Showing results by author "Simon Callow" in All Categories

Exclusively from Audible. 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.' So begins Charles Dickens' most famous historical drama: a gripping tale of war, social injustice and the choice between darkness and light. After being unjustly imprisoned for 18 years, French doctor Manette is released from the Bastille jail in Paris and embarks upon a journey to London in the hope of finding the daughter he never met.

Simon Callow, the celebrated author of Orson Welles, delivers a dazzling, swift, and accessible biography of the musical titan Richard Wagner and his profoundly problematic legacy--a fresh take for seasoned acolytes and the perfect introduction for new fans. Richard Wagner's music dramas have...

A short biography of Charles Dickens by acclaimed actor and writer Simon Callow that offers a fresh perspective on one of the greatest novelists in the English language in a lively, highly readable account. "It has all the gusto that a popular biography of Dickens—a man who “could do nothing...

Jacques and His Master is a deliciously witty and entertaining 'variation' on Diderot's novel Jacques le Fataliste, written for Milan Kundera's 'private pleasure' in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. When the 'heavy Russian irrationality' fell on Czechoslovakia he felt drawn to the spirit of the eighteenth century - 'And it seemed to me that nowhere was it to be found more densely concentrated than in that banquet of intelligence, humour and fantasy, Jacques le Fataliste'.

A short life of Dickens which celebrates the impact of the theatre on his life and work. Two hundred years after his death, Dickens’s work is more popular than ever, in a variety of media, most of them undreamed of during his lifetime. Over the last few decades of intensive research, Dickens the man has become much better known to us and the sheer originality of his personality blazes forth as never before.

ESTE É UM EPISÓDIO DA OBRA "CARTA PARA O MEU JOVEM EU", DE JANE GRAHAM, QUE APRESENTAM CARTAS PARA OLIVIA COLMAN E SIMON CALLOW MAIS JOVENS. SE QUISER LER TODAS AS CARTAS LEIA A OBRA COMPLETA. Se a viagem no tempo fosse uma possibilidade, o que você diria ao seu eu adolescente, caso o...

In this unique oral biography, Bachardy recounts his astonishing story, providing illuminating recollections of celebrity portrait sittings and revelations about his thirty-year relationship with Christopher Isherwood. From their meeting in the 1950s until Isherwood's death in 1986, theirs was a legendary love story, courageous and uncompromising for its time, and remarkable in any era for the creative collaborations and art it continues to inspire.

A stunning new reading of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis (adapted by Frank McGuinness, from the stage production directed by Mark Rosenblatt) and The Ballad of Reading Gaol, performed by one of Britain's greatest actors. One of the most famous and successful writers of his day, Oscar Wilde was celebrated as much for his flamboyant personality and his prodigious wit as for his provocative essays, touching fairy stories and satirical plays.

The perfect introduction to the Master. Over a century after his death, Richard Wagner’s music dramas stand at the centre of the culture of classical music. He was a walking contradiction: aggressive, flirtatious, disciplined, capricious, heroic, visionary and poisonously anti-Semitic. His ten...

Insightful, incisive & enlightening, the first volume of Simon Callow's comprehensive biography of Orson Welles. Now in abridged audio, Callow's vastly entertaining chronicle of Welles's first 26 years seems even finer than it did in 1995. The author's ability to skewer his subject's evasions...