Edition: Abridged
Publication date: 2001-05-09
Dewey code: 909
RRP: £12.43
Price: £24.79
Review Little Big Horn - Audio / Penton Overseas Inc:
Creator: Timothy West
Publication date: 2004-11-11
Dewey code: 355
RRP: £47.01
Price: £29.98
Review Forgotten Voices of the Second World War (cassette box set) / Random House Audiobooks:
Creator: Michael Tudor Barnes
Publication date: 2006-01
RRP: £41.95
Price: £43.94
Review Secret War Heroes: Men of the Special Operations Executive / Soundings:
Creator: Christopher Scott
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 1997-09
RRP: £25.95
Price: £27.94
Review A Donkey in the Meadow: Unabridged / Soundings:
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1995-10
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £7.99
Price: £3.97
Review Footbridge to Enchantment: Nigel Tranter's Country Notebook / Novelsound:
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2002-07-18
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.50
Review The End of the Beginning / Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books:In End of the Beginning Tim Clayton and Phil Craig use the same techniques of oral history employed for their previous book. Finest Hour described the events of the first full year of the Second World War, 1940, highlighting the drama of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain by telling the story largely though the testimony of those who were there. End of the Beginning traces the desperate days from May to November 1942, as Rommel swept through north Africa in a seemingly unstoppable drive towards Cairo, only to be finally halted and defeated by Montgomery's Eighth Army. The story of the desert war has been told often enough, most recently in John Bierman's and Colin Smith's excellent Alamein: War Without Hate, but the use of oral testimony makes End of the Beginning a particularly vivid account. It's one thing to read a historian's bird's eye perspective on battle and quite another to follow, for example, a particular gun-crew in the desert as they struggle to make sense of the seeming chaos surrounding them. The focus of End of the Beginning is always on north Africa, as indeed was the attention of Churchill and his generals at the time, but the authors also find room to record the experiences of both combatants and non-combatants elsewhere. A nurse working in a hospital on the besieged island of Malta. A US soldier caught up in the fiasco that was the raid on Dieppe. A young woman involved in the briefing of RAF bomber crews flying from airfields in Yorkshire. The strength of this often powerful and moving book lies in the glimpses it offers of ordinary men and women obliged to do their best in extraordinary, and bloody, times. [+]-Nick Rennison.
Creator: Joss Ackland
Publication date: 2003-06-19
Dewey code: 941
RRP: £12.99
Price: £12.99
Review Fortress Malta (Tape): An Island Under Siege 1940-1943 / Orion:
Creator: Jamie Glover
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 2003-05-01
Dewey code: 355
RRP: £9.99
Price: £9.99
Review First Light / Penguin Audiobooks:Surviving Battle of Britain fighter aces were thin on the ground even in 1941, so any new book more than 60 years later from a previously unknown pilot is bound to get noticed. And First Light is not just any book. It might not turn out to be a lasting classic, like Richard Hillary's The Last Enemy or Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, but it is a cut well above the bog standard wartime reminiscences of many retired military bods. For a start Wellum can write, but more than this he has an instinctive feel for a good story. He begins First Light as a fresh-faced, rather obnoxious public schoolboy keen to blag his way into the RAF in March 1939; just three years, two full tours on Spitfires, the Battle of Britain, nearly 100 escorts and fighter sweeps over occupied France and a Malta convoy later, Wellum was physically and mentally burnt out before the age of 22. An old man in a boy's body. His descriptions of the excitement, freedom and, at times, sheer terror of operating in a three-dimensional airspace are vividly powerful, but perhaps his greatest gift is to get across the way the fatigue and the emotional shutting off creeps up unnoticed. At the start, the death of a friend leaves Wellum devastated and wondering when his turn will come; within the space of a few hundred pages, the failure of a pilot to return is dropped in almost as an afterthought. This is not the response of a man who cares too little, but of one who cares too much. Without being aware of it, he has experienced and felt too much and his mind and body have involuntarily separated. [+]This comes into even sharper relief at the end when Wellum is stood down from active service; he is the only one not to see-quite literally, as his vision has become impaired-that his ailments are rooted in his psyche rather than his body. The only one false note is his desire to see his role as part of a bigger picture; written many years after the events he describes, Wellum sometimes interjects thoughts and feelings about the war that simply do not ring true. That aside, one is left wondering what became of Wellum the man between the war ending and the book's publication. What sense did the prematurely aged fighter pilot make of the post-war age and did he learn to love again? But that, maybe, is the subject for another book. -John Crace.
