Showing results by narrator "David Shaw-Parker" in All Categories

After the fall of France in May 1940, the British Expeditionary Force was miraculously evacuated from Dunkirk. Britain now stood alone to face Hitler’s inevitable invasion attempt. For the German Army to be landed across the Channel, Hitler needed mastery of the skies – the RAF would have to be broken – so every day, throughout the summer, German bombers pounded the RAF air bases in the southern counties.

Peter Fleming, brother of James Bond author Ian Fleming, was one of the greatest adventurers and travel writers of the 20th century and author of several classic and best-selling books. This is the first paperback edition. It presents an exciting adventure that could never be made today - it will appeal to all interested in the region.

Poetry can capture the imagination in a few short lines but narrative verse or poetry takes the form of telling a story, whether it be simple or complex in a longer form. Among the most ancient forms of poetry, it has widespread roots through almost every culture. In Volume 4 we bring you the classics 'The Eve of St Agnes' by John Keats; 'Flodden' by Sir Walter Scott; 'The Ballad of Agincourt' by Michael Drayton; 'Tam O'Shanter' by Robert Burns; and 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' by Robert Browning.

Perhaps England's greatest literary family. To find one brilliant novelist in a family is extremely rare. But two? Three?

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily Jane and Anne, together with their brother Patrick, are famed throughout the world. And amongst their many talents was poetry. Of course, being Brontë's, they were rather good at that too.

With classics such as ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ Robert Browning’s status as one of the great Victorian poets will always be secure in popular culture, while for the more literary he is considered a master of dramatic verse and dramatic monologues. It is interesting to note that his career bloomed late. Indeed, it was only after the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1861 and his return to England from their life in Italy that his work came into wider acceptance and critical acclaim. 

Many nations, peoples and special interest groups believe that violence will advance their cause. Warfare has changed greatly since the Second World War; it continued to change during the late 20th century, and this process is still accelerating. Political, technological, social and religious forces are shaping the future of warfare, but most Western armed forces have yet to evolve significantly from the Cold War era when they trained to resist a conventional invasion by the Warsaw Pact.

Five short stories about bullying, school camaraderie, and about learning how to relate to others as an only child.

When an interest in surrealism becomes a fascination, and then a passion, and then an obsession which dominates your dreams, it's time to take a reality check.

Loss in any form seems to burden us with more weight than anything that can possibly be gained or learnt from. The loss of a person, a loved one, is often overwhelming. Lives so interwoven that the severing or loss of one life leaves the other weakened, unable to function for some time. Recovery comes in a myriad of forms but is usually debilitating, slow and, in the end, we are not as whole as we once were.It is a subject that authors return to again and again.

Whilst Europe endured the Dark Ages in the 6th & 7th Centuries, devotees of Shiva and Vishnu in Southern India were creating the Bhakti Movement. Some of these exponents, as in our volume, were bestowed with the title of saint but some had the additional title of sant, swami or goswami. Broadly speaking, Bhakti poetry, as in Hinduism itself, is divided into ‘Nirguna’, the idea that the divine is formless as exampled by Kabir and ‘Saguna’, which interprets the divine as having physical form as captured by Mirabai.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 22nd May 1859. His literary career burst into life in November 1886 with ‘A Study In Scarlet’, the first of the fabulously successful Sherlock Holmes stories. In 1891 tired of writing Holmes stories, he began a series of historical novels and even went so far as to apparently kill off Holmes in a lethal brawl with his arch-nemesis, Moriarty.

During the Victorian era the publishing of magazines and periodicals accelerated at a phenomenal rate. This really was mass market publishing to a hungry audience eager for literary sustenance. Many of our greatest authors contributed and expanded their reach whilst many fledging authors also found a ready source for their nascent works and careers. Amongst the very many was ‘The Yellow Book’.

Richard Thomas Gallienne was born in Liverpool on 20th January, 1866. His first job was in an accountant's office, but this was quickly abandoned to pursue his first love as a professional writer. His first work, My Ladies’ Sonnets, was published in 1887. In 1889 he became, for a brief time, literary secretary to Wilson Barrett the manager, actor, and playwright. Barrett enjoyed immense success with the staging of melodramas, which would later reach a peak with the historical tragedy The Sign of the Cross (1895).

John William Polidori was born on 7th September 1795, in London, to Gaetano Polidori. In 1816 Dr Polidori was given the job of Byron’s personal physician and accompanied him on a trip through Europe. The publisher John Murray offered Polidori £500 to keep a diary of their travels. At the Villa Diodati, Byron’s rented villa at Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the pair met with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont.

Poetry has over the centuries grouped poets or poems into many different themes and movements. Amongst its most unusual movements are the English wordsmiths, The Silver Poets. This select band lived during the sixteenth century reign of Queen Elizabeth 1st. Amongst their storied ranks were Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Davies, Michael Drayton and Mary Sidney (Herbert), the Countess of Pembroke.

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born on August 28th, 1814, at 45 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, into a literary family with Huguenot, Irish and English roots. Between 1838 and 1840 Le Fanu had written and published twelve stories which purported to be the literary remains of an 18th-century Catholic priest called Father Purcell. Set mostly in Ireland they include classic stories of gothic horror, with grim, shadowed castles, as well as supernatural visitations from beyond the grave, together with madness and suicide.

Gibran Khalil Gibran was born on 6th January 1883, in the village of Bsharri, Beirut Vilayet, then part of the Ottoman Empire. His first book in English, ‘The Madman’, became an international phenomenon. Gibran was regarded as a literary rebel and a leading figure of the Arabic literary Renaissance and made influential contributions to Western poetry, stories and thought. Madame Rose Hanie is an exquisite short story that unravels the real calling of love and its experience in a society where women were too often treated as second-class. Rose Hanie thinks very differently.

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5th, 1850, near Dieppe in France. In 1880 he published what is considered his first great work, ‘Boule de Suif’, (translated as as ‘Dumpling’, ‘Butterball’, ‘Ball of Fat’, or ‘Ball of Lard’), which met with a success that was both instant and overwhelming. Flaubert at once acknowledged that it was ‘a masterpiece that will endure.’ Maupassant had used his talents and experiences in the war to create something unique.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854, in Dublin, Ireland. The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Trinity College and then at Oxford. His only novel, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with ‘Salome’ in 1891. His society comedies were enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London. This collection of light-hearted and witty stories was written by Oscar Wilde in 1891.

In this collection of short stories some of our most popular and well-known authors are grouped together with an unfortunate tag: dead at 44. These authors are not run-of-the-mill or ten a penny; they are literary leviathans who left enduring works of literature and sadly may have left us many more had they lived. We will never know.