Showing results by narrator "Richard Burnip" in All Categories

Ray Greenland is an exemplary family man, a Thames River pilot who guides others to safety, while his wife Lily runs a dating agency, navigating others to happy futures. What none of those around him know, including Lily and their children, is that Ray's life is not his own. An act committed when he was twelve has meant that Ray must live under a false identity for the rest of his life.

Baghdad, 1917: Captain Jim Stringer has been dispatched to investigate what looks like a case of treason. He arrives to find his cover blown - his contact dead. The Baghdad heat alone threatens the lives of the British soldiers who occupy the city. But the recently ejected Turks are still a danger - and the local Arabs are none too friendly, either. Aside from his investigation, Jim is working on the railways around the city. His boss, Lieutenant-Colonel Shepherd, presides over the dining society called The Baghdad Railway Club. Jim's search for the truth brings him up against murderous violence as enemies wait around every corner.

1066 – Senlac Ridge, England. William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, defeats Harold Godwinson, King Harold II of England, in what will become known as the Battle of Hastings. But England will not be conquered easily, the Anglo-Saxons will not submit meekly to Norman rule. Although his heroic deeds will nearly be lost to legend, one man unites the resistance. His name is Hereward of Bourne. His honour, bravery and skill at arms will change the future of England.

Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, has lived through Henry II’s reign and has witnessed the terrifying civil war between Henry II’s mother, the Empress Matilda, and her cousin, Stephen; a time so traumatic that it becomes known as the Anarchy. The greatest letter writer of the 12th Century, Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, gives an intimate account of one of England’s most troubled eras. Central to his account is the life of a knight he first met over 50 years earlier, Harold of Hereford.

The close-knit villages of the Dearne Valley were home to four generations of the Hollingworth family. Spanning Richard Benson's great-grandmother Winnie's 92 years in the valley, and drawing on years of historical research, interviews and anecdotes, The Valley lets us into generations of carousing and banter as the family's attempts to build a better and fairer world for themselves meet sometimes with triumph, sometimes with bitter defeat.

June 1914. The beginning of another long, prosperous summer for Britain. But beneath the clear skies, the chill wind of social discontent swirls around this sceptred isle. Shots ring out in a distant European land - the assassination of a foreign aristocrat. From that moment the entire world is propelled into a conflict unlike any seen before. This is the story of five British communities, their circumstances very different, but who will all share in the tragedy that is to come.

Life for Jonathan Leech is on the verge of taking a toe-curling turn for the worse. Or is it? He's about to discover his family's darkest secret. Grandad! But that's not all. Jonathan makes some unusual new friends who are going to teach him a few bloodcurdling things about himself, too... Meet Jonathan and the grisly neighbours of Goolish in the first of a brand new series about the Fang Gang.

In 1944, as waves of German ninjas parachute into Kent, Britain's best hopes for victory lie with a Spitfire pilot codenamed Ack-Ack Macaque. The trouble is, Ack-Ack Macaque is a cynical, one-eyed, cigar-chomping monkey, and he's starting to doubt everything, including his own existence.

It looks like Mr Cheng has finally lost his mind! So when everything starts to spiral out of control, it's not long before Jonathon and the Fang Gang have to get involved. Enjoy more fiendishly funny stories from Jonathon the Fang Gang and the grisly neighbours of Goolish.

This is an epic audiobook set in an age of dramatic change. Siward, scion of a great dynasty, commands the Varangian Guard and has vowed to defend the Roman Empire to the last. Makkim, renowned general to Ottoman rule, has vowed to destroy it. They are enemies in war, but unknown to them, they are also rivals to inherit one of Europe's greatest fortunes. Even worse, they are competing for the love of the same woman .

Autumn, 1917. London is not the city that Dr. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes once bestrode like giants. Terror has come from the sky, and Londoners are scurrying underground in fear. Then a twin tragedy strikes Watson. An old friend, Staff Nurse Jennings, is on a boat-ambulance torpedoed in the Channel with no survivors. And his concert-going companion, Sir Gilbert Hardy, is kidnapped.

1072: England is firmly under the heel of its new Norman rulers. The few survivors of the English resistance look to Edgar the Atheling to overthrow William the Conqueror. Years of intrigue and vicious civil war follow and in the face of chaos and death, Edgar and his allies form a secret brotherhood, pledging to fight for justice and freedom. But soon they are called to fight for an even greater cause: the plight of the Holy Land.

Deep in the trenches of Flanders Fields, men are dying in the thousands every day. So one more death shouldn't be a surprise. But then a body turns up with bizarre injuries, and Sherlock Holmes' former sidekick, Dr. John Watson - unable to fight for his country due to injury but able to serve it through his medical expertise - finds his suspicions raised.

‘I am fascinated by people turning their daft dreams into a reality. How did they do it and why?’ Driven by his own passion for collecting Hunter Davies has packed his notepad and set off in search of Britain’s maddest museums. As he explores these hidden gems he soon discovers that they are everywhere and that they celebrate just about everything, from lawnmowers in Southport to pencils in Keswick.

North East India, 1923. On the Night Mail to Jamalpur, a man is shot dead in a first class compartment. Detective Inspector Jim Stringer was sleeping in the next compartment along. Was he the intended target?Jim should have known that his secondment to the East Indian Railway would not be the working holiday he had hoped for. Aside from the Jamalpur shooting, someone is placing venomous snakes in the first class compartments of the railway.

In order to hide from his unwanted fame as the spitfire pilot-monkey who emerged from a computer game to defeat the nefarious corporation that engineered him, the charismatic and dangerous Ack-Ack Macaque is working as a pilot on a world-circling nuclear-powered zeppelin. But when the cabin of one of his passengers is invaded by the passenger's own dying doppelganger, our hirsute hero finds himself thrust into another race to save the world - this time from an aggressive hive mind, time-hopping saboteurs, and an army of homicidal Neanderthal assassins!

Dr. John Watson is back home, fresh from his time in the trenches of Flanders Fields. The horrors of war weigh heavy on his mind, and now his task is to help rehabilitate soldiers suffering from the crippling effects of shell-shock.

October 1941. Twenty-one-year-old Alan Mart is posted to India and taken under the wing of the overbearing Acting-Captain Sam Holl. Following the Japanese advance on Singapore, the men are deployed to Malaya. What follows is a quietly shattering and searingly authentic depiction of the claustrophobia of jungle warfare and the indiscriminate nature of conflict. Based on David Piper's own wartime experience in South East Asia, this new edition of a 1959 classic includes a contextual introduction from IWM which sheds new light on the dramatic true events that so influenced its author.

May 1941. The Royal Navy’s Eastern Mediterranean fleet has its back to the wall. Hearts of Steel traces a history of the Royal Navy from a fresh perspective beginning in 1918 to World War 2 and its darkest hour. During peacetime we sail with the crews of HMS Effingham and Hawkins, Flagships to the East Indies Station, cruising the Indian Ocean to protect and support the British Empire. As WW2 looms we join the hand picked crew of Tribal Destroyer HMS Nubian.

The Forrester Detective Agency is going from strength to strength: they’ve expanded their office space and even hired a new office manager – a qualified and astute woman named Carol. What starts as a simple burglary case soon turns into something darker. The victim of said burglary soon turns up dead, after making threats to the local yobs she believed to have been responsible. But it soon becomes clear that there’s more at play here, and Matt – alongside sister Hermia, partner Steve, and life partner Karen – will have to put all his skills to the test, even if it puts them all in danger.