Showing results by narrator "Peter Marinker" in All Categories

These four works show Samuel Beckett at his most penetrating. Both Krapp's Last Tape (1958) and Not I (1972) are among the most striking pieces written for the theatre in the 20th century. An old man sits at a table, playing back old tapes made when he was younger, mixed glimpses of past feelings. In Not I, we have just a mouth expressing memories and torment in a torrent of words.

Most of us think we know the story of Bambi - but do we? The Original Bambi is an all-new translation of a literary classic that presents the story as it was meant to be told.

Reality Hunger is a manifesto for a burgeoning group of interrelated but unconnected artists who, living in an unbearably artificial world, are breaking ever larger chunks of 'reality' into their work. The questions Shields explores - the bending of form and genre, the lure and blur of the real - play out constantly around us, and Reality Hungeris a radical reframing of how we might think about this 'truthiness'.

Mesmerized and somewhat unnerved by his 97-year-old father's vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an original investigation of our flesh-and-blood existence, our mortal being. Weaving together personal anecdote, biological fact, philosophical doubt, cultural criticism, and the wisdom of an eclectic range of writers and thinkers - from Lucretius to Woody Allen - Shields expertly renders both a hilarious family portrait and a truly resonant meditation on mortality.

Alexander Litvinenko: Mr Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian living in London, was poisoned by Polonium-210, traced by alpha detectors to a British Airways flight from Moscow to Heathrow. A Champions League match between Arsenal and CKSA Moscow had brought thousands of Russian fans to London. Was one of them responsible for Litvinenko's death?

Bar Codes Mark Relfe's book 'The New Money System: 666' implies that the average barcode has satanic significance. Can it really be that these codes apparently indicate 666; the mark of the devil and his coming cashless economy?

Our ability to make choices is fundamental to our sense of ourselves as human beings and essential to the political values of freedom-protecting nations. Whom we love; where we work; how we spend our time; what we buy: such choices define us in the eyes of ourselves and others, and much blood and ink has been spilt to establish and protect our rights to make them freely. Choice can also be a burden. Our cognitive capacity to research and make the best decisions is limited, so every active choice comes at a cost.

It is 1865: the American Civil War is ending. Eliza Duane Mulvey sets out from Lafayette, Louisiana, the town her mother Mary Duane called home. Alone, she walks across a devastated country in search of a youngster she has not seen in four years. One of the hundred thousand children drawn into the war, his fate has been mysterious and will prove extraordinary.

In Paris' Pre-Lachaise cemetery, Jim Morrison's graffiti-scrawled tombstone is a place of pilgrimage for local devotees, adolescent hedonists, and wayward backpackers alike. Found dead in his bathtub aged only 27, having achieved worldwide stardom as lead singer of The Doors, Morrison was quickly immortalized amongt the rock and roll deities such as Hendrix and Joplin. In death, however, this debauched "rock poet" remained more stubbornly enigmatic than ever.

The world is never done catching up with Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), the author of Walden, “Civil Disobedience,” and other classics. A prophet of environmentalism and vegetarianism, an abolitionist, and a critic of materialism and technology, Thoreau even seems to have anticipated a world of social distancing in his famous experiment at Walden Pond. In Now Comes Good Sailing, 27 of today’s leading writers offer wide-ranging original pieces exploring how Thoreau has influenced and inspired them.

Though by profession a doctor (he coined the word anesthesia) Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) was one of the leading 19th century American poets and a member of the famous Saturday Club with Emerson, Longfellow, and Lowell. The 200th anniversary of his birth occurs in 2009. Here are his major poems, including "Old Ironsides" and "The Last Leaf" in a rare audiobook collection read by Peter Marinker.

A quirky BBC Radio 4 comedy by Ben Lewis about a teenager who becomes an internet phenomenon. Originally broadcast as the ‘Afternoon Play’ on 17 September 2010.This is the story of a legend in the making. A nervous young man lives at the dead end of a dead-end town. On his eighteenth birthday he comes into his inheritance. With a little help from an old teacher, he finds it equips him to broadcast over the internet.

7/7: Is the government covering up evidence of bungling by the intelligence services before the 7/7 bombings in London? 9/11: Did George Bush stage the 9/11 attack, or at least purposefully allow for it to occur so he could generate support to invade Afghanistan for reasons linked to the oil industry? And was Flight 93 shot down on the order of the White House before it could reach its target? Or was it really al-Qaeda acting alone? HAARP: It is said that HAARP camouflages the most destructive weapon ever created. Is it really possible that this is what this 33-acre site is concealing?

Across north-eastern America the armies of Britain and France struggle for ascendancy. Their conflict, however, overlays older struggles between nations of Native Americans for possession of the same lands and between the native peoples and white colonisers. Through these layers of conflict Cooper threads a thrilling narrative, in which Cora and Alice Munro, daughters of a British commander on the front line of the colonial war, attempt to join their father.

Black helicopters are believed by some to be used for the surveillance of patriotic groups opposed to the takeover of the United States by foreign powers. Those sinister, silent, Black Hawk Down-style copters are hard to miss, but what exactly is their role?

A young boy is hiding for his life having witnessed a murder. Thirty years later, that boy, Jack Renoir, is in the business of dicovering other people's secrets, yet keeping his own. Renoir is forced to confront the horrors of his past in order to ensure a future with the woman he loves.

Roderick Hudson is one of Henry James's first novels.

Originally published in 1875 as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly, it traces the development of the title character, a sculptor. Funded by the wealthy Rowland Mallet, Roderick Hudson travels from America to Rome, where he becomes the talk of the city. He soon finds that Europe tests him in ways he had not anticipated, both as an artist and as a man.

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of the strange legal case of film star Peter Lorre, written and produced by Michael Butt and starring Stephen Greif. Originally broadcast as the ‘Afternoon Play’ on 10 May 2010.Towards the end of his unique career, movie star Peter Lorre found himself at the centre of an unusual legal case. Incorporating verbatim extracts from the court transcripts, Michael Butt's play wonders what was going through Lorre's troubled mind as he fought to protect his name and identity.

The Dead Sea Scrolls: Why was it so important these documents should not be seen? What ancient historical secret was so big that it had to be buried forever? Freemasons: Is this group of seemingly innocuous middle-aged men linked to almost every evil perpetuated? Are they really just an eccentric bunch of patriarchal do-gooders, or are they in fact sinister agents of satanic forces? The Gunpowder Plot: Why is it that we reserve particular scorn for Guy Fawkes when there were six other men involved?

Published in 1878, portrays the courtship of the beautiful American girl Daisy Miller by Frederick Winterbourne. Winterbourne's pursuit of her is hampered by her own flirtatiousness, which is frowned upon by the other expatriates they meet in Switzerland and Italy. The the novel coments on the contrast between American and European society that is common to James's work.