Showing results by narrator "Samuel West" in All Categories

In London, 26-year-old Venetia Stanley–aristocratic, intelligent, bored, reckless–is having a love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state. As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer is assigned to investigate a leak of top-secret documents. Suddenly what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that could topple the British government–and will alter the course of political history.

An urgent account of the revolution that has upended the news business, authored by one of the most accomplished journalists of our time.

A timeless classic - one of Jacqueline Wilson's Top Ten Books to Read Aloud. his is the story of the Velveteen Rabbit's journey towards becoming real - through the love of a child. This gentle, beautiful recording is perfect for bedtime. It includes a story reading, soundtrack, and a song, all voiced by Samuel West.

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.

For Oxford, the arrival of 27 American tourists is nothing out of the ordinary...until one of their number is found dead in Room 310 at the Randolph Hotel. It looks like a sudden - and tragic - accident. Only Chief Inspector Morse appears not to overlook the simultaneous theft of a jewel-encrusted antique from the victim's handbag.... Then, two days later, a naked and battered corpse is dragged from the River Cherwell. A coincidence? Maybe. But this time Morse is determined to prove the link....

Here are some of the finest narrative poems in the English language, dating from an age of rich inspiration.

Samuel narrates the 1990 Booker Prize winner, Possession by A. S. Byatt, an exhilarating novel of wit and romance. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets, uncovering their letters, journals, and poems, tracking their movements from London to Yorkshire, showing an extraordinary counterpoint of passions and ideas. In this interview, Samuel tells us about Possession, what he likes about narrating, what it was like growing up in a family of actors and what he’s working on next.

Samuel West reads ten of Rudyard Kipling’s famous tales, as broadcast on BBC Radio 4. "How the Whale Got His Throat", "How the Leopard Got His Spots", "The Beginning of the Armadillos", "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin", "The Cat That Walked By Himself", "How the Camel Got His Hump", "The Crab That Played With The Sea", "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo", "The Butterfly That Stamped", "The Elephant’s Child".

The sweet countenance of Reason greeted Morse serenely when he woke and told him that it would be no bad idea to have a quiet look at the problem itself before galloping off to a solution. Chief Inspector Morse was alone among the congregation in suspecting continued unrest in the quiet parish of St Frideswide's. Most people could still remember the churchwarden's murder. A few could still recall the murderer's suicide. Now even the police had closed the case.

The body of Joanna Franks was found at Duke's Cut on the Oxford Canal at about 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday, 22nd June 1859. At around 10.15 a.m. on a Saturday morning in 1989 the body of Chief Inspector Morse - though very much alive - was removed to Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital. Treatment for a perforated ulcer was later pronounced successful.

Human life is a staggeringly strange thing. On the surface of a ball of rock falling around a nuclear fireball in the blackness of a vacuum, the laws of nature conspired to create a naked ape that can look up at the stars and wonder where it came from. What is a human being? Objectively, nothing of consequence. Particles of dust in an infinite arena, present for an instant in eternity.

Jude Fawley, the stonemason excluded not by his wits but by poverty from the world of Christminster privilege, finds fulfilment in his relationship with Sue Bridehead. Both have left earlier marriages. Ironically, when tragedy tests their union it is Sue, the modern emancipated woman, who proves unequal to the challenge. Hardy’s fearless exploration of sexual and social relationships and his prophetic critique of marriage scandalised the late Victorian establishment and marked the end of his career as a novelist. Part of a series of vintage recordings taken from the Penguin Archives.

They called her the Swedish Maiden - the beautiful young tourist who disappeared on a hot summer's day somewhere in North Oxford. Twelve months later the case remained unsolved - pending further developments. On holiday in Lyme Regis, Chief Inspector Morse is startled to read a tantalising article in The Times about the missing woman. An article which lures him back to Wytham Woods near Oxford...and straight into the most extraordinary murder investigation of his career.

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.

Discovering that he has nine lives and is destined to be the next ‘Chrestomanci’ is not part of Christopher’s plans for the future: he’d much rather play cricket and wander around his secret dream worlds. But he soon finds that destiny is difficult to avoid, and that having more than the usual number of lives is pretty inconvenient - especially when you lose them as easily as he does!

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unique tales inspired by traditional literary forms appeared frequently in socialist-leaning British periodicals, such as the Clarion, Labour Leader, and Social Democrat. Based on familiar genres, these stories were meant to entertain readers of all ages - and some challenged the conventional values promoted in children’s literature for the middle class. Acclaimed critic and author Michael Rosen brings together more than 40 of the best and most enduring examples of these stories in one beautiful volume.

In Second World War Poland, a prisoner closes his eyes and pictures a sunlit cricket ground. Across the yard of a Victorian poorhouse, a man is too ashamed to acknowledge the son he gave away. In a 19th-century French village, an old servant understands the meaning of the Bible story her master is reading. In the Catskills, 1971, a girl steps out of a Chevy with a song that will send shivers through her listeners' skulls. A few years from now, in Italy, a scientist discovers links between time and the human brain, and her lover's novel and his life.

The heartrending story of a British boy's four-year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Based on J. G. Ballard's own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy's life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai - a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint.

Edward Manners - 33 and disaffected - escapes to a Flemish city in search of a new life. Almost at once he falls in love with 17-year-old Luc and is introduced to the twilight world of the 1890s Belgian painter Edgard Orst.

By the 16th of July, the Master of Lonsdale was concerned but not yet worried. Dr Browne-Smith had passed through the porter's lodge at approximately 8:15 a.m. on the morning of Friday, 11th July. And nobody had heard from him since. Plenty of time to disappear, thought Morse. And plenty of time, too, for someone to commit murder....