Showing results by narrator "Julian Elfer" in All Categories

Growing up Jewish in London with a difficult home life, Jonathan Wilson had plenty of reasons to feel he didn't belong, and one reason to feel certain he did: football. Wilson discovered his love for the game as a young boy; through his adolescence and adulthood and well into his later years it remained an important part of his life.

When, on the spur of the moment, Norman Huntley and his friend Henry invent an 83-year-old woman called Miss Hargreaves, they are inspired to post a letter to their new fictional friend. It is only meant to be a silly, harmless game - until Miss Hargreaves arrives on their doorstep. She is, to Norman’s utter disbelief, exactly as he had imagined her: enchanting, eccentric, and endlessly astounding. He hadn’t imagined, however, how much havoc an imaginary octogenarian could wreak on his sleepy Buckinghamshire hometown.

Jomier has reached the age of retirement, his children are grown up and his wife, after having an affair, has left him. Embittered and humiliated, he lives alone in London, mourning the disintegration of his marriage as he broods about the past and the present. When he falls for Judith, things begin to improve. Yet he still cannot escape his old habits and it is only when his daughter falls ill that he begins to reassess his feelings toward those he loves and his ability to forgive.

Dylan Mint has Tourette's. His life is a constant battle to keep the bad stuff in - the swearing, the tics, the howling dog that seems to escape whenever he gets stressed. But a routine visit to the hospital changes everything. Overhearing a hushed conversation between the doctor and his mum, Dylan discovers that he's going to die in March. So he makes a list of things he must do before he dies: First, he wants to have real sex with gorgeous Michelle Malloy; Second, he's got to find his autistic best friend Amir a new best bud; Third, he's got to get his dad back home from the army so they can say goodbye properly.

Delete everything you think you know about tech pioneer John McAfee, whose antivirus software operates on millions of computers around the world. Drawn from hours of conversations between Mark Eglinton and John McAfee in 2019, No Domain: The John McAfee Tapes provides startling insight into the extraordinary life of one of America's genuine renegades.

 In The Inconvenient Journalist, Dusko Doder, writing with his spouse and journalistic partner Louise Branson, describes how one February night crystalized the values and personal risks that shaped his life. The frigid Moscow night in question was in 1984, and Washington Post correspondent Doder reported signs that Soviet leader Yuri Andropov had died.

After the war in the Parish, Adam is looking forward to a period of peace, but his superiors have other ideas. There are rumours from Oxford and the Cotswolds that Father John—who once almost overthrew Plymouth—is building an army, and someone has to go and investigate. Arriving in Oxford, Adam is surprised to find a thriving city with a healthy populace and technology not seen since before the fall of The Sisters. He also finds it patrolled by the descendants of the Thames Valley Police, among them Detective Inspector Leonie Mellow.

In the year 493, the leader of a vast confederation of Gothic warriors, their wives, and children personally cut down Odoacer, the man famous for deposing the last Roman emperor in 476. That leader became Theoderic the Great (454-526). This engaging history of his life and reign immerses listeners in the world of the warrior-king who ushered in decades of peace and stability in Italy as king of Goths and Romans.

During the eighteenth century, Britain's slave trade exploded in size. Formerly a small and geographically constricted business, the trade had, by the eve of the American Revolution, grown into a transatlantic system through which fifty thousand men, women, and children were enslaved every year.

Today, we are caught in a shame spiral—a vortex of mutual shaming that pervades everything from politics to social media. We are shamed for our looks, our culture, our ethnicity, our sexuality, our poverty, our wrongdoings, our politics. But what is the point of all this shaming and countershaming? Does it work? And if so, for whom? In Shame, David Keen explores the function of modern shaming, paying particular attention to how shame is instrumentalized and weaponized.

