Showing results by narrator "Tony Robinson" in All Categories

Through the ages of Britain, from the 15th century to the 21st, Edmund Blackadder has meddled his way along the bloodlines, aided by his servant and sidekick, Baldrick, and hindered by an assortment of dimwitted aristocrats. Now the complete history of Blackadder is collected together, including the four TV series: The Black Adder, Blackadder II, Blackadder the Third and Blackadder Goes Forth.

Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but that looks completely different. It plays by different rules. Certainly it refuses to succumb to the quaint notion that universes are ruled by pure logic and the harmony of numbers. But just because the Disc is different doesn't mean that some things don't stay the same.

This is a collection of humorous stories about the Delmonico family. Discover what happens when Mrs Delmonico announces she is feeling a little blue and promptly turns blue, and meet the cat who becomes a poet and the girl who starts a craze for hanging upside down.

This isn't real life. This isn't even cheese mongering. It's opera - where the music matters, and where an opera house is being terrorised by a man in evening dress with a white mask, lurking in the shadows, occasionally killing people, and, most worryingly, sending little notes, writing maniacal laughter with five exclamation marks. Opera can do that to a man. In such circumstances, life has obviously reached that desperate point where the wrong thing to do has to be the right thing to do.

It's an offer you can't refuse. Who would not wish to be the man in charge of Ankh-Morpork's Royal Mint and the bank next door? It's a job for life. But, as former con-man Moist von Lipwig is learning, the life is not necessarily for long.

Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch had it all. But now he's back in his own rough, tough past without even the clothes he was standing up in when the lightning struck. Living in the past is hard. Dying in the past is incredibly easy. But he must survive, because he has a job to do. He must track down a murderer, teach his younger self how to be a good copper, and change the outcome of a bloody rebellion. But there's a problem: if he wins, he's got no wife, no child, no future.

Never let real life get in the way of a good story, especially when a good story involves three witches, including a fairy godmother, and travelling to a faraway land to make sure that a servant girl doesn't marry a prince. It looks as though a happy ending may be averted before catastrophe strikes. But unfortunately, the forces of good are up against a godmother who has made Destiny an offer it can't refuse.

There's nothing like the issue of evolution to get under the skin of academics. Especially when those same academics are by chance or bad judgement deposited at a critical evolutionary turning point when one wrong move could have catastrophic results for the future. Unfortunately, in the hands of such an inept and cussed group of individuals, the sensitive issue of causality is, sadly, only likely to receive the same scant respect that they show to one another.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse. And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, and a chase....

Up on the chalk downs they call The Wold, witches are banned: ever since the Baron's son vanished in the woods. Anyway, as all witches know, chalk's no good for magic. Nine-year-old Tiffany Aching thinks her Granny Aching, a wise shepherd, might have been a witch, but now Granny Aching is dead, and it's up to Tiffany to work it all out when strange things begin happening.

Mightily Oats has not picked a good time to be priest. He thought he'd come to the mountain kingdom of Lancre for a simple little religious ceremony. Now he's caught up in a war between vampires and witches, and he's not sure there is a right side.

Eric is the Discworld's only demonology hacker. Pity he's not very good at it. All he wants is his three wishes granted. Nothing fancy: to be immortal, to rule the world, and have the most beautiful woman in the world fall madly in love with him. The usual stuff. But instead of a tractable demon, Eric calls up Rincewind, the most incompetent wizard in the universe, and his extremely intractable and hostile travel accessory, the Luggage.

A real witch never casually steps out of her body, leaving it empty. Eleven-year-old Tiffany Aching does. And there's something just waiting for a handy body to take over. Something ancient and horrible and that can't die. Tiffany returns in this exciting new adventure, helped as before by the Nac Mac Feegle - the rowdiest, toughest, smelliest bunch of fairies ever to be thrown out of Fairyland for being drunk at two in the afternoon. They'll fight anything!

Everything you need to know about World War I! Tony Robinson takes you on a headlong gallop through time, pointing out all the most important, funny, strange, amazing, entertaining, smelly, and disgusting bits about World War I. It's history, but not as we know it! Find out everything you ever needed to know about World War I in this brilliant action-packed, fact-filled book.

Three witches gathered on a lonely heath. A king has been cruelly murdered, his throne usurped by his ambitious cousin. A child heir and the crown of the kingdom are both missing. The omens are not auspicious for the new incumbent, for whom ascending this tainted throne is a more complicated affair than you might imagine - particularly when the blood on your hands just won't wash off, and you're facing a future with knives in it.

Koom Valley? That was where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs, or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. It was far away. It was a long time ago. But if he doesn't solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch is going to see it fought again, right outside his office. With his beloved Watch crumbling around him and war-drums sounding, he must unravel every clue, outwit every assassin, and brave any darkness to find the solution. And darkness is following him.

The first in a fantastically funny new history series from the acclaimed Tony Robinson, who takes you on a headlong gallop through time, pointing out all the most important, funny, strange, amazing, entertaining, smelly and disgusting bits about the Egyptians! It's history, but not as we know it!

They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. There are some situations where the correct response is to display the sort of ignorance that happily and wilfully flies in the face of the facts. In this case, the birth of a baby girl, born a wizard, by mistake. Everybody knows that there's no such thing as a female wizard. But now it's gone and happened, there's nothing much anyone can do about it. Let the battle of the sexes begin.

Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed. And on Discworld, that is the job of the Monks of History, who store it and pump it from the places where it's wasted (like underwater; how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there's never enough time. But the construction of the world's first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time for Lu Tze and his apprentice, Lobsang Ludd. Because it will stop time. And that will only be the start of everyone's problems.

For members of the City Watch, life consists of troubling times, linked together by periods of torpid inactivity. Now is one such troubling time. People are being murdered, but there's no trace of anything alive having been at the crime scene. Is there ever a circumstance in which you can blame the weapon not the murderer? Such philosophical questions are not the usual domain of the city's police, but they're going to have to start learning fast.