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frank mc guile
Edward Gibbon (8 May 1737 – 16 January 1794) was an English historian, writer and Member of Parliament. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788 and is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its open criticism of organized religion. Edward Gibbon was born in 1737, the son of Edward and Judith Gibbon at Lime Grove, in the town of Putney, Surrey.
Wilfred Thesiger’s stunning account of five years spent crossing the Arabian Peninsula by foot and on camels, with nomadic Bedouin tribesmen as guides. Travelling between 1945 and 1950, the British explorer treks through Yemen, The Empty Quarter, Oman and parts of the then Trucial States, crossing and re-crossing around 250,000 miles of this most inhospitable terrain
Bill Bryson is an unabashed Anglophile who, through a mistake of history, happened to be born and bred in Iowa. Righting that error, he spent 20 years in England before deciding to repatriate: "I had recently read that 3.7 million Americans according to a Gallup poll, believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another, so it was clear that my people needed me." That comic tone enlivens this account of Bryson's farewell walking tour of the countryside of "the green and kindly island that had for two decades been my home."
Two Years Before the Mast is a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834 and published in 1840.
While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles which affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway) and being something of a non-conformist, left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor on a voyage around Cape Horn on the brig Pilgrim. He returned to Massachusetts two years later aboard the Alert (which left California sooner than the Pilgrim).
He kept a diary throughout the voyage, and, after returning, he wrote a recognized American classic, Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840, the same year of his admission to the bar.
This is the inspiring story of an ordinary guy who achieved two great goals that others had told him were impossible. First, he set a record for the longest automobile journey ever made around the world, during the course of which he blasted his way out of minefields, survived a serious accident atop the Peak of Death, came within seconds of being lynched in Pakistan, and lost three of the five men who started with him, two to disease, one to the Vietcong.
The Darkest Jungle tells the harrowing story of America's first ship canal exploration across a narrow piece of land in Central America called the Darién, a place that loomed large in the minds of the world's most courageous adventurers in the nineteenth century. With rival warships and explorers from England and France days behind, the 27-member U.S. Darién Exploring Expedition landed on the Atlantic shore at Caledonia Bay in eastern Panama to begin their mad dash up the coast-hugging mountains of the Darién wilderness. The whole world watched as this party attempted to be the first to traverse the 40-mile isthmus, the narrowest spot between the Atlantic and Pacific in all the Americas.
This acclaimed portrait of heroism and ingenuity captures a watershed moment in human history. The astronauts themselves have called it the definitive account of their missions. On the night of July 20, 1969, our world changed forever when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Based on in-depth interviews with twenty-three of the twenty-four moon voyagers, as well as those who struggled to get the program moving, A Man on the Moon conveys every aspect of the Apollo missions with breathtaking immediacy and stunning detail.
Tracing the extraordinary trajectory of the great Roman emperor’s life, Goldsworthy covers not only the great Roman emperor’s accomplishments as charismatic orator, conquering general, and powerful dictator but also lesser-known chapters during which he was high priest of an exotic cult, captive of pirates, seducer not only of Cleopatra but also of the wives of his two main political rivals, and rebel condemned by his own country. Ultimately, Goldsworthy realizes the full complexity of Caesar’s character and shows why his political and military leadership continues to resonate some two thousand years later.
The 60 Greatest Old-Time Radio Shows from Science Fiction Selected by Ray Bradbury, one of the greatest fantasy writers of the 20th Century. Rocket into the future with “adventures in time and space, told in future tense” by Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Ray Bradbury, Gordon R. Dickson, Robert A. Heinlein, Murray Leinster, Frederik Pohl, Robert Sheckley, Theodore Sturgeon, Jules Verne, Kurt Vonnegut, H.G. Wells and other top science fiction authors. Also featured are Orson Welles’ landmark War of the Worlds broadcast, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Curt Siodmak’s unforgettable Donovan’s Brain and a terrifying tale by Arch Oboler.
