Showing results by narrator "William Hootkins" in All Categories

"Call me Ishmael." Thus starts the greatest American novel. Melville said himself that he wanted to write "a mighty book about a mighty theme" and so he did. It is a story of one man's obsessive revenge-journey against the white whale, Moby-Dick, who injured him in an earlier meeting. Woven into the story of the last journey of The Pequod is a mesh of philosophy, rumination, religion, history, and a mass of information about whaling through the ages.

When the Bates Motel looms up out of the storm, Mary Crane thinks it is her salvation. The rooms are musty but clean. The manager, Norman Bates, seems like a nice enough fellow, if a little strange. Then Mary decides to take a shower, and the nightmare begins....

Longfellow's great narrative poem has been unjustly neglected in recent years though it gives a sympathetic portrait especially of Hiawatha, reared by Nokomis, daughter of the Moon, and his bride Minehaha.

On 15 March 1878, Lord Littleby, an English eccentric and collector, is found murdered in his Paris house together with nine members of his staff. A gold whale in the victim's hand leads Erast Fandorin to board the Leviathan, the world's largest steamship, as the murderer is one of the 142 First Class passengers.

A 23-year-old law student commits suicide in broad daylight in Moscow's Alexander Gardens. Fandorin is put on the case to find out what drove him to it, a case that deepens as he discovers that the young man was the son of a rich and influential factory owner. The story is enhanced by its authentic backdrop of 19th century Russia. After all, it's difficult to keep your mind on a case when the new Dostoyevsky novel has just hit the shops.

The godfather of the hard-boiled detective novel, Dashiell Hammett is widely acknowledged as one of America's greatest mystery writers. This collection brings together the BBC radio adaptations of his works for the first time, including the iconic The Maltese Falcon, featuring his most famous character: Sam Spade.

Four gripping historical dramas centred around key figures who shaped America in the 20th century. Award-winning writer Mike Walker has created many acclaimed docudramas and historical dramas for Radio 4, including The Stuarts, Tsar, Caesar! and Plantagenet. This collection includes four nuanced dramas featuring a trio of controversial men who stamped their mark on American history: J Edgar Hoover, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Baines Nixon. Among the casts are William Hootkins, Bob Sherman, Lorelei King, Nathan Osgood and Alex Lanipekun.

Born in the wilds of the freezing cold Yukon, White Fang - half-dog, half-wolf - is the only animal in the litter to survive.

He soon learns the harsh laws of nature, yet buried deep inside him are the distant memories of affection and love. Will this fiercely independent creature of the wild learn to trust man again?

Read by the late William Hootkins, star of Star Wars, Batman, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Walt Whitman said, "...poetry is the voice of the nation, expressing its deepest concerns, ambitions and longings," which is certainly true of the great classic poetry of America. This wide-ranging anthology, from the earliest poets of the 16th century to the present day, reflects the changing preoccupations and visions of Americans, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, E.E. Cummings, and more.

Terry Malloy is a hoodlum, caught between the beginnings of a conscience and the racketeers for whom he works. Katie is that conscience. But she is torn between her love for him and her belief he killed her brother. Together with a slum-reared Catholic priest, Father Pete Barry, Terry and Katie take on the gangster-ridden waterfront unions of Johnnie Friendly....

Following the death of his wife Rachel and diagnosis of his own medical condition, Dr Ben Givens left his home in Seattle - heading east with his Winchester and hunting dogs in tow - not intending to return. It was to be a journey to the verges of the Columbia River, where he had entered the world and had decided he would now take his leave of it. What transpired was anything but the journey he anticipated. Instead, Ben’s perspective shifts as his intended exit transforms into an eye-opening, life-enhancing diversion.

Poetry can sometimes be elusive, the real meaning layered beneath another. In this volume American poets give voice to their nation, their hopes, and their aspirations. Whitman, Emerson, and Dickinson are joined by Poe, Holmes, Dunbar, and others to pleasure our ears and minds with a rambling stroll through their works. It doesn’t define America, but it captures her mood and the flavours of her soul in the early days of the American dream.