Showing results by narrator "Andrew Cullum" in All Categories

Underlain by an acute sense of ethics, this provided the basis for his strongly declared, wide-ranging views on many subjects: prohibition of cock-fighting, liberty of the press, universal suffrage, the removal of religious tests for office and even hunting. All were radical ideas for his time. He also proposed the decriminalisation of homosexuality, though even he did not dare to publish his essay on this subject during his lifetime. But An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation was his major work.

In Concorde, Jonathan Glancey tells the story of this magnificent and hugely popular aircraft anew, taking the reader from the moment Captain Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in 1947 through to the last commercial flight of the supersonic airliner in 2003. It is a tale of national rivalries, technological leaps, daring prototypes, tightrope politics, and a dream of a Dan Dare future never quite realised.

First published in March 1722, 57 years after the event that struck more than 100,000 people, Journal of the Plague Year is a compelling portrait of life during London's horrific bubonic plague. Through the eyes of H.F. (speculated to be Defoe's uncle, Henry Foe, from whose journals the book was supposedly adapted) we witness great grief, depravity and despair: crazed sufferers roam the streets, unearthly screams resound across the city, death carts dump their grisly loads into mass graves, and quackery and skulduggery feed on fear. But there is kindness and courage too, as mutual support and caring are upheld through the worst of days.

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics represent, in many ways, the Western classical springboard for the systematic study and implementation of ethics, the optimum behaviour of the individual. (By contrast, Aristotle’s Politics concerns the optimum blueprint for the city-state.) It is in the hands of each individual, he argues in these books on personal ethics, to develop a character which bases a life on virtue, with positive but moderate habits.

The title Politics literally means ‘the things concerning the city’. Here, Aristotle considers the important role that politics plays in the life of the community and its contribution to harmonious and virtuous existence. It is divided into eight books and was a cornerstone in political philosophy for centuries despite certain features - including attitudes towards slaves and women - clearly placing its conclusions and advice within the confines of Athenian society of the fourth century BCE. 

The Golden Bough, the monumental study of religious rites and practices in ‘primitive’ societies, was one of the earliest influential texts in anthropology. Its author, Sir James Frazer, surveyed the wide range of cultural habits, taboos and beliefs in communities across the world concluding that there was an observable pattern in the way magic developed into religion, though formal expression emerged in different ways.  

The third gripping instalment in the DI Paolo Sterling crime series. Detective Inspector Paolo Sterling has just six weeks to solve a series of murders by insulin injection, with nothing to connect the victims except the manner of death and a note left at each crime scene. The murderer, determined to avenge a wrong from many years earlier, gets close to his prey by assuming various identities. Can Paolo win in his race against the pretender?

Detective Inspector Paolo Sterling has more headaches than usual. Someone is abducting men and subjecting them to horrific acts of rape and torture, but who? More to the point - why? After three days of cruelty and starvation, they are released. Why will none of them give any information which would help the police to find the perpetrator? The victims refuse even to admit they were held captive. 

Barely half of the Bomber Command's aircrews survive a full tour, but wireless operator Billy Angell has beaten the odds and completed his 30th - and final - mission. Now, Billy is due two-weeks leave, a posting to a training squadron and a six-month exemption from active duty. Except that MI5 need an airman to drop into Nazi-occupied France. MI5 are interested in Hélène Lafosse, a Frenchwoman keeping unusual company in her small family château in the depths of the Touraine. 

In Dieter's hands, the Messerschmitt Bf-109 is as graceful as a matador's killing strike: la estocada. Scotsman and ex-marine Tam Moncrieff is recruited by a nameless intelligence agency in London to go to Germany and sound out Hitler's resolve. Does he really intend to invade Czechoslovakia? Do his generals support him? Can the march to war be stopped?  