Shows included:
• Mercury Theatre On the Air War of the Worlds 10-30-38
• Dimension X Martian Chronicles 08-18-50
• Dimension X With Folded Hands 04-15-50
• Suspense Donovan’s Brain 02-07-48
• Escape Earth Abides Part 1 11-05-50
• Escape Earth Abides Part 2 11-12-50
• X-Minus One And the Moon Be Still As Bright 09-22-55
• X-Minus One Dr. Grimshaw’s Sanitorium 07-14-55
• Dimension X Report on the Barnhouse Effect 04-22-50
• X-Minus One The Veldt 08-04-55
• Lights Out Sub-Basement 08-24-43
• Dimension X Nightfall 09-29-51
• X-Minus One Martian Death March 09-08-55
• X-Minus One The Defenders 05-22-56
• CBS Radio Workshop Season of Disbelief & Hail and Farewell 02-17-56
• X-Minus One Child’s Play 10-20-55
• Suspense Black Door 11-19-61• Dimension X Lost Race 05-20-50
• X-Minus One Requiem 10-27-55
• X-Minus One Marionettes, Inc. 12-21-55• Family Theatre 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 08-23-50
• X-Minus One A Logic Named Joe 12-28-55
• CBS Radio Workshop A Pride of Carrots 09-14-56
• X-Minus One The Roads Must Roll 01-04-56
• Dimension X The Embassy 06-03-50
• Dimension X Knock 05-06-50
• Suspense Frankenstein 06-07-55
• X-Minus One Skulking Permit 02-15-56
• X-Minus One Tunnel Under the World 03-14-56
• Dimension X Universe 08-02-51
• X-Minus One Lulungameena 05-29-56
• X-Minus One If You Was a Moklin 06-12-56
• Dimension X Beyond Infinity 07-21-50
• X-Minus One Project Trojan 06-19-56
• X-Minus One Bad Medicine 07-10-56
• Escape Dream of Armageddon 09-05-48
• X-Minus One The Old Die Rich 07-17-56
• X-Minus One The Stars Are the Styx 07-24-56
• Dimension X Hello Tomorrow 09-15-50
• X-Minus One The Last Martian 08-07-56
• X-Minus One Surface Tension 08-28-56
• Escape Mars Is Heaven 06-02-50
• X-Minus One Soldier Boy 10-17-56
• X-Minus One Inside Story 06-20-57
• Dimension X Time and Time Again 07-12-51
• Mysterious Traveler Zero Hour 06-22-48
• X-Minus One Hostess 12-12-56
• Dimension X Dwellers In Silence 07-19-51
• X-Minus One Saucer of Loneliness 01-09-57
• X-Minus One The Seventh Order 05-08-56
• Dimension X To the Future 05-27-50
• Mysterious Traveler Big Brain 03-14-50
• Sealed Book Beware of Tomorrow 07-29-45
• Escape Zero Hour 10-04-53
• X-Minus One The Lights on Precipice Peak 03-13-57
• Exploring Tomorrow First Contact 1957
• Suspense Second Door 05-06-62
• Theatre Royal Country of the Blind 1950s
• Exploring Tomorrow Happiness Effect 1957
• X-Minus One The Category Inventor 06-27-57
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A treasure chest of the written and spoken word, this collection is read by brilliant actors who make this audio anthology a genuine treat for the listener. This audio recording includes the following short stories: - "Reginald on House Parties" by Saki, read by Nigel Hawthorne- "The Sphinx without a Secret" by Oscar Wilde, read by Martin Jarvis- "Tobermory" by Saki, read by Barbara Leigh-Hunt- "On Being Idle" by Jerome K. Jerome, read by Hugh Laurie- "For Better or Worse" by W.W. Jacobs, read by Joanna David- "The Model Millionaire" by Oscar Wilde, read by T. P. McKenna- "The Garden of Truth" by E. Nesbit, read by Harriet Walker- "The Cat That Walked by Himself" by Rudyard Kipling, read by Liza Goddard- "The Girl from Arles" by Alphonse Daudet, read by Stephen Fry- "Mr. & Mrs. Dove" by Katherine Mansfield, read by Rosalind Ayres- "Georgie Porgie" by Rudyard Kipling, read by Edward Fox- "Caterpillars" by E. F. Benson, read by Patrick Malahide- "Lost Hearts" by M. R. James, read by Richard Pasco- "Ship to Tarshish" by John Buchan, read by Iain Cuthbertson- "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe, read by Richard Pasco- "The Man of the Night" by Edgar Wallace, read by Robin Bailey- "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, read by Nicky Henson- "B-24" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, read by Brian Cox- "Pat Hobby & Orson Welles" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, read by Kerry Shale- "Mad" by Guy de Maupassant, read by Derek Jacobi- "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe, read by Richard Griffiths- "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs, read by Patrick Malahide
Crazy Horse, the legendary military leader of the Oglala Sioux whose personal power and social nonconformity contributed to his reputation as being “strange,” fought in many famous battles, including the Little Bighorn, and held out tirelessly against the U.S. government’s efforts to confine the Lakotas to reservations. Finally, in the spring of 1877 he surrendered, only to meet a violent death.
