Showing results by narrator "Phyllida Nash" in All Categories

If you’ve ever wanted to add a little savoir faire to your badinage, or chutzpah to your spiel, then fear not, help is at hand. A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi is an entertaining jaunt through the legions of words, from aficionado to zeitgeist, that we English-speakers have pilfered from across the globe. It includes fascinating derivations and witty examples, as well as all the stories of just how and why we absorbed such exotic imports.

After 20 years of marriage, Nina had offloaded serial philanderer Joe and was happy enough, thank you, coping alone with their two demanding daughters and her own hectic life. It felt like freedom, not having to wonder constantly where Joe was, who with, and up to what. But into Nina's new, carefree life some disturbing elements began to appear.

Ruby is thrilled when she gets to meet her aunt's dachshund's new puppies for the very first time. And her parents have a wonderful surprise - she is going to have one of them for her very own! Ruby chooses the cheekiest, most adventurous puppy, Toby, and the two have fun playing together. But Toby's inquisitive nature gets him into serious trouble on a woodland walk, when he slips his collar and goes off to investigate the woods by himself.

When Amy consults her doctor about her increasing mood swings, she is advised to keep a diary as an outlet for her bursts of irritation. And her life obligingly becomes eventful enough to provide interesting reading. But it is the tantalising allusions to Amy's past - so at odds with her appearance as the stereotypical retired schoolmistress - that intrigues, delights, and eventually reveals a woman of surprising qualities.

A Family Man tells the story of 31-year-old Matt Webster, who arrives home from work one day to find that his wife, Kath, has walked out, leaving him to care for their four-year-old son. Shock and hurt are compounded by the challenge of suddenly having to juggle work with being a single parent. While the needs of his confused, unhappy little son come first, Matt embarks on the difficult quest to find out what could have driven his wife to abandon their child. It is only as the truth emerges that he learns the full heartbreak and joy of unconditional love.

This extraordinary audiobook is a collection of diary pieces that Jan Morris wrote for the Financial Times over the course of 2017. A former soldier and journalist, and one of the great chroniclers of the world for over half a century, she writes here in her characteristically intimate voice - funny, perceptive, wise, touching, wicked, scabrous, and above all, kind - about her thoughts on the world, and her own place in it as she turns 90. From cats to cars, travel to home, music to writing, it's a cornucopia of delights from a unique literary figure.

In RASCAL THE STAR, Ellie is thrilled when her friend Lucy is picked to star in a TV commercial. The only problem is that the ad is for dog food and Lucy is terrified of dogs. Ellie and Rascal team up to help out - but whenever Rascal is about, trouble is never far behind... In RASCAL AND THE WEDDING, Auntie Gemma is getting married and Ellie is going to be a bridesmaid. She'd love for Rascal to to be part of her auntie's Big Day, too.

It was said that she had the good manners of a respectable upper servant but was far too young to have been pensioned; that she spoke as if she had received and education, but knew the costers’ slang as if she were born-and-bred to it; and that she not only had no husband – which was a commonplace on Leather Lane – but seemed never to have possessed one…

A werewolf video leaves Micky terrified of dogs. Mum decides the only answer is to get Micky a puppy of his own. To everyone's surprise, including Micky's, he chooses a werepuppy. But Wolfie turns out to be a very special pet...and a real joker!

Kate Long presents a tale of three generations of women, grandmother, mother, and daughter, as told from their separate perspectives, and which illustrates the complex relationships that exist between them.

Eleanor Lee is fiercely independent. She has lived alone well into her nineties, despite her now near-total blindness. Now, finally, she has been persuaded by her children to move into a home. She employs Peter, a recent graduate nursing a broken heart, to spend the summer sorting through her attic – papers, photographs, books and letters – ahead of the move.

Siblings Billa and Ed share their beautiful, grand old childhood home in rural Cornwall. Their lives are uncomplicated. With family and friends nearby and their free-and-easy living arrangements, life seems as content as can be. But when postcards start arriving from a sinister figure they thought belonged well and truly in their pasts, old memories are stirred. Why is he contacting them now? And what has he been hiding all these years?

Florence has never forgiven Jane for the circumstances of her birth. She was an accident; the product of Jane's first and only one-night-stand, and Flo does not want to know how hard her teenage mother fought to keep her. When Flo's own, carefully planned, baby arrives, and her glossy, controlled world is turned upside down, for the first time in her life she turns to her mother for help.

Step outdoors and let your space nourish all of your senses and settle a busy mind. Discover how to garden to enliven all five senses - touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste - to build a connection with the world around you and bring joy and wonder into the everyday. Find out how simply being outside can help to ground and calm you, and learn what plants to grow to nourish both your mental and physical well-being.

1731: When his youngest son is killed in a tragic accident, Sir William Keyt, master of Norton House, buries himself in his fortune. He builds a second vast mansion on his grounds, squandering money he does not have on luxury his family does not want. Keyt has long been blind to the desires of others. His eldest son has fallen in love with their young maidservant, Molly Johnson, a ray of light in a household dimmed by tragedy. But Keyt wants Molly for himself and, driven mad with lust and jealousy, he will do anything to have her...

Jess Penhaligon is on her way to Devon to receive an award for her botanical painting. Hosting her will be Kate, who gladly welcomes her into her home. Jess's own family fell apart several years ago, so she is grateful for Kate's friendliness - and her close unit of extended family and friends, who embrace Jess just as warmly. As this group begins reminiscing on their pasts and sharing their stories with Jess, it becomes apparent that her family history may be linked with theirs.

This is the extraordinary true story of a plucky young woman and her dramatic escape from a German-run internment camp in Occupied France. Written in Rosemary's own words and completed by her daughter and son-in-law after her death, Rosie's story moves from artistic circles in Avignon, through occupied Paris and the privations of prison camp, and across war-ravaged Europe.

The marriage of Prince William to Catherine Middleton is one of the most significant royal events of recent times. As second in line to the throne, William carries the hopes and expectations of millions of people around the world. As a ‘commoner’ who will become a princess, Kate brings beauty and freshness to a very traditional union. William and Catherine: Their Lives, Their Wedding portrays the histories and characters of the couple as well as covering the wedding itself.

Stephanie Sandford, recently widowed, must tell her family the truth. But the past is indistinct and it’s complicated. First, there was her mum, who developed an anxious streak after marrying the wrong Reg. And then there was the young man from the dairy who gave Stevie swimming lessons before he broke her heart. War came, and four years chopping root vegetables in the canteen of the Sun Pat peanut factory on the Old Kent Road.

From an obscure country parsonage came the most extraordinary family of the nineteenth century. The Brontë sisters created a world in which we still live the intense, passionate world of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights; and the phenomenon of this strange explosion of genius remains as baffling now as it was to their Victorian contemporaries. In this panoramic novel we see with new insight the members of a uniquely close-knit family whose tight bonds are the instruments of both triumph and tragedy.