The second gripping instalment in the DI Paolo Sterling crime series. Detective Inspector Paolo Sterling is determined to shut down the syndicate flooding Bradchester’s streets with young prostitutes. When a child is murdered, Paolo becomes aware of a sinister network of abusers spread across Europe and spanning all levels of society. But Joey, the shadowy leader of the gang, always seems to be one step ahead in the chase. Has Paolo come up against a criminal he cannot defeat?

Brought up believing that sex is the devil's work, a killer only finds release once he has saved his victim's souls. Abiding by his vision, he marks them as his. A gift to guide his chosen ones on the rightful path to redemption. Detective Inspector Paolo Sterling is out to stop him, but Paolo has problems of his own. Hunting down the killer as the death toll rises, the lines soon blur between Paolo's personal and professional lives.

Blackstone and the Rendezvous with Death is an expertly plotted Victorian mystery that will keep listeners guessing to the last minute. The body of a young man fished out of the Thames is of little interest to Londoners caught up in the excitement of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Yet to Inspector Sam Blackstone, the case is as puzzling as any he has ever come across. Why should a corpse dressed in the rags of a commoner have the face of a gentleman? And if this man does belong to noble stock, why has no one come forward to claim the body?

The criminalisation of homosexuality over centuries has been one of the shocking injustices of European history - it existed from the middle ages and before and well into the 20th century. The death penalty (hanging or burning) was a commonplace feature in legal systems. These two remarkable texts - one from England in the 18th century and one from Germany in the 19th century - show how there was a growing awareness of the prejudice and the cruelty of its effect.  

Meet Arshile Grekov. A reclusive Russian oligarch, he lives in Holland Park in exceptional opulence after successfully extricating his gigantic fortune from Russia. He is deeply worried. His doctors are confounded by his slowly failing health, and his beloved son, a loud, druggy, dissolute Etonian, is secretly involved with a white-Russian princess. As a former spy, he knows he will always remain of intense interest to the paranoid Russian government.

It is 1914, and while battles rage across Europe, three empires fight for dominance in the Middle East. In the midst of the chaos is Kingdom Lock. Working for the British Intelligence Service, Lock is sent to Persia by the Australian Infantry Force. His mission: to prevent a German spy from inciting rebellion among the Muslim tribes and from seizing control of the oilfields. But before then, having recently rescued Amy Townshend, the daughter of a British officer, he now finds that he must save her from the clutches of death once more.

May 1915. Kingdom Lock and his faithful sidekick, Siddhartha Singh are gunned down on the streets of Basra and suspicion falls on German spy, Wilhelm Wassmuss. Major Ross believes Wassmuss is behind the assassination of a Turkish officer, the death of whom has been blamed on Lock. Meanwhile, Lock has discovered that Amy Townshend is pregnant and that the child is his. But the general's daughter stubbornly refuses to break off her engagement.

When his ship is wrecked in a storm, Robinson Crusoe finds himself stranded on a desert island with no one to help him and no chance of rescue. Scared and alone, he tries to make a life for himself, building shelters, hunting food, taming animals, crafting boats, and making clothes. But just as his life appears to be settled, he sees someone else's footprint on the beach, and a different struggle for survival begins, this time against cannibals and pirates.

The dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the spread of Perestroika throughout the former Soviet bloc was a sea change in world history. Here, acclaimed Russian historian Robert Service examines precisely how that change came about. Drawing on a vast and largely untapped range of sources, he builds a picture of the two men who spearheaded the breakthrough: Ronald Reagan, president of the United States; and Mikhail Gorbachev, last general secretary of the Soviet Union.

Cambridge spy Guy Burgess was a supreme networker. He also set a gold standard for conflicts of interest, working variously for the BBC, MI5, MI6, the War Office, the Ministry of Information and the KGB. Yet Burgess was never challenged by Britain's spy catchers: his superiors were convinced he was too much of a liability to have been recruited by Moscow. Now, with a major new release of hundreds of files into the National Archives, Purvis and Hulbert reveal just how this charming establishment insider was able to fool everyone for so long.