A Criminal and an Irishman is the story of Pat Nee's life as an Irish immigrant and Southie son, a Marine, a convicted IRA gun smuggler, and a former violent rival and then associate of Whitey Bulger. His narrative transports the listener into the criminal underworld, inside planning and preparation for an armored car heist, inside gang wars and revenge killings. Nee details his evolution from tough street kid to armed robber to dangerous potential killer, and discloses for the first time how he used his underworld connections and know-how as a secret, Boston-based operative for the Irish Republican Army.
Is this journey's end . . . or just the beginning?
Toklo, Kallik, Lusa, and Ujurak have finally reached the Last Great Wilderness, the legendary bear paradise they've been searching for. But while his companions think they've come to the end of their long journey, Ujurak feels a deep unrest. Is this truly where they're meant to be?
In the Last Great Wilderness, one by one the bears begin to remember their true natures. Toklo feels the urge to hunt caribou and mark his territory as a brown bear should, and Kallik feels the pull of the ice within her. It's only Lusa, happy just to be in the wild, who fears the day when her friends will leave her to follow their own paths.
When Michael Palin was researching his novel Hemingway's Chair, his interest was stimulated by Hemingway's appetite for travel and "Papa's" evocations of the places he knew. In pursuit of Hemingway, Palin begins at the beginning, in Oak Park, Idaho, then travels to Italy where Hemingway served in the Ambulance Brigade in the First World War. Then on to Paris in the "Roaring Twenties", bull-running at Pamplona and Hemingway's love affair with Spain. Hemingway became disillusioned and returned to the States, where he lived on Key West in Florida before moving to Sun Valley, Idaho, until the Spanish civil war recalled him.
This memoir by a British seaman who fought in the War of 1812 provides valuable insights into the history of that war, illuminates the experience of the forecastle in the age of the fighting sail, and tells the story of an interesting life. Leech began his career at sea at the age of 12, worked as a "powder monkey" at the age of 14 on the Macedonian during the War of 1812, was taken into Boston as a prisoner of war, and escaped to live in America.
Discover the sixth book in the ludicrously inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, as broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and featuring original cast members including Simon Jones, Geoff McGivern, Mark Wing-Davey and Sandra Dickinson.
Arthur Dent led a perfectly ordinary, uneventful life until the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy hurled him deep into outer space. Now he's convinced a cruelly indifferent universe is out to get him.
And who can blame him?
Sailing Alone Around the World is a sailing memoir by Joshua Slocum in 1900 about his single-handed global circumnavigation aboard the sloop Spray. Slocum was the first person to sail around the world alone. The book was an immediate success and highly influential in inspiring later travelers.
Dirk Bogarde's own vivid and engaging account of his childhood and first steps as an actor - a bestseller on first publication in 1977.
'At the top of the field the cottage roof stuck up with its chimney, and then the flint walls and the two rather surprised looking windows in the gable looking down to the farm. Round the cottage was a rickety wooden fence with bits of wire and an old bedstead stuck in it, and some apple trees and the privy with its roof of ivy and honeysuckle'
A POSTILLION STRUCK BY LIGHTNING marked Dirk Bogarde's transition from star of stage and screen to a bestselling and internationally acclaimed author.
