Showing 232 to 252 of 263 results:
Routes of English, Series 2,programme 2
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes to English Series 2, Book 2
Duration 27m
Melvyn has fun and games with puns, wordplay and tongue twisters. Twisting, manipulation and stretching of the English language is an integral part of everyday communication. This language play exists in many forms, as puns, double entendres, word games and verse exercises, and we have been playing with English for centuries.
View BookRoutes of English,series 2, Programme 1
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes to English Series 2, Book 1
Duration 27m
When a new concept or product comes along, how does it get its name? Making up new words for new things or ideas isn't new. New words-linguists call them "coinages"-are as old as the English language itself. Melvyn Bragg explores the history of linguistic innovation from the Middle Ages, through the inventiveness of the Industrial Revolution, to th...
View BookA Close Shot With A Charge of Sixpence
Author: Sir Samuel Baker
Format: Stream / Download
Author Sir Samuel Baker
Narrator Dinsdale Landen
Duration 17m
Sir Samuel White Baker, (b. 8 June 1821 - d. 30 December 1893) was a British explorer, officer, naturalist, big game hunter, engineer, writer and abolitionist. This account of a big game encounter is a thrilling testimony that relays the sights, smells and especially sounds of a nineteenth-century hunting experience.
View BookAuthor: Richard Overy
Format: Stream / Download
Author Richard Overy
Narrator Jonathan Keeble
Duration 4h 12m
The dizzying pace of technological change in the early 20th century meant that it took only a little over ten years from the first flight by the Wright Brothers to the clash of fighter planes in the Great War. A period of terrible, rapid experiment followed to gain a brief technological edge. By the end of the war the British had lost an extraordin...
View BookAuthor: Bill Bryson
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Author Bill Bryson
Narrator Bill Bryson
Duration 2h 45m
BILL BRYSON presents a fascinating exploration of THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. This highly entertaining BBC Radio 4 series is written and presented by Bill Bryson and based on his bestselling book, Mother Tongue. In it he romps through the history of Britain to reveal how English became such an infuriatingly complex - but ultimately world-b...
View BookAuthor: Simon Jenkins
Format: Stream / Download
Author Simon Jenkins
Narrator Simon Jenkins
Duration 11h 14m
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of A Short History of Europe written and read by Simon Jenkins. Europe is an astonishingly successful place. In this dazzling new history, bestselling author Simon Jenkins grippingly tells the story of its evolution from warring peoples to peace, wealth and freedom - a story that twists and turns from Greece a...
View BookLucy Kellaway's History of Office Life
Author: Lucy Kellaway
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Author Lucy Kellaway
Narrator Lucy Kellaway
Duration 2h 16m
In today's Britain, more and more people spend longer at an office than ever before. It dominates lives. It's made more people middle class, transformed the lot of women, raised standards in education and been the reason for many technological advances. But the office itself seems to have no history and people accept without question the way they w...
View BookAuthor: Guy De La Bedoyere
Format: Stream / Download
Author Guy De La Bedoyere
Narrator The Author
Duration 2h 55m
A guided tour of Roman Britain with historian Guy de la B‚doyŠre, as heard on BBC Radio 4. In 55 BC, Julius Caesar invaded Britain, which was then on the edge of the known world. But he was unable to conquer it. Where Caesar failed the Emperor Claudius, in AD 43, succeeded and the mighty Roman Empire came to stretch from Cairo to Carli...
View BookAuthor: Antonia Fraser
Format: MP3 CD
Author Antonia Fraser
Narrator Patricia Hodge
Duration 6h 30m
Mistresses and wives, mothers and daughters - Antonia Fraser explores the relationships which existed between The Sun King and the women in his life. This includes not only Louis XIV's mistresses, principally Louise de La Valliere, Athenais de Montespan, and the puritanical Madame de Maintenon, but also the wider story of his relationships with wom...
View BookAuthor: Various
Format: MP3 CD
Author Various
Narrator Various
Duration 7h 28m
This audiobook contains the following titles: 'Henry VII', 'Edward VI', 'Mary Tudor', 'James I', 'Charles I and Puritanism', 'Charles II', 'Charles V', and 'Louis XIV'. Part of a series of historical discussions from the 1970s.
