Showing results by narrator "Roger Davis" in All Categories

Through the firsthand experiences of pilots and ground crew, the author of Javelin Boys chronicles the history of the RAF’s first jet-engine aircraft. As Britain’s first jet fighter, the Gloster Meteor has had a remarkably varied and lengthy life. But while many books have focused on its development and service history, the time has come to hear the personal experiences of its air and ground crews.

Author of three books, this is by far his best. Lee puts you in the cockpit in a riveting account of life as a fighter pilot at the front. At times humorous and dramatic, this thoughtful, enlightening, true account is a classic to be ranked with Winged Victory by W. V. Yeates, also published by Grub Street.

The past 20 years saw unprecedented growth and stability followed by the worst financial crisis the industrialised world has ever witnessed. In the space of little more than a year, what had been seen as the age of wisdom was viewed as the age of foolishness. Almost overnight, belief turned into incredulity. Most accounts of the recent crisis focus on the symptoms and not the underlying causes of what went wrong.

Goose Green was the first land battle of the Falklands War. It was also the longest, the hardest-fought, the most controversial and the most important to win. What began as a raid became a vicious 14-hour infantry struggle, in which 2 Para—outnumbered, exhausted, forced to attack across open ground in full daylight, and with inadequate fire support—lost their commanding officer and almost lost the action. This is the only detailed full-length account of this crucial battle.

In Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy, the revolutionary, acclaimed book, radio series and podcast, best-selling economist Tim Harford introduced us to a selection of 50 radical inventions that changed the world. Along the way he entertained us with a myriad of great stories and revealed some of the most surprising landmarks in our history. 

How do people of seemingly ordinary talent go on to achieve unexpected results? What can we learn from them? What are the ingredients for unreasonable success and how is it achieved? In this ground-breaking book, bestselling author Richard Koch charts a map of success, identifying the nine key...

According to a recent international study, the Lightning is the fifth most popular military aircraft of all time. It has many thousands of devotees who are a ready market for this timely and entertaining book which, with over 20 individual stories from former Lightning pilots, relates the highs and lows, and the dramas and the demands of those who operated this iconic aircraft from the sharp end.

For the past forty years, Richard Koch has worked to uncover simple and elegant principles which govern business success. To qualify, a principle must be so overwhelmingly powerful that anyone can reliably apply it to generate extraordinary results. Working with venture capitalist Greg Lockwood...

A classic of WWII, this is the vivid memoir of Private Bowlby, who came through the North Africa campaign only to have to battle in bitter fighting against a stubborn and skilled German defence in Italy. It is a truly authentic account of what it was like to fight your way through one of the most gruelling and dangerous campaigns of the Second World War, where so often the hunters became the hunted.

Russia, 1946, the Nazis recently defeated. Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside somewhere. Convinced that the defeat of America is only a few years away, and equally convinced that the Soviet Union needs a massive external threat to...

Watching in disbelief as his computer was struck by lightning in 2007, Harry Bucknall had no idea that the subsequent trail of events would lead him to Rome - five years later, on foot. Following the Via Francigena, the ancient pilgrim path that dates back nearly 2,000 years, Harry walks through England, France, Switzerland, and Italy weaving a historical tapestry liberally colored with tales of angels and saints, emperors and kings, and war and revolution.

The world economy defies comprehension. A continuously changing system of immense complexity, it offers over 10 billion distinct products and services, doubles in size every 15 years, and links almost every one of the planet's seven billion people. How can we make sense of this bewildering system on which our lives depend? From the tally stick to Bitcoin, the canal lock to the jumbo jet, each invention in Tim Harford's fascinating new book has its own curious, surprising and memorable story, a vignette against a grand backdrop.

This is one of the most significant military books of the twentieth century. By an outstanding soldier of independent mind, it pushed forward the evolution of land warfare and was directly responsible for German armoured supremacy in the early years of the Second World War. Published in 1937...

The Handley Page Victor was the third of the three V Bombers and the longest lasting, serving in the RAF until 1993, and still doing invaluable service in the first Iraq war. Moreover, in 1982, it was the only Victor tanker fleet based on Ascension Island that made possible the Vulcan Black Buck bombing of Port Stanley airfield and the long-range reconnaissance of Argentina by Nimrods. Victor Boys tells the story of all the great things that were achieved, recounted firsthand by the operators themselves.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD 2019 Wordsworth and Coleridge as you’ve never seen them before in this new book by Adam Nicolson, brimming with poetry, art and nature writing. Proof that poetry can change the world. It is the most famous year in English poetry. Out of it came The...

The urge to be tidy seems to be rooted deep in the human psyche. Many of us feel threatened by anything that is vague, unplanned, scattered around or hard to describe. We find comfort in having a script to rely on, a system to follow, in being able to categorise and file away. We all benefit from tidy organisation - up to a point. A large library needs a reference system. Global trade needs the shipping container. Scientific collaboration needs measurement units. But the forces of tidiness have marched too far.

Often the colourful kings and queens of England seem like mere caricature, while less familiar rulers like William IV or Henry VI have faded into the shadows of history. Carolly Erickson's sensitive and revealing portrayals bring new life to the big names, and light up some of our most neglected but intriguing royals. Here is the puny Charles I, nervous, tense and socially awkward, the frail slight Richard II, melancholic and sad, and the homosexual James I with his handsome favourites.

Originally intended as a trainer, the Anglo-French Sepecat jet, equipped with the very latest in weapon-aiming and navigational equipment, eventually became the backbone of the RAF's tactical strike-attack and recce forces for a decade from the mid-1970s. In these minutes, the Jaguar Boys - pilots, engineer, and ground crew - tell of the aircraft's drawbacks and joys, their sadness at losses, and their pleasure at its development into a readily deployable and outstandingly capable fighter-bomber for the post-Cold War era.

‘The story of “invasive species” is really the story of human history, and Eatherley tells it with great verve … Fascinating’ Daily Telegraph A unique history of plant and animal invaders of the British isles spanning thousands of years of arrivals and escapes, as well as defences...

This is the incredible tale of Operation Fifth Column, a Second World War MI5 operation so secret that its existence was revealed by the National Archives for the first time only in 2014. Throughout the war and even for a couple of years afterwards, 'Agent Jack' - in reality, a bank clerk named Eric Roberts - acted as a Gestapo agent to whom hundreds of British-based Nazi sympathisers and informers passed their secrets, thinking that he was sending them back to Germany.