Alfred John Evans was a reconnaissance pilot officer with 3 squadron RFC. On 16 July 1916, while over enemy territory, his engine failed and he crash-landed his machine. He was sent to Gutersloh, and then to Clausthal from where he escaped, being recaptured a few days later at the Dutch border. As a consequence of his escape attempts, he was sent to Fort 9, Ingolstadt where the Germans had collected into it all the naughty boys who had tried to escape from other camps.
This novel tells the story of Kimball O' Hara (Kim), who is the orphaned son of a soldier in the Irish regiment stationed in India during the British Raj. It describes Kim's life and adventures from street vagabond, to his adoption by his father's regiment and recruitment into espionage.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is known universally for the gentle charm of Le Petit Prince, but it is this book, Land of Men - known originally in English as Wind, Sand and Stars - which is his masterpiece. First published in 1939, it documents Saint-Exupéry's life as a pilot in the pioneering days of long-distance flying and in particular his experiences as a pilot transporting mail across countries, across continents.
John Barleycorn is an autobiographical novel by Jack London dealing with his enjoyment of drinking and struggles with alcoholism. It was published in 1913. The title is taken from the British folksong "John Barleycorn".
In 1894, an eighteen-year-old Jack London quit his job shoveling coal, hopped a freight train, and left California on the first leg of a ten thousand-mile odyssey. His adventure was an exaggerated version of the unemployed migrations made by millions of boys, men, and a few women during the original "great depression of the 1890s. By taking to the road, young wayfarers like London forged a vast hobo subculture that was both a product of the new urban industrial order and a challenge to it. As London's experience suggests, this hobo world was born of equal parts desperation and fascination. "I went on 'The Road,'" he writes, "because I couldn't keep away from it . . . Because I was so made that I couldn't work all my life on 'one same shift'; because-well, just because it was easier to than not to."
There is a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. It's not an easy thing to do, and Arthur Dent thinks he's the only human who's been able to master this nifty little trick - until he meets Fenchurch, the woman of his dreams.
After 4 years of being stranded on prehistoric Earth, Arthur Dent is met by his old friend Ford Prefect, who drags him into a space-time eddy, represented by an anachronistic chesterfield sofa.
If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe? Which is exactly what the crew of the Heart of Gold plan to do. There’s just the small matter of escaping the Vogons, avoiding being taken to the most totally evil world in the Galaxy and teaching a space ship how to make a proper cup of tea. And did anyone actually make a reservation?
In the Spring of 1974, 2nd Lt. Hiroo Onoda of the Japanese army made world headlines when he emerged from the Philippine jungle after a thirty-year ordeal. Onoda had skillfully outmaneuvered all his pursuers, convinced that World War II was still being fought and waiting for the day when his fellow soldiers would return victorious.
Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.
In Patagonia is an account of Bruce Chatwin's travels to a remote country in search of a strange beast and his encounters with the people whose fascinating stories delay him on the road.
Alistair Urquhart was a soldier in the Gordon Highlanders captured by the Japanese in Singapore. He not only survived working on the notorious Bridge on the River Kwai , but he was subsequently taken on one of the Japanese 'hellships' which was torpedoed.
This autobiography of Arthur Conan Doyle describes the varied aspects of his professional life as a doctor, sportsman, adventurer, political campaigner and author.
The boys at Linbury Court Preparatory School are eager to speed up the progress of space travel, and none more so than Jennings,
Caesar, Life of a Colossus is a biography of Julius Caesar written by Adrian Goldsworthy
The extraordinary autobiographical story of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's plane crash in the Libyan desert in 1935 and his miraculous survival.
A True Story of Survival is a 2004 nonfiction book written by maritime historian Dean King.It is based on two of the survivors' journals, primarily Captain James Riley's memoir Sufferings in Africa
Cabin Pressure is a radio sitcom written and created by John Finnemore and directed and produced by David Tyler.
A medieval acrobat and jongleur enters the Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux, but finds it difficult to contribute to the prayer and work of the house. After all, his one skill couldn't possibly be of any use to God. Or could it?
This 12th century French tale has also been retold by Anatole France as "Our Lady's Juggler" and by Tomie de Paola as "The Clown of God".