Creator: Jon Nettles
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1999-03-06
Price: £8.99
Review Encore Provence: Abridged / Penguin Audiobooks:Poor Peter Mayle and his wife tried to live other places, but after four years away from Provence-they'd settled into a house outside East Hampton, Long Island-they realised they were hopelessly homesick. They missed the smell of thyme in the fields and the Sunday morning markets. They missed the slower pace. Mostly, they missed the small moments that make up the texture of daily life in Provence-eating, of course; a conversation on a street corner; an impromptu game of boules. Happily, the Mayles knew when it was time to go home. Encore Provence resonates not only with the acute perspective of someone who is supremely glad to be back on French turf, but also with the wit and relief of a refugee who has a solid American yardstick by which to measure the good life. The Mayles had tried valiantly to adapt to American culture: they learned about California wines, they shopped by mail, they took vitamins, they tried to watch television, they attempted to watch their cholesterol; there was even a period when they tried to be good citizens and drink eight glasses of water a day. Can the author of A Year in Provence andToujours Provence possibly have anything more to say about the sunny south of France? Yes, especially when he's chronicling his newfound dual roles as an expert in all things American ("we are in some way considered responsible for the spread of American tribal customs," he writes, "everything from le fast-food to les casquettes de baseball, which have begun to appear on previously bare French heads") and as a defender of all things Provencal. Mayle sounds most defensive in a chapter devoted to former New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl, who penned a Times piece chronicling a bad vacation in Provence and then wrote off the entire region, concluding that she'd "been dreaming of a Provence that never existed. " For Mayle, that Provence is clearly alive and well, if-as he aptly demonstrates in a lighthanded chapter entitled, "Eight Ways to Spend a Summer's Afternoon" (pretending to read, planning your own chateau)-you're in the right state of mind to savour it. [+]-Kimberly Brown.
Creator: Kim Criswell
Publication date: 2001-10
Dewey code: 782.109034
RRP: £11.99
Price: £1.97
Review The History of the Musical / Naxos AudioBooks:
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2002-07-18
RRP: £9.99
Price: £3.65
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.
Publication date: 2001-05-17
RRP: £9.99
Price: £9.99
Review Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History / Hodder & Stoughton Ltd:Consider the humble jar of nutmeg pushed to the back of your kitchen cupboard, among all the other spices that you hardly ever use. Would you believe that nutmeg formed the basis for one of the most bitter international conflicts of the 17th century, and was also intimately connected to the rise to global pre-eminence of New York City? Strange but true; nutmeg was one of the most prized commodities in Renaissance Europe, and its fascinating story is told in Giles Milton's delightful book Nathaniel's Nutmeg. The book deals with the competition between England and Holland for possession of the spice- producing islands of South-East Asia throughout the 17th century. Packed with stories of heroism, ambition, ruthlessness, treachery, murder, torture and madness, Nathaniel's Nutmeg offers a compelling story of European rivalry in the Tropics, thousands of miles from home, and the mutual incomprehensibility which often comically characterised relations between the Europeans and the local inhabitants of the prized islands. At the centre of the story lies Nathaniel Courthope, a trusty lieutenant of the East India Company, who took and held the tiny nutmeg-producing island of Run in the face of overwhelming Dutch opposition for more than five years, before being treacherously murdered in 1620. Courthope's heroism led to the English taking the Dutch colony of Manhattan in revenge for the death of Courthope and the loss of Run. The subsequent peace deal between the two nations gave Holland Run and the British Manhattan; New York was born. As Milton wittily remarks, although Courthope's death "robbed England of her nutmeg, it gave her the biggest of apples". Inevitably inviting comparisons with Dava Sobel's Longitude, Nathaniel's Nutmeg is a charming story, which throws light on a spicy, neglected slice of early Europe's fascination with the East. -Jerry Brotton.
Publication date: 2004-11-11
Dewey code: 355
RRP: £40.01
Price: £29.99
Review Forgotten Voices of the Second World War (cassette box set) / Random House Audiobooks:
Edition: TV Tie in Ed
Publication date: 1995-07-13
Price: £8.99
Review The One That Got Away / Random House Audiobooks:
Creator: Patricia Hodge
Edition: TV Tie in Ed
Publication date: 2001-02-19
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £10.99
Price: £5.00
Review Elizabeth / HarperCollins Audio:The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, Good Queen Bess; Elizabeth I holds a unique place in the English imagination as one of the nation's most powerful, charismatic and successful monarchs. Elizabeth is usually imagined as the icy, untouchable figure memorably recreated on screen by Bette Davis and Judi Dench, but that vision of Elizabeth ignores the turbulent years of her early life, from her birth as the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn in 1533, until her accession to the throne in 1558 following the death of her sister Mary. It is these early years which are the subject of David Starkey's fascinating Elizabeth I, written to accompany his television series about the life of Elizabeth. Starkey argues that in her first 25 years Elizabeth "had experienced every vicissitude of fortune and ever extreme of condition. She had been Princess and inheritrix of England, and bastard and disinherited; the nominated successor to the throne and an accused traitor on the verge of execution; showered with lands and houses and a prisoner in the Tower". He draws on his skills as a respected Tudor historian to produce a deft account of the religious, political and dynastic maelstrom of mid-16th century England that reads "like a historical thriller". The book carefully picks its way through the finer points of contemporary religious conflict and the peculiarities of Tudor court ceremony, whilst also exploring the formation of Elizabeth's character in relation to a murdered mother, a charismatic father, a tortured sister, and a predatory guardian. Highly readable and written with verve and pace, this is a fascinating account of the young Elizabeth. -Jerry Brotton.
