ancient Greece and the grandeur of Rome, and to Classics within modern culture - from Jefferson and Byron to Asterix and Ben-Hur.
View BookAuthor: Jeremy Paxman
Format: MP3 CD
Author Jeremy Paxman
Narrator Christopher Oxford
Duration 10h 30m
What is it about the English? Not the British, Scots, Irish or Welsh, but the English? Why do they seem so unsure of who they are? As Jeremy Paxman remarks, being English used to be so easy. Now, with the Empire gone, with devolution, with an ever closer Europe, the English seem to have entered a collective crisis of national identity.
View BookRoutes of English, Series 4, Programme 6
Author: Melvyn Bragg
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Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 4, Book 6
Duration 27m
With English now hailed on all sides as the world's first "global" language and the preferred medium of expression from United Biscuits to the United Nations, Melvyn Bragg meets people-like former Dome supremo P.Y. Gerbeau-for whom talking English is the most natural way to speak, yet who didn't absorb it with their mother's milk. Also taking part...
View BookRoutes of English, Series 4, Programme 5
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 4, Book 5
Duration 27m
English becomes the language of liberation as Afrikaans takes on the label of oppression. In 1994 the first free democratic elections in South Africa were held, bringing Nelson Mandela to power as the country's first black president. One of the other consequences was the elevation of nine African languages to equal status with English and Afrikaans...
View BookRoutes of English, Series 4, Programme 3
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 4, Book 3
Duration 27m
Here we take up the story of Caribbean English where the Brixton Routes left off. For the poet Edward Kamau Braithwaite the legacy of the English language is something from which he, in his tropical landscape, must break free because, as he wrote, "the hurricane does not roar in pentameters". Melvyn Bragg heads off to the Caribbean where he meets a...
View BookRoutes of English, Series 4, Programme 2
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 4, Book 2
Duration 27m
The English language in India. Despite being the imposed language of the imperial power, English also had the power to unite the nation. The story of the English language in India is also the story of the British merchants, adventurers and colonial administrators for whom the country was the Empire's jewel in the crown. Calcutta, the great Victoria...
View BookRoutes of English, Series 4, Programme 1
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 4, Book 1
Duration 27m
We explore the rise of powerful non-English linguistic forces in the United States. Starting at Plymouth Rock where the Pilgrim Fathers landed in 1620, Melvyn Bragg follows the development of English in the American colony-from the War of Independence and the founding of the first capital, Philadelphia, right through to the controversial contempora...
View BookRoutes of English, Series 3, Programme 6
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 3, Book 6
Duration 27m
The final programme in the series considers the future of English dialects. In the last programme in the series Melvyn looks at Standard English. He is joined by Lynda Mugglestone, Fellow of English Language at Pembroke College, Oxford and John Wells, Professor of Phonetics at the University of London. Together they attempt to answer some of the qu...
View BookAuthor: Michael Palin
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Author Michael Palin
Narrator Michael Palin
Duration 11h 5m
In September 2014 the wreck of a sailing vessel was discovered at the bottom of the sea in the frozen wastes of the Canadian Arctic. It was broken at the stern and covered in a woolly coat of underwater vegetation. Its whereabouts had been a mystery for over a century and a half. Its name was HMS Erebus. Now Michael Palin - former Monty Python stal...
View BookRoutes of English, Series 3, Programme 5
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 3, Book 5
Duration 27m
Here, Melvyn visits Oswestry. Just five miles from the Welsh border, this is a frontier town whose name means "boundary". It's where Offa's Dyke and countless crumbling castles bear witness to centuries of shifting political allegiances. Language too, has been a battleground. Welsh and English have waxed and waned, woven and unravelled. Visit the t...
View BookAuthor: Suetonius
Format: MP3 CD
Author Suetonius
Narrator Derek Jacobi
Duration 7h 13m
Suetonius wrote his 'Lives of the Twelve Caesars' in the reign of Vespasian around 70AD. He chronicled the extraordinary careers of Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian and Domitian and the rest in technicolour terms. They presented some high and low times at the heart of the Roman Empire. The accounts provide us with ins...
View BookRoutes of English, Series 3, Programme 4
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes to English Series 3, Book 4
Duration 27m
Melvyn visits Brixton to discover the most imitated, influential form of spoken English today. It's a dialect determined not by geography or profession, but by age, fashion and aspiration. Pulsing through music culture, spread by television and radio, it can be found throughout the UK. Sometimes subversive, often secretive, it is arguably the most...
View BookRoutes of English, Series 3, Programme 3
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes to English Series 3, Book 3
Duration 27m
Melvyn travels west in search of the increasingly elusive Cornish dialect. Cornwall is an evocative place. A Celtic land with a rich mythology, a land of caves and coves, of cream teas and country lanes. At least that's the image that has long attracted travellers and settlers. Yet it's also a land that has, over the last century, faced dramatic so...
View BookRoutes of English,series 2, Programme 4
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes to English Series 2, Book 4
Duration 27m
Bad language is not new. We've been swearing for centuries, and those in power have been trying to censor us for just as long. Nowadays, many people are quite relaxed about swearing and will be careful about the context-although we still try to avoid bad language in front of the children, or in polite society.
View BookRoutes of English,series 2, Programme 3
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes to English Series 2, Book 3
Duration 27m
"By your vowels, your station shall be known." How accents and social class are entwined. For at least 400 years, the way we speak has been one of the fundamental measures by which we've judged our fellow men on the scale of social acceptability. To so many, "talking proper" matters, and "rough talk is not quality talk." But such attitudes are begi...
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