Authors
- Ragnhild Marie Hatton
- Stewart P. Oakley
RRP: £12.99
Price: £14.98
Review Rise and Fall of Sweden 1500-1721 / Sussex Publications:
Creator: Peter Wickham
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2007-04-01
Dewey code: 900
RRP: £47.95
Price: £49.94
Review Brothers in War / Soundings Audio Books:
Publication date: 2003-09-01
Dewey code: 791
Price: £25.99
Review Life on Air / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:David Attenborough hardly needs any introduction; his voice has accompanied so many of the best natural history programs that have graced our televisions over several decades. Life On Air, his autobiography, tells the story of how he has managed to professionalise his schoolboy interests in such a remarkably successful way. Attenborough's Life On Air began in 1950, having taken a degree in Natural Sciences in the University of Cambridge, done National Service in the Navy, got married, done a year as an editor with an educational publisher, had a son and then answered a BBC recruiting ad in the Times. Turned down for BBC Radio, he was offered a traineeship in BBC TV which was pioneering the medium in Britain and he has never looked back. The rest is TV history and you can read Sir David's personal view of it all in his engaging and highly entertaining book. This is no boring story of the rise and rise of a media mogul in the smoke-filled rooms of Ally Pally and Lime Grove. Having served his apprenticeship producing programmes like Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter with the famous American folk singer and song collector Alan Lomax, he managed to escape from the confines of overlit studios into the natural world. Zoo Quest began in 1954 with an animal collecting trip to Sierra Leone and David Attenborough had found his metier. Since then he has managed to bring the wonders of the natural world into millions of living rooms around the world and to reach general audiences without patronising them, without any spurious antics, silly voices or dumbing down. His animal and plant subjects are the stars, Attenborough is the master of ceremonies who introduces the acts for our wonder and amazement. [+]But his scope extends way beyond the birds and the bees. In the 1960s, it was suggested that he took up an administrative post-"after all, you won't want to be gallivanting around the world when you are 50". Fortunately, he did not abandon gallivanting for admin but went freelance, studied anthropology and helped extend our view of native peoples and sympathies for their life styles. He went on to become responsible for coming up with famous BBC TV series such as Kenneth Clark's incredibly successful Civilisation series, followed by Bronowski's The Ascent of Man. Inevitably, he did become one of the BBC suits but one that wore a camouflage jacket. What is remarkable is that Attenborough has managed to do it for so long without really changing his own style too much. He has not had to because the technology has changed and so he has constantly been able to give new views and insights into the details of life on Earth. Writing pretty much as he speaks, it is easy to hear his voice, dry sense of humour and generosity coming through all the time. Do not expect to read personal details, navel-gazing or malicious gossip-that is not his style. The only personal note comes at the end with the death of his wife in 1997. Over 100 photos associated with the huge range of programmes he has been intimately involved with decorate Life On Air, a fascinating personal story of our times. He says that he knows of "no pleasure deeper than that which comes from contemplating the natural world and trying to understand it"; he certainly manages to convey that in Life On Air. -Douglas Palmer.
Creator: Joss Ackland
Publication date: 1998-10
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.75
Review The Chronicle: Vol 4 (Chronicle) / Mr Punch Audio Books:
Authors
- Carolyn Fry
- Max Arthur
- Imperial War Museum
Dewey code: 355
RRP: £10.99
Price: £0.04
Review Forgotten Voices of the Second World War: War in the Mediterranean (Forgotten Voices) / Random House Audiobooks:
Creator: d'Eberhard W. Kornfeld
Publication date: 1997
Dewey code: 779'.9956
RRP: £35.00
Price: £36.99
Review Reves De Papier: La Photographie Orientaliste 1860-1914 (Photographie) / Editions Ides et Calendes:
Creator: Neville Jason
Edition: Abridged
Publication date: 2002-07
Dewey code: 709.4509024
RRP: £18.99
Price: £12.74
Review Lives of the Artists (Biography) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Edition: Har/Com
Publication date: 2001-04
Dewey code: 264.23
RRP: £6.52
Price: £21.05
Review Peace with CDROM (Hymns) / Barbour Bargain Books:
Publication date: 2003-05-12
RRP: £9.95
Price: £9.95
Review Route Napoleon (Campaign Trails) / John Urquhart:
Edition: Cassettes
Publication date: 1996-01
Dewey code: 781.6609
RRP: £11.09
Price: £19.94
Review Rock & Roll: An Unruly History (Nova Audio Books) / Brilliance Corp:
Publication date: 2002-06
Dewey code: 973
RRP: £8.99
Price: £1.99
Review Famous Americans in History (Junior Classics) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Publication date: 2003-10-13
Dewey code: 910
RRP: £14.99
Price: £4.79
Review Captain Scott / Hodder & Stoughton Ltd:
| Browse History:
Models & Brands:
Little Big Horn - Audio, Forgotten Voices of the Second World War (cassette box set), Secret War Heroes: Men of the Special Operations Executive, A Donkey in the Meadow: Unabridged, Footbridge to Enchantment: Nigel Tranter's Country Notebook, The End of the Beginning, Fortress Malta (Tape): An Island Under Siege 1940-1943, First Light, Rise and Fall of Sweden 1500-1721, Brothers in War, Life on Air, The Chronicle: Vol 4 (Chronicle), Forgotten Voices of the Second World War: War in the Mediterranean (Forgotten Voices), Reves De Papier: La Photographie Orientaliste 1860-1914 (Photographie), Lives of the Artists (Biography), Peace with CDROM (Hymns), Route Napoleon (Campaign Trails), Rock & Roll: An Unruly History (Nova Audio Books), Famous Americans in History (Junior Classics), Captain Scott |