Publication date: 1994
Review Bravo Two Zero / Telling Editions:The True Story of an SAS Patrol behind the lines in Iraq.
Edition: 1
Publication date: 1999-12-16
Dewey code: 425
RRP: £23.49
Price: £18.72
Review Essential Latin: The Language and Life of Ancient Rome / Routledge:
Publication date: 2003-10-13
Dewey code: 428
RRP: £9.99
Price: £10.00
Review The Adventure of English / Hodder & Stoughton Ltd:
Publication date: 1996-10-31
Price: £4.99
Review Poachers' Tales / David & Charles Audiobooks:
Creator: Anna Massey
Publication date: 2005-02-03
Dewey code: 940
RRP: £12.99
Price: £7.96
Review Catherine de Medici (Tape) / Orion:
Creator: Tim Piggott-Smith
Publication date: 1997-10-30
Price: £8.99
Review Nelson: A Personal History / Penguin Audiobooks:
Authors
- Lord Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson
Publication date: 1997-04
Price: £8.99
Review The Letters and Journals of Lord Nelson / Mr Punch Audio Books:
Creator: Billy Hartman
Edition: Abridged
Publication date: 1994-11
Dewey code: 944
RRP: £8.99
Price: £3.25
Review Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (Classic non-fiction) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Publication date: 2003-10-02
Dewey code: 355
RRP: £40.00
Price: £38.00
Review Forgotten Voices of the Great War: In Association with the Imperial War Museum (Forgotten Voices) / Random House Audiobooks:Max Arthur's compilation of First World War memories, Forgotten Voices of the Great War, offers a reminder of the scale of human experience within the 1914-18 conflict. Arthur, a military historian best known for his history of the RAF and his account of the Falklands campaign in 1982, has assembled hundreds of excerpts from the sound archives of the Imperial War Museum. Officers, rank-and-file troops, Australians, Americans, war widows, women in the munitions factories, and German soldiers too, all left oral testimony of their experiences, and these interviews provide the basis of the book. Arthur has put them in chronological and campaign order, and provided a general commentary, but beyond that, has left the rich and moving record to speak for itself. The sheer humdrum ordinariness of modern warfare-the mud and rain, the relentless loss of life and inevitability of death, the pointless routine of attrition-come over in the matter-of-fact recollections of so many. But so too does the humanity and morality of the ordinary soldier-a factor that rather belies the recent emphasis amongst some historians on how soldiers loved to kill. Arthur might have intruded more. No biographical information is given about the owners of these "voices", nor does he say when, where and how this oral testimony was gathered. These quibbles aside this is a worthwhile read and should encourage people not only to observe a minute's silence on Remembrance Day, but also to spend a few hours in the Imperial War Museum itself. -Miles Taylor.
Publication date: 2003-10-13
Dewey code: 428
RRP: £9.99
Price: £10.00
Review The Adventure of English / Hodder & Stoughton Ltd:
Edition: Abridged Ed
Publication date: 1995-10
Dewey code: 920
RRP: £7.99
Price: £7.90
Review Footbridge to Enchantment: Nigel Tranter's Country Notebook / Novelsound:
Publication date: 2003-11-07
Dewey code: 324
RRP: £9.99
Price: £0.47
Review Wars Against Saddam: The Hard Road to Baghdad / Macmillan Audio Books:
Creator: Tim Pigott-Smith
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2005-05-16
RRP: £13.99
Price: £2.24
Review Together We Stand: North Africa 1942-1943 - Turning the Tide in the West / HarperCollins Audio:
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Encore Provence: Abridged, The History of the Musical, The End of the Beginning, Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History, Forgotten Voices of the Second World War (cassette box set), The One That Got Away, Elizabeth, Bravo Two Zero, Essential Latin: The Language and Life of Ancient Rome, The Adventure of English, Poachers' Tales, Catherine de Medici (Tape), Nelson: A Personal History, The Letters and Journals of Lord Nelson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (Classic non-fiction), Forgotten Voices of the Great War: In Association with the Imperial War Museum (Forgotten Voices), The Adventure of English, Footbridge to Enchantment: Nigel Tranter's Country Notebook, Wars Against Saddam: The Hard Road to Baghdad, Together We Stand: North Africa 1942-1943 - Turning the Tide in the West |