In The Most Human Right, Eric Heinze explains why global human rights systems have failed. International organizations constantly report on how governments manage human goods, such as fair trials, humane conditions of detention, healthcare, or housing. But to appease autocratic regimes, experts have ignored the primacy of free speech. Heinze argues that goods become rights only when citizens can claim them publicly and fearlessly: free speech is the fundamental right, without which the very concept of a “right” makes no sense. 

It's easy for new fans to get overwhelmed by the sprawling mythology and complexity of the six films that make up Peter Jackson's epic trilogies. Unlike encyclopedias and guides that offer diehard J. R. R. Tolkien fans trivia, details, and deep dives into every on-screen moment, this first-of-its kind explainer is an easy, fun, and accessible introduction to the characters, plots, and interconnected stories that make up one of the greatest pop culture franchises of all time. Smart Pop has all of your burning questions covered!

Called by Winston Churchill in 1921, the Cairo Conference set out to redraw the map of the Middle East in the wake of the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The summit established the states of Iraq and Jordan as part of the Sherifian Solution and confirmed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine—the future state of Israel. No other conference had such an enduring impact on the region. C. Brad Faught demonstrates how the conference was an ambitious, if ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to move the Middle East into the world of modern nationalism.

But one Alt, Chester "Chilly" Beckett, did not celebrate; his eyes have been opened to the truth. Luka's corpse is dragged away, but Chester remains determined to find out what is going on in the Laboratory on the 65th floor. There, he finds three subjects tortured in an attempt to extract a regeneration formula... and one of the subjects is, impossibly, a face he never thought he'd seen again. A bold escape sets in motion a race against time as Happy's plans to release planet-eating nano-bots into the world draw nearer. 

For three millennia, the Mediterranean Sea served as the center of western civilization and the scene of many colossal wars and naval battles. In the early summer of 1940, this ancient body of water again played host to a new and extensive conflict as the Kingdom of Italy challenged Britain for dominance within the region. With France on the verge of collapse and Britain facing the prospect of imminent invasion, the Italians hoped to re-establish control over the Mediterranean. 

Vienna is unique amongst world capitals in its consistent international importance over the centuries. From the ascent of the Habsburgs as Europe's leading dynasty to the Congress of Vienna, which reordered Europe after Napoleon, to bridge-building summits during the Cold War, it is the Austrian capital that has been the scene of key moments in European and world affairs. History has been shaped by scores of figures influenced by their time in Vienna, including: Empress Maria Theresa, Count Metternich, Bertha von Suttner, Theodore Herzl, Gustav Mahler, and many others.

The second I stepped through the doors of Gray Wolf Academy, my world disintegrated. Here, time is malleable. It can be manipulated, shifted. Changed. And for those of us who Trip—or travel through time—the possibilities are infinite and perilous. Now my life is caught in the secrets of everyone around me. Arthur, the eccentric billionaire who rules this school. Killian, who could be the only honest person here…or the biggest liar. And Braxton, magnetic, gorgeous, and unfathomable. The only thing I trust about him is our electric connection.

Drawing on a wide range of previously unpublished British, French, German, Danish, and Czech archival sources, Spying on the Reich tells the story of Germany and its rearmament in the 1920s and 1930s; its relations with foreign governments and their intelligence services; and the relations and rivalries between Western governments, seen through the prism of the cooperation, or lack of it, between their spy agencies.

Opium's Orphans is the first full history of drug prohibition and the "war on drugs." A no-holds-barred but balanced account, it shows that drug suppression was born of historical accident, not rational design. The war on drugs did not originate in Europe or the United States, and even less with President Nixon, but in China. Two Opium Wars followed by Western attempts to atone for them gave birth to an anti-narcotics order that has come to span the globe. But has the war on drugs succeeded? 

There is an African proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi,” which translates as “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” This is why we continue to remember the tales of struggle and tales of perseverance, even as we look to tales of hope. What a people choose to remember about their past, the stories they pass down, informs who they are and sets the boundaries of their identity. We remember the pain of our past to mourn, to heal, and to learn. Only in that way can we ensure the same mistakes are not repeated.