Showing results by narrator "Samuel West" in All Categories

Humanity has reached a critical moment. Our world is unsettled and rapidly changing, and we face existential risks over the next century. Various outcomes - good and bad - are possible. Yet our approach to the future is characterized by short-term thinking, polarizing debates, alarmist rhetoric, and pessimism. In this short, exhilarating book, renowned scientist and best-selling author Martin Rees argues that humanity’s prospects depend on our taking a very different approach to planning for tomorrow.

The Way Through the Woods is the tenth novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series. Quietly, rather movingly, Strange was making his plea: 'Christ knows why, Lewis, but Morse will always put himself out for you.' As he put the phone down, Lewis knew that Strange had been right . . . in...

The Monsters and the Critics, a new HarperCollins book, full description to follow when available...

Henry V, which dates from 1599, is the last in Shakespeare's series of plays based on English history. It is also, of course, among the Bard's best-known and most-performed works. It's given rich new life here by a full-cast presentation that combines classic literature with classical music.

Famed for being Dickens’s last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend is a sophisticated social analysis and damning satire of wealth, and the greed and corruption it can bring. First published between 1864 and 1865, Our Mutual Friend revolves around the inheritance of a large fortune left by John Harmon Sr., owner of a huge estate. Once John passes, his wealth is left to his son, but only under one condition: that he marries Miss Bella Wilfer, a shallow young woman preoccupied with money.

John Keats was largely unappreciated during his lifetime and died in Rome at the age of 26. Most of his 150 poems were written in just nine extraordinary months in 1819. This selection contains some of his finest works, including the principal "Odes", "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", "Old Meg", and "Much Have I Travelled".

In Poems to Live Your Life By, Chris Riddell, former Children's Laureate and political cartoonist for the Observer, has selected his very favourite classic and modern poems about life, death and everything in between. This beautiful collection includes forty-six poems and is divided into...

Published at the author’s own expense in 1896, after rejection from publishers, this collection contains a cycle of 63 poems. Despite exploring themes of lost love, obsession, pessimism, and death, the poems touched English readers and the book became a best seller during the Second Boer War and World War I. The collection, set in a half-imagined pastoral Shropshire, includes the well-known poems "When I Was One-and-Twenty", "To an Athlete Dying Young", and "Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now".

We are unprepared for the greatest discovery of modern science. Scientists are confident that there is alien life across the universe yet we have not moved beyond our perception of 'aliens' as Hollywood stereotypes. The time has come to abandon our fixation on alien monsters and place our expectations on solid scientific footing. Using his own expert understanding of life on earth and Darwin's theory of evolution - which applies throughout the universe - Cambridge zoologist Dr Arik Kershenbaum explains what alien life must be like.

Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars investigating the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time.

After scheming his way to power in House of Cards, Francis Urquhart made a triumphant return in To Play the King - a Sunday Times number one best-seller that became a BBC TV series, with Ian Richardson resuming his award-winning role as Francis Urquhart, and a hugely successful Netflix series. 

In 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young Scottish woman, goes to occupied France on a dual mission: to run an apparently simple errand for a British special operations group and to search for her lover, an English airman called Peter Gregory, who has gone missing in action.

Brought to you by Penguin. Gripping, terrifying, an unputdownable read. Discover Graham Greene's most iconic novel. A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is...

A celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, including documentaries and readings as heard on BBC Radio 4. 2011 marked the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, a seminal text that remains the most widely published and influential book in the English language.Once...

A collection of BBC Radio 3's iconic Shakespeare productions: three Roman plays with all-star casts including Gerard Murphy, Nicholas Farrell, Susannah York, Samuel West, Frances Barber and David Harewood. The plays included in this collection are: Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra.

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. When beautiful Clarissa Harlowe is forced to marry the rich but repulsive Mr. Solmes, she refuses, much to her family’s chagrin. She escapes their persecution with the help of Mr. Lovelace, a dashing and seductive rake, but soon finds herself in a far worse dilemma. Terrifying and enlightening, Clarissa weaves a tapestry of narrative experimentation into a gripping morality tale of good versus evil.

The Jewel That Was Ours is the ninth novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series. He looked overweight around the midriff, though nowhere else, and she wondered whether perhaps he drank too much. He looked weary, as if he had been up most of the night conducting his investigations...

Francis Urquhart’s eventful career as Prime Minister comes to a spectacular end in the final volume in the Francis Urquhart trilogy – now reissued in audio. He schemed his way to power in ‘House of Cards’ and had a memorable battle of wills with the new king in ‘To Play the King’...

An award-wining poet, short story writer and novelist, Walter de la Mare is probably best known for his works for children and his perennially popular poem ‘The Listeners’. His ghost stories were much admired by H. P. Lovecraft and inspired subsequent authors of supernatural horror such as Robert Aickman and Ramsey Campbell. In 1921, his novel Memoirs of a Midget won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, and this haunting, surrealistic tale is the opening tale in our anthology.

A traveller on a train returning to London smells the burn of brakes as it hisses to a stop in the middle of the countryside. He sees a white-faced woman leap from the train and race to the aid of a sheep stranded on its back, unable to rise, in a field. Righting it, she turns, and he sees her face is full of tragedy. Considering tragedies of his own, he does not intrude, but the image lodges in his mind: a strange but familiar despair, unable, despite itself