Showing results by narrator "Jilly Bond" in All Categories

Christian Lamb is one of the last surviving Wren officers to have served throughout the Second World War, from Blitz ravaged London, to the important radar and operations rooms and undertaking a vital role in D Day. Escaping both the Spanish Flu pandemic when she was born and the pandemic we are emerging from today, she has reached the impressive age of 101. Now she leads us through the story of her extraordinary life and the wartime experiences of her fellow Wrens.

In this beautifully nostalgic memoir, eminent author Angela Thirkell recalls in rich detail the three houses in which she grew up. Focusing first on 'The Grange', where her grandfather, the celebrated painted Sir Edward Burne-Jones, set the cultivated tone, Thirkell also reminisces about her parents' home in Kensington Square and the Burne-Jones' seaside retreat, where Angela's cousin, Rudyard Kipling, lived across the green.

Based in Devon in the 1940s, these two dramas follow the lives and loves of a group of young women, all from different backgrounds, but all determined to do their bit for king and country in the Land Army. Billeted in a hastily converted farmhouse, they face cramped conditions and gruelling work - but there's always dances at the village hop and the chance of romance with a GI....

The Tree of Heaven follows the fortunes of the Harrison family as the children grow up in the shadow of the First World War and Dorothy's brothers go off to the trenches, while she becomes involved with the suffrage movement, and later joins a version of the Women's Social and Political Union.

Jack Andrews was having a tough time. He'd come back from the First World War to find his wife had 'got religion'. She'd got it so badly that she finally went off, left Jim and the three children and joined Father Peter's League of Repenters. She never really came home again. Jack and the children managed as best they could, but things were pretty tough when Aunt Edie turned up. The first thing she did was give her cousin, Maud Andrews, a piece of her mind for running off and leaving her family. But when that didn't do any good, Edie moved in and took over the Andrews family.

Penelope was to spend the first Christmas after her marriage at the country home of her great aunt Hermione, where she had lived as a child after the death of her parents. She looked forward to the traditionally peaceful holiday that she had known all her life. Before they left London, Vincent, her husband, gave her a present which was to prove a dominant factor in the events, tragic and terrifying, that followed. It was a small china doll.

The profound emotion felt around the world upon seeing images of Notre-Dame in flames opens up a series of questions: Why was everyone so deeply moved? Why does Notre-Dame so clearly crystallise what our civilisation is about? What makes ‘Our Lady of Paris’ the soul of a nation and a symbol of human achievement? What is it that speaks so directly to us today?

Voices from the Blue tells the story of the hundred years of service of female police officers within the Metropolitan Police through the voices of the women who fought their way towards equality and won the respect of both their colleagues and the public. The authors have interviewed hundreds of former and serving policewomen and with the co-operation of the Metropolitan Police and the Women's Police Association now have access to the files and stories of thousands of former officers who served over the past hundred years.

Ever been talked into buying a camel? Or become a burglar by mistake? Or accidentally drugged a friend on a blind date? Keggie Carew has an unerring instinct for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, of putting her foot in it, and making a hash of things. From the repercussions of a missing purse, to boiling a frog, or the holiday when the last thing you could possibly imagine happens, Keggie has been there. She also has an enviable talent for recycling awfulness and turning embarrassment into gold. In prose that will make you laugh, wince and curl your toes, Keggie Carew shares her most embarrassing, awkward, uncomfortable, funny, true, terrible and all-too-relatable moments. You will be glad none of it happened to you.

It is the day of her ex-husband's wedding. The press call Ursula first thing, demanding that she share her innermost feelings with the world at large. Her three children cannot restrain their excitement. After all, it isn't every day that their father marries a government minister.

A story about love, loss and starting again. Widower Henry Drummond is marking time, drifting towards retirement, until he accidentally saves a life. His daughter, Maddie, is at a wedding with the love of her life. But he is the groom, and she is not the bride. They both decide they need to change their lives, preferably with soulmates by their sides. But, as Henry's mother tells him, 'Love is a complicated business, and it is not for the easily discouraged'.

When a bomb goes off in the West End, Home Secretary Victoria Osborne has a desperate sense of having failed to protect the public. A young Muslim reporter, Ahmed Khan, also has a deep-seated sense of anger and responsibility. He persuades his editor to let him go back amongst childhood friends in Leeds to try to find information.

Anna Fehrback is not yet 21, the picture of innocent beauty-and a deadly assassin with seven kills to her name. Recruited by the Nazis under threats of reprisals against her family, she has served as a double agent in the war, secretly spying for the British. Now, as France falls to Germany, she faces a new mission: go to Russia and assassinate Stalin.

Emma Blair once again richly evokes the setting and characters of Scotland during the 30s. Continuing the story she began in Flower of Scotland, Emma invites the listener back into the lives of the Drummond family, who are still dealing with the aftermath of the First World War but now must also face up to the horrors of the Second. Andrew and Rose are running the distillery and have given a job to Jack's son, Tommy.

Jen's stable relationship, steady job as a press officer for the police and mapped-out future is thrown into turmoil after she confronts her fiancé about a telephone call from a mysterious woman. In sadness and revenge she picks up a stranger in a bar. When videos and demands for money start to arrive, Jen has to find her blackmailer and rescue her relationship with Dan. As she emulates her police colleagues to find her evil extortionist darker secrets emerge.

It is 1936 in a remote dale in the old northern county of Westmorland. For centuries the rural community has remained the same, the Lightburn family has been immersed in the harsh hill-farming tradition. Then a man from the city of Manchester arrives, spokesman for a vast industrial project that will devastate both the landscape and the local community. Mardale will be flooded to create a new reservoir, supplying water to the Midland cities. In the coming year this corner of Lakeland will be evacuated and transformed.

Friendship, freedom, booze and student loans: the glory days of University, the halcyon haze. For friends Liz, Cora, Mike and Stevie, students at Cardiff, that haze was shared, their circle tight, a surrogate family, bound together for three idyllic, hedonistic years in total trust. Or so it seemed. Mike and Cora marry after graduation, while Liz and Stevie look on, misty-eyed.

The first time Annie Sweet sees 43 Stanley Road, the house is so perfect she feels almost as if it has chosen her. She longs to move in, but with her husband increasingly distant, and her daughter wrapped up in childhood, Annie is left alone to mull over the past.

The poignant, heart warming and beautifully written new standalone novel from the best-loved and original Queen of Tween, whose books are described by Jacqueline Wilson as “funny, funky, feisty – and fantastic reads!”. Ruby, Tizz and Sam are sisters. At 12, Ruby is the oldest but with all...

The dark wood was green and gold - green where the oak trees stood crowded together with misshapen, twisted trunks, red-gold where the great smooth beeches lifted their branching arms to the sky. In between jostled silver birches - olive-tinted fountains which never reached the light-black spruces with little pale candles on each tip - and nut trees smothered to the neck in dense bracken.