Showing results by narrator "Julian" in All Categories

Your mind does not shut off at night because it is broken. It stays awake because it has nowhere safe to go. When the day finally ends, thoughts still move. Worries replay. The body stays tense. Sleep feels close, but never quite lands. Bedtime Stories for Stressed Adults: Magical Dreamworlds was created for this exact moment. This collection of soothing, guided meditation short stories gently guides your mind away from stress and into deep, restorative sleep through immersive portal fantasy worlds designed for rest, not stimulation.

Brought to you by Penguin. ‘We are now about to visit the most marvellous places and see the most wonderful things!’ This edition of James and the Giant Peach, part of The Roald Dahl Classic Collection, is perfect for Dahl fans old and new. So, enter a world where invention and mischief can...

On a sullen, cloudy July day ten years since 7/7, the happy, confident and optimistic British Prime Minister is visiting a charity in East London. It's just two months after the general election which saw John Campbell's government returned to power with a clear majority, the economy is on the mend and the coalition is fast becoming a bad memory. Suddenly, a man appears out of the crowd and shoots him three times in the chest.

This is the third book in the 'Blackwood' saga. For three generations, members of the Blackwood family served the Royal Marines with distinction. With the outbreak of World War I, at last comes Jonathan Blackwood’s turn to carry the family name into battle. But as the young marines embark for the Dardanelles, and a new kind of warfare, it dawns on them that the days of scarlet coats and an unchanging tradition of honour and glory have gone forever.

Elizabeth Gaskell was one of Victorian England's pre-eminent female novelists. Admired by Charles Dickens, who described her as his 'dear Scheherazade', she mingled storytelling and social realism to superb effect in her highly acclaimed fiction. This comprehensive collection comprises dramas and readings of her finest works and some lesser-known pieces.

Your body is tired, but your mind refuses to slow down. Thoughts loop. Muscles stay tense. The day replays itself long after the lights are off. Sleep feels close, yet just out of reach. Bedtime Stories for Stressed Adults: Fantasy Tales was created for nights exactly like this. This collection of soothing, guided meditation short stories is designed to help you step out of stress and into deep, restorative sleep through immersive fantasy worlds that feel safe, slow, and grounding.

Have you ever felt like you're talking, but nobody is listening? Renowned five-time TED Talk speaker and author Julian Treasure reveals how to speak so that people listen - and how to listen so that people feel heard. As this leading sound expert demonstrates via interviews with world-class speakers, professional performers, and CEOs at the tops of their fields, the secret lies in developing simple habits that can transform our communication skills, the quality of our relationships, and our impact in the world.

Departure(s) is the story of a man called Stephen and a woman called Jean, who fall in love when they are young and again when they are old. It is the story of an elderly Jack Russell called Jimmy, enviably oblivious to his own mortality. It is also the story of how the body fails us, whether through age, illness accident or intent. And it is the story of how experiences fade into anecdotes, and then into memory. Does it matter if what we remember really happened? Or does it just matter that it mattered enough to be remembered?

Nominated for a British Comedy Award for Best Radio Comedy, The Harpoon is a nostalgic, spiffing spoof of adventure story papers for boys from yesteryear - but on the wireless. In the style of publications such as the Boys' Own Paper - but with its tongue firmly in its cheek - it features a veritable feast of thrilling serials, 'How-Tos', readers' letters and patent cures - all introduced by 'your old chum, the Editor'.

By 1930, no place in the world was less well explored than Greenland. The native Inuit had occupied the relatively accessible west coast for centuries. The east coast, however, was another story. In August 1930, Henry George Watkins (nicknamed “Gino”), a twenty-three-year-old British explorer, led thirteen scientists and explorers on an ambitious expedition to the east coast of Greenland and into its vast and forbidding interior to set up a permanent meteorological base on the icecap, 8,200 feet above sea level.

While King Henry's England is threatened by rebellion, the king's scapegrace son Hal haunts the taverns of London, his companions a crew of rogues and thieves let by Falstaff. The earl of Northumberland and his fiery son Hotspur scheme to overthrow the crown. Can Hal be brought to a sense of duty as Prince of Wales? Or will the influence of Falstaff prove too strong? The issue is decided when Hal, Hotspur, and Falstaff come together at the climactic battle of Shrewsbury.

Suave, unflappable and ambitious, veteran politician Charles Bannister knows his way around the corridors of power. As chief whip, he's adept at keeping MPs in line and squashing potential scandals—aided by his brother-in-law, MI6 Agent Henry Colvil, who whispers useful titbits of information in his ear. His position seems invincible—but nothing is forever, and when the tides of politics turn, Charles finds himself under threat. In these six series, we follow his fortunes and those of his close friend Home Secretary Dougal Baxter. Together, the duo rise, fall and rise again.

Now a major TV series Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2012 Winner of the 2012 Costa Book of the Year Shortlisted for the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction ‘Simply exceptional…I envy anyone who hasn’t yet read it’ Daily Mail ‘A gripping story of tumbling fury and terror’ Independent on...

It’s 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world’s greatest detective, is being transported from the Dutch East Indies to Amsterdam, where he is facing trial and execution for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Travelling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent, while also on board are Sara Wessel, a noble woman with a secret, and her husband, the governor general of Batavia.

A full-cast three-part adaptation of the Medieval Mystery Plays, introduced by David Buck During medieval religious holidays in certain English towns and cities, members of the various guilds would gather in the streets to re-enact Bible stories, from the Creation to the Last Judgment. Often...

The Bolds are a family of hyenas living as humans in a suburban house. But now their kindness to animal waifs and strays has become legendary, and more and more animals keep turning up to stay! But when the Bolds take in a couple of racehorses who are on the run, they worry their animal magnetism is getting to be too much. Have these hyenas bitten off more than they can chew?

Christopher Martin, the sole survivor of a torpedoed destroyer, is stranded upon a rock in the middle of the Atlantic. Pitted against him are the sea, the sun, the brutal cold and the aching terror of his isolation. To drink, there is a pool of rainwater; to eat, seaweed and anemones, preyed upon by feathered reptiles. As he descends into the abyss of his consciousness, weathering lightning strikes of memory, Martin must try to assemble the truth of his fate - piece by terrible piece.

Julian Barnes' new book is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on morality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and homage to the French writer Jules Renard. Though he warns us that 'this is not my autobiography', the result is a tour of the mind of one of our most brilliant writers.

Eleven BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramas telling the stories of Mary Queen of Scots and the Stuart royals. Under the Stuarts, Britain entered the modern world. But with great change came turmoil, and for 111 years, the Stuart monarchs faced dynastic struggles, religious conflict, the rise of parliamentary democracy - and civil war. These dramas chart that turbulent epoch through its royal family, from Mary, Queen of Scots to the ‘last Stuart’, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s daughter Charlotte.

In Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, one of our very best writers brings the opulent world of the Tudors to bloody, glittering life. It is the backdrop to the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell: lowborn boy, charmer, bully, master of deadly intrigue, and, finally, most powerful of Henry VIII’s coutiers. But the bloody theatre of Cromwell’s ascension will leave no one unscathed.