Showing results by narrator "Charles Johnston" in All Categories

The Titian Show at the National Gallery here in London has just opened to the public again. It was available for just three days before the big lockdown. Now, it is with us once more, though on rather different terms from what was the case previously. You have to book a time. You have to be wearing a mask. You have to maintain distance between yourself and other visitors booked in for the same slot. Is it worth the hassle? Yes, of course it is. Titian is one of the greatest figures in the history of Western art.

Is it true that every life is the stuff of novels? Or are some people just too ordinary? This is the question a struggling Parisian writer asks when he challenges himself to write about the first person he sees when he steps outside his apartment. Secretly hoping to meet the beautiful woman who occasionally smokes on his street, he instead sets eyes on octogenarian Madeleine. She’s happy to become his subject, but first she needs to put her shopping away. Wondering if his project is doomed to be hopelessly banal, he soon finds himself tangled in the lives of Madeleine’s family.

MI7 is expecting an eccentric new recruit in the person of Chasha Jones, self-described (only partly tongue-in-cheek) as "the most intelligent woman in London". She's hard-working, insightful, and fun to work alongside. But the day she's due to begin, there's no sign of her. It turns out she's joined forces with an eccentric Brit called Hector Raynebow. Raynebow used to be an environmentalist, but he's rejected all that on the grounds that humanity, in its present form, is incapable of saving the world. He has the perfect solution: Humankind 2.0.

Selected poems from a couple of decades in South East London.

Featuring popular tales such as Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, Tom Thumb, and Thumbelina - this audiobook contains versions of popular fairy tales by the famed Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm, who gathered the oral traditions and set the juggernaut that is the modern fairy tale in motion, or so some argue. Along with some interesting Hans Christian Andersen stories - and some from the American tradition by the likes of Baum - we have here the children’s poetry of Stevenson, Lear, and Howitt, among others, plus a few gems cherry-picked to delight and entertain!

If you are a manager or leader in an organization - company, public service, or NGO - or you are simply interested in how to make your organization work better, then this book is for you. If you have the feeling that you are skating over the surface of what is really going on in your organization, if you know that there is something more vital that you are missing out on, if you’re frustrated by applying the same management fads over and over, just with different labels on, then perhaps you are open to looking deeper into what makes organizations function, fail, and flourish.

Father Fred is not without guile, but that doesn't mean he won't half get up to some naughty mischief! His hearing aid goes missing at a festival, and that's where the doggy comes into this adventurous story indeed. Mystery and shenanigans abound.

Are you sick and tired of the rant and rave about Bitcoin but not having a clue about what's going on? This is a perfect entry point! In this book, we will equip you with all the tools you need to start you cryptocurrency escapade. This audiobook explains what is crypto, how to get started, the fluctuation of the market, and more!

Have you ever had a reoccurring nightmare? What if the nightmare was more than a dream? In this story our protagonist discovers that his night terror is more is a glimpse into his past. An unforgivable crime haunts him in his present life. This short story is part of a series of short supernatural and horror stories. A quick, spooky listen that will leave you haunted.

An essay by Edward Lucie-Smith on David Hockney's portraits exhibited at the Royal Academy's "82 Portraits and One Still-Life", and also "David Hockney and the Yorkshire Landscape" at RA in 2012.

An interview with leading British sculptor Sir Anthony Caro (1924-2016) recorded by Nicholas James at his Barford Street sculpture studio Camden Town in 1994, used as a basis for a feature in Art Monthly 1994. Also includes the essay "Caro to Wilding: Shifts in Modern British Sculpture", comparing the work of Caro with Alison Wilding.

This is a succinct biography of Schopenhauer and provides a glimpse of his philosophical thinking.

Set two seasons after the coronavirus devastated the summer game, Close of Play is a humorous rustic rural romp looking at what happens when property developers want to turn a village cricket ground into a new housing estate. The planning laws offer no protection. Protests do not help. And when the players can earn £40,000 each by selling off the land, everything seems lost. Until they decide to settle the issue by holding a £1 million village cricket match.

These poems range across a number of topics related to marriage: parenthood, family, friendship, sex, divorce and bereavement and refer from time to time to marriages in literature, opera and the Old Testament. The verse is accomplished, the analysis of marriage both instructive and entertaining, the compassion and wisdom remarkable.

This is a tale of witches and wishes, tales and trees, stepmothers, spells and a girl who sleeps in the ashes by the fire.... But it's not the one you know.

Steeped in history, culture and traditions, London remains one of the largest and most populous cities on the planet. Small wonder then, that some of history's greatest poets have been inspired by it.

Scrapbook of Dreams is a collection of stories and poems. You'll listen to a poem about robots reading poetry and a story about a ghost ferret called Alfonso. There is a barbarian that lives in a quaint cottage and a knight that rides a donkey! Plus, much, MUCH more.

“DNA," is what I read in the paper. That’s hard to argue with. Until an unofficial search of the victim’s room uncovers evidence that the police missed, or chose to ignore. An engraved ring; a phone number; and an antique copy of Lorna Doone inscribed with a cryptic message.

A Forgotten Poet follows the fortunes of diffident and reluctant man of letters, Harold Humber, from his early life in the English Midlands through his post-war career as economist, jazz aficionado, expert in industrial architecture, and, in the final reckoning, author of four slim volumes of popular verse.