Showing results by narrator "Richard Burnip" in All Categories

Meeting with a revolutionary (codename 'Satan') who risked Stasi capture to undermine an oppressive regime, an American-Gambian activist who plotted to liberate his homeland on breaks during his construction job and the unapologetic former leader of a Burundian rebel group which carried out a massacre, internationally renowned security expert and political scientist Dr Marcel Dirsus draws on extensive field research and personal interviews with coup leaders, rebels and soldiers to examine the workings and malfunctions of tyrants.

In 2019, a Chinese entity called Tencent overtook Facebook to become the world's fifth-largest company. It was a watershed moment, a wake-up call for those in the West accustomed to regarding the global tech industry through the prism of Silicon Valley: Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft. Yet to many of the two billion-plus people who live just across the Pacific Ocean, it came as no surprise at all.

Drawing on evidence from many fields, including archaeology, anthropology, neurology and linguistics, Sverker Johansson weaves these disparate threads together to show how our human ancestors evolved into language users. The Dawn of Language provides a fascinating survey of how grammar came into being and the differences or similarities between languages spoken around the world, before exploring how language eventually emerged in the very remote human past.

Since the end of the Second World War, the US dollar has been the global reserve currency, which has ensured American dominance of the world economy. But no longer. More than a hundred countries are developing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), digital equivalents to cash that will utterly transform how we do business at home and abroad. Urgent, clear-eyed and groundbreaking, Smart Money shows us how CBDCs are going to impact all of our futures in ways that most of us have failed to even consider.

What if you could see the toll that over-work, too much sugar or bad sleep really take on your system? What if you knew what boosts your energy, and what saps it, and when you are heading for burnout? What if you could feel more vitality and joy, have stronger will power and live longer? With the aid of your phone, smartwatch or a wearable heart rate monitor and The Pulse Cure, you can. The key lies in measuring your heart rate variability - the distance between your heart beats - which indicates what is happening in your autonomic nervous system.

Mark Clattenburg found himself in the centre circle, whistle in hand, at the start of 450 Premier League matches during a highly eventful 13-year career in football's top flight. He has shaken hands with, issued red and yellow cards to, and been sworn at by hundreds of players. He has been screamed at and shared jokes with dozens and dozens of managers. And he's felt the wrath of thousands upon thousands of irate fans. His autobiography is the ultimate guide to what it's really like to be in the referee's spotlight.

In 1995, 12-year-old Sidney Parsons was savagely murdered by two boys his own age. No reason was ever given for this terrible crime, and the 'Demonic Duo' who killed him were imprisoned until their release in 2002, when they were given new identities and lifetime anonymity. Online journalist Scott King investigates the lead-up and aftermath of the killing, uncovering dark and fanciful stories of demonic possession, and encountering a village torn apart by this unspeakable act.

Mark Pegg offers a synthesis of the most innovative scholarship on the Middle Ages of the last thirty years. Interweaving the history of Muslims with the histories of Christians and Jews, the scholarly history is propelled by a narrative of the relationship of the human and the divine within individuals and their societies between 950 and 1550. In displaying the history of the Middle Ages to be no less than a history of the formation of Western culture, Pegg offers a rethinking of what it means to talk about the medieval world that is at once vital, compelling, and necessary.

With the constant threats now posed by gangs, drugs turf wars and terrorism, the world of police protection has changed almost beyond recognition. But the story of these incredible officers is also the story of Britain's most dramatic and traumatic news events. In Bodyguard: The Real Story we meet individuals with first-hand recollection of these indelible events with powerful stories to tell.

Argentina is in the grip of a brutal military dictatorship. Inspector Joaqun Alzada's work in the Buenos Aires police force exposes him to the many realities of life under a repressive regime: desperate people, terrified people and - worst of all - missing people. Personally, he prefers to stay out of politics, enjoying a simple life with his wife, Paula. But when his revolutionary brother, Jorge, is disappeared, Alzada will stop at nothing to rescue him.

The life and times of Don Revie - one of the most complex and controversial men ever to grace the game of football. Whenever the greatest managers the game has ever produced are mentioned, names like Busby, Shankly, Paisley and Ferguson trip off the tongue. Despite dominating the game in the late 1960s and '70s, there is clearly one name missing: Don Revie, the former Leeds United and England manager.

He's saved the world twice. Now the dangerous but charismatic Ack-Ack Macaque finds himself leading a dimension-hopping band of angry monkeys, facing an invading horde of implacable killer androids, and confronting the one challenge for which he was never prepared: impending fatherhood! Meanwhile, former journalist Victoria Valois finds herself facing old enemies as she fights to save the electronic ghost of her dead husband, and Merovech, king of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and France, receives a troubling message from the dead sands of Mars....

‘I am fascinated by people turning their daft dreams into a reality. How did they do it and why?’ Driven by his own passion for collecting Hunter Davies has packed his notepad and set off in search of Britain’s maddest museums. As he explores these hidden gems he soon discovers that they are everywhere and that they celebrate just about everything, from lawnmowers in Southport to pencils in Keswick.

In order to hide from his unwanted fame as the spitfire pilot-monkey who emerged from a computer game to defeat the nefarious corporation that engineered him, the charismatic and dangerous Ack-Ack Macaque is working as a pilot on a world-circling nuclear-powered zeppelin. But when the cabin of one of his passengers is invaded by the passenger's own dying doppelganger, our hirsute hero finds himself thrust into another race to save the world - this time from an aggressive hive mind, time-hopping saboteurs, and an army of homicidal Neanderthal assassins!

It's 1952. More than a decade since humiliation at Dunkirk brought an end to Britain's war and the beginning of an uneasy peace with Hitler.

In Africa, the swastika flies from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. The brutal presence of the SS is visible everywhere. Now, however, the demonic plans of Walter Hochburg - architect of Nazi Africa - threaten Britain's ailing colonies.

In England, ex-mercenary Burton Cole is offered one last contract. He jumps at the chance to settle an old score with Hochburg.

The close-knit villages of the Dearne Valley were home to four generations of the Hollingworth family. Spanning Richard Benson's great-grandmother Winnie's 92 years in the valley, and drawing on years of historical research, interviews and anecdotes, The Valley lets us into generations of carousing and banter as the family's attempts to build a better and fairer world for themselves meet sometimes with triumph, sometimes with bitter defeat.

In 1944, as waves of German ninjas parachute into Kent, Britain's best hopes for victory lie with a Spitfire pilot codenamed Ack-Ack Macaque. The trouble is, Ack-Ack Macaque is a cynical, one-eyed, cigar-chomping monkey, and he's starting to doubt everything, including his own existence.

Vienna, 1902: A beautiful medium has been found shot dead, and Dr Max Liebermann, a young disciple of Sigmund Freud, is called upon to help his friend Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt investigate her death. The room containing the body has been locked from the inside, and a cryptic note suggests a malevolent supernatural power is at work. Using the new science of psychoanalysis, Liebermann probes the minds of the suspects in an attempt to unravel this bewildering crime.

At the age of 17, after a childhood in an fostered family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. Here Sissay recounts his life story. It is a story of neglect and determination. Misfortune and hope. Cruelty and triumph.

January 1313. As London is gripped by a freezing winter, Sir Hugh Corbett becomes embroiled in a ghoulish game of kings played out between the English and French courts. Years earlier, Corbett prevented a gang of rifflers from breaking into the Royal Treasury, but the leading chieftain, Sarasin, escaped. Now Sarasin is caught killing a squire of Queen Isabella's and Corbett swiftly has the riffler tried and hanged from the signpost of The Twilight tavern.