View BookA Life on the Railway Book 1: Steam
Author: Productions Llp Pennine
Format: Stream / Download
Author Productions Llp Pennine
Narrator Pete Waterman
SeriesA Life on the Railway, Book 1
Duration 2h 15m
Before cars and planes, railways and steam engines were the main form of transport. And in the early days the engine driver was the fastest man on earth, travelling at 60 mph (and much faster than a car). No wonder it was every schoolboy's dream to become the driver of a locomotive, even though it was dirty and dangerous work. Some boys went straig...
View BookThe Gentry: Stories of the English
Author: Adam Nicolson
Format: MP3 CD
Author Adam Nicolson
Narrator David Fleeshman
Duration 16h 3m
Adam Nicolson tells the story of England through the history of fourteen gentry families - from the 15th century to the present day. This sparkling work of history reads like a real-life Downton Abbey, as the loves, hatreds and many times of grief of his chosen cast illuminate the grand events of history. We may well be `a nation of shopkeepers', b...
View BookAuthor: Margot Morrell, Stephanie Capparell
Format: MP3 CD
Author Margot Morrell, Stephanie Capparell
Narrator Tim Piggot-Smith
Duration 2h 30m
Sir Ernest Shackleton was one of the greatest explorers of the 20th Century. The authors of 'Shackleton's Way' explore the leadership skills of the man who, following the wreck of his ship Endurance and stranded 1200 miles from any form of communication, led all of his 27 men to safety.
View BookAuthor: Jane Robinson
Format: MP3 CD
Author Jane Robinson
Narrator Carole Boyd
Duration 6h 57m
Robinson presents the inspiring story of the first young women who overcame all the odds to get their education and attend university. Using the words of the women themselves, this book charts the fight for and expansion of higher education for women.
View BookAuthor: Niall Ferguson
Format: Stream / Download
Author Niall Ferguson
Narrator Roy Mcmillan
Duration 33h 13m
No American statesman has been as revered and as reviled as Henry Kissinger. Hailed by some as the "indispensable man", whose advice has been sought by every president from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, Kissinger has also attracted immense hostility from critics who have cast him as an amoral Machiavellian - the ultimate cold-blooded "realist"...
View BookA Classical Education: The Stuff You Wish You'd Been Taught At School
Author: Caroline Taggart
Format: Stream / Download
Author Caroline Taggart
Narrator Bill Wallis
Duration 4h 56m
Is the Greek alphabet all Greek to you? Is geometry your Achilles heel and does your knowledge of Homer have more to do with The Simpsons than the Sirens? From engineering and architecture to drama and democracy, the world around us is founded on the principles and discoveries of the Ancient World, yet our understanding of it is episodic at best. S...
View BookAuthor: Bruce Henderson
Format: Stream / Download
Author Bruce Henderson
Narrator John Pruden
Duration 9h 9m
Bruce Henderson brings to life one of the most mysterious tragedies of American exploration in Fatal North.
View BookAuthor: Alison Weir
Format: Stream / Download
Author Alison Weir
Narrator Maggie Mash
Duration 23h 5m
Acclaimed historian Alison Weir looks into the life of the first Tudor queen, revealing the woman behind the image Elizabeth of York would have ruled England, but for the fact that she was a woman. One of the key figures of the Wars of the Roses, daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, she married Henry Tudor to bring peace to a war-torn Eng...
View BookAuthor: Sarah Kilgarriff
Format: Stream / Download
Author Sarah Kilgarriff
Narrator Jonathan Keeble
Duration 2h 12m
A unique collection of historic recordings in which the last brutal encounters of the war and the mixed emotions of the armistice are remembered by troops from both sides. By the end of March 1918, Germany's Spring Offensive had thrown British forces back over the old Somme battlefields. But this last push failed and with the stalemate of trench wa...
View BookRoutes of English, Series 1, Programme3
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
SeriesRoutes of English Series 1, Book 3
Duration 27m
Where better than Hastings to look at the impact of the French on the English language? Melvyn Bragg goes to Hastings, where in 1066 William, Duke of Normandy, defeated King Harold and invaded England. The actual fighting took place in the nearby village of Battle. It was to be the starting point of a long and intense relationship between England a...
View BookRoutes of English, Series, Programme 1
Author: Melvyn Bragg
Format: Stream / Download
Author Melvyn Bragg
Narrator Melvyn Bragg
Duration 27m
Melvyn Bragg goes back to his home town of Wigton in Cumbria to see how English is developing-and how dialects are still spoken. He meets townspeople from all generations and walks of life, from octogenarian horse-dealer Tommy Miller to local poet Mary Haslam, and finds that the old ways of speaking are being lost.
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