Showing results by narrator "Charles Johnston" in All Categories

Selected poems from a couple of decades in South East London.

When a violent storm blasts England’s south coast, it’s up to retired Italian detective Giuseppe Bianchi to sift through the devastation and piece together the tragic events left behind in the storm’s wake.

Set two seasons after the coronavirus devastated the summer game, Close of Play is a humorous rustic rural romp looking at what happens when property developers want to turn a village cricket ground into a new housing estate. The planning laws offer no protection. Protests do not help. And when the players can earn £40,000 each by selling off the land, everything seems lost. Until they decide to settle the issue by holding a £1 million village cricket match.

Father Fred is not without guile, but that doesn't mean he won't half get up to some naughty mischief! His hearing aid goes missing at a festival, and that's where the doggy comes into this adventurous story indeed. Mystery and shenanigans abound.

Retired Italian detective, Giuseppe Bianchi, travels to England to escape one tragic death, when he comes face-to-face with another. When the body of a teenager is found on a Sussex beach, Giuseppe is drawn to the case - a case with no witnesses, and a case about which no one is prepared to talk. National news reports of a missing 12-year-old in Manchester spark fear across the nation. The phrase "stranger-danger" filters into public consciousness. Local reporter, Christina Rossi, already has concerns about her local community. Families are not as close-knit as they first appear.

The Founding Scroll is the first installment of The Vowforged Saga, an epic fantasy series centered on oath-bound power, guild structures, and the cost of authority. Set in a world where magic is shaped by sworn vows rather than bloodline or chance, the story follows Seren, a reluctant bearer drawn into a system of ancient agreements that govern power, protection, and dominion. As guilds rise and fracture under competing interpretations of these oaths, Seren must navigate political intrigue, moral consequence, and escalating conflict.

A Forgotten Poet follows the fortunes of diffident and reluctant man of letters, Harold Humber, from his early life in the English Midlands through his post-war career as economist, jazz aficionado, expert in industrial architecture, and, in the final reckoning, author of four slim volumes of popular verse.

MI7 is expecting an eccentric new recruit in the person of Chasha Jones, self-described (only partly tongue-in-cheek) as "the most intelligent woman in London". She's hard-working, insightful, and fun to work alongside. But the day she's due to begin, there's no sign of her. It turns out she's joined forces with an eccentric Brit called Hector Raynebow. Raynebow used to be an environmentalist, but he's rejected all that on the grounds that humanity, in its present form, is incapable of saving the world. He has the perfect solution: Humankind 2.0.

If you are a manager or leader in an organization - company, public service, or NGO - or you are simply interested in how to make your organization work better, then this book is for you. If you have the feeling that you are skating over the surface of what is really going on in your organization, if you know that there is something more vital that you are missing out on, if you’re frustrated by applying the same management fads over and over, just with different labels on, then perhaps you are open to looking deeper into what makes organizations function, fail, and flourish.

Have you ever had a reoccurring nightmare? What if the nightmare was more than a dream? In this story our protagonist discovers that his night terror is more is a glimpse into his past. An unforgivable crime haunts him in his present life. This short story is part of a series of short supernatural and horror stories. A quick, spooky listen that will leave you haunted.

An essay by Edward Lucie-Smith on David Hockney's portraits exhibited at the Royal Academy's "82 Portraits and One Still-Life", and also "David Hockney and the Yorkshire Landscape" at RA in 2012.

An interview with leading British sculptor Sir Anthony Caro (1924-2016) recorded by Nicholas James at his Barford Street sculpture studio Camden Town in 1994, used as a basis for a feature in Art Monthly 1994. Also includes the essay "Caro to Wilding: Shifts in Modern British Sculpture", comparing the work of Caro with Alison Wilding.