Showing results by narrator "Andrew Wincott" in All Categories

A respectable young widow and mother of two children, the Marquise of O— finds herself inexplicably pregnant after being rescued by a Russian officer from the attentions of his soldiers during the storming of her town's citadel. Convinced of her own innocence and wishing to vindicate her own integrity, the Marquise places an advert in the newspapers, appealing for the father to come forward and promising to marry him.

Although William Morris is known primarily as a designer, he was also a writer of poetry and prose. The novel News from Nowhere (subtitled An Epoch of Rest Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance) is his best-known prose work and describes a humane socialist future as experienced by William Guest, who is transplanted there from the 19th century. Set in London and Oxfordshire, the novel takes place in 2090, over a century after a revolutionary upheaval. It remains a distinctive literary contribution to the concept of the utopian ideal.

In the fashionable spa town of Bath, one man is the arbiter of taste and the epitome of elegance: the self-proclaimed ‘King of Bath’, Beau Nash. In his capacity as Master of Ceremonies, he presides over the city’s social life, arranging balls and concerts for the ‘ton’, keeping a discreet eye on distinguished visitors and smoothing over any quarrels or disagreements. In these six episodes, he has his work cut out for him...

1939: Adolf Hitler, fallen from power, seeks refuge in a London engulfed in the throes of a very British fascism. Now eking a miserable living as a down-at-heels private eye and calling himself Wolf, he has no choice but to take on the case of a glamorous Jewish heiress whose sister went missing. It's a decision Wolf will very shortly regret. For in another time and place a man lies dreaming: Shomer, once a Yiddish pulp writer, who dreams lurid tales of revenge in the hell that is Auschwitz.

Crime reporter Eve Singer's career is on the downward slope when a spate of bizarre murders - each carefully orchestrated and advertised like performance art - begin in her territory. Covering these very public crimes revives her byline, and when the killer contacts Eve to discuss her coverage of his crimes, she is suddenly on the inside of the biggest murder investigation of the decade. But as the killer becomes increasingly obsessed with her, Eve realizes there's a thin line between inside information and becoming an accomplice to murder.

When two young sisters run away on Dartmoor, Daniel Whelan and his German Shepherd is called into action. A desperate search of the moor quickly turns up one of the girls. However, rather than showing relief at being rescued, she seems terrified, and Daniel cannot help but notice the strange behaviour of her father and uncle. Just what had the girls been running from?

The publishing house of John Murray was founded in Fleet Street in 1768 and remained a family firm over seven generations. Published to coincide with this remarkable achievement' and in the anniversary year, Dear Mr Murray is a collection of some of the best letters from the hundreds of thousands held in the John Murray Archive. They reveal not only the story of some of the most interesting and influential books in history but also the remarkable friendships - as well as occasional animosities - between author and publisher as well as readers, editors, printers and illustrators.

The Perigord of 16th-century France is a wild region on the edge of the reaches of royal authority - its steep, forested valleys roamed by bands of brigands and gypsies, its communities divided by conflict between Catholics and converts to the new Protestant faith, the Huguenots. To this beautiful but dangerous country come two veterans of the French king's wars, Jean de Siorac and Jean de Sauveterre, The Brethren - as fiercely loyal to the crown as they are to their Huguenot religion.

Moribus, Stormcast Eternals Decimator of the Sons of Mallus, wanders the glass labyrinths of Shadespire alone. Somewhere out of sight, his brothers can be heard, and together they search for a dangerous creature, a malignant spirit that haunts this wasteland. This foe carries a cache of shardglass, which Sigmar hopes can cure the Stormcast Eternals of the degradations that come with their reforging. As Moribus remembers his many deaths to focus his mind, he begins to doubt his senses and reality.

When the committee members of the Oldford Literary Festival all receive anonymous letters telling them to resign or die, it marks the start of an unusual case for Chief Superintendent Lambert and DS Hook. All of the members identify one man as being capable of such a thing: Peter Preston, a self-important cultural snob who is in disagreement with the head of the festival, Marjorie Dooks, over what he sees as the dumbing down of the events programme. But could a disagreement over a literary festival actually lead to murder?

The last thing Inspector Sam Blackstone wants to do is investigate the murder of a young lieutenant on the Western Front, but he owes a debt to General Fortesque - the soldier’s grandfather. Once he arrives at the front line, it does not take him long to realise that he is completely out of his depth. The officers resent his presence, and the enlisted men refuse - or do not dare - to talk to him. As thousands are slaughtered around him, Blackstone struggles to solve one of the most difficult cases of his career.

At 25, West-End dancer Ellie Wakefield should be having the time of her life. The only problem is, since waking up in a 300-year-old vampire’s leaky cellar, Ellie’s been very much dead. William James Austen has fallen hard. He’s spent the last year loving Ellie from afar and now he’s finally able to be truthful about who and what he is. But this time, Will might just have bitten off more than he can chew.

The message was short: "I want to see you now. I want you to come to me, it doesn't matter how late it is, and tell me exactly what you want from me." Like the world around him, at the dawn of the 21st century, Adam Kellas' life is showing distinct signs of cracking apart. Against his better judgement, Kellas - divorced, unstable, spurned by his lover and by the world of letters - accepts a war assignment from his newspaper.

Mr Ginger Leghorn is used to collecting up umbrellas and other lost property, but he’s never found an abandoned puppy on his train before. He has no intention of keeping it, but his five children - Alfie, Arthur, Beryl, Sissy and Albert - have other ideas, and Jim is soon a much-loved but often disruptive member of the family. Whether it’s his feud with the cat, getting stuck in rabbit holes, accidentally going to sea, accompanying the children to school or carol singing at Christmas, Jim has a knack of making himself the centre of attention.

Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. A high school English teacher specializing in the Gothic writer R. M. Holland, she teaches a course on it every year. But when one of Clare’s colleagues and closest friends is found dead, with a line from R. M. Holland’s most famous story, “The Stranger”, left by her body, Clare is horrified to see her life collide with the story lines of her favorite literature.

A full-cast dramatisation of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a passionate love affair which breaks all the rules of the restrictive high society of 1870s New York.In the exclusive world of upper-class New York, in which attendance at balls and dinner passes for occupation, Newland Archer anticipates his marriage to May Welland, a beautiful young girl from a suitable family ‘who knows nothing and expects everything’.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. But war is waged in many ways. From the dark places where 10,000-year-old psychic warriors interrogate living machines from a time before man, to a treacherous assassination plot that could bring an end to a centuries-old legacy of honour, to relic hunters who want to wrest secrets from a plague-ridden traitor or cross swords with a sinister Chaplain of the Dark Angels.

Montpellier in 1566 - only fools walk the streets at night unarmed while a profession of faith in the wrong company can lead to a knife in the back. Not even this proud city of philosophers is safe from the menaces that endanger the peace of France. The city militia are struggling to contend with the lawlessness and religious hatred that threaten to tear the whole country in two.

1922: Commander Joe Sandilands returns from a stint in India and immediately finds himself up to his neck in a tricky political situation. London is reeling from IRA atrocities and Joe is further plagued by the machinations of a spy ring being run under his nose by a Russian émigrée princess. When a war hero is gunned down and the life of a popular Englishman is threatened, Joe knows he has only days to root out the person behind the killings.

Scott Manson and London City are in Athens battling for the UEFA Champion's League title. The situation in Athens is tense, and some of City's players are so unpopular in Greece they've been assigned bodyguards. Karaiskakis Stadium is packed to the rafters when tragedy strikes: Christoph Bundchen collapses and dies midmatch. Is it a heart attack? Or something more sinister?