検索キーワード： ナレーター "Mark Elstob" すべてのカテゴリー

Kit Davies has been dating the gorgeous Captain Jason Buchannan for six months. Six whole months of being wheeled out as his significant other at various Naval functions. While she's not convinced she has the makings of a future Officer's wife, things have been pretty good, and at least she hasn't caused a diplomatic incident—yet. Then one memorable evening, Jason drops a bombshell. His father's health is failing and he wants to retire from the Royal Navy, and relocate to his crumbling ancestral home in the wilds of Scotland. And he wants Kit to go with him.

Around the World in 80 Games is about the mathematics of chance, game theory, gamification, gaming strategies and computer games. Traversing the globe, Marcus du Sautoy looks at the genesis of games new and old, explores how to invent a good game and explains the fascination of a popular lockdown game. The most simple games endure: board games, card games and dice games have captivated us for centuries and the acclaimed mathematician and author of The Creativity Code (among many others) will once again bring mathematics to the fore with insight and aplomb in Around the World in 80 Games.

It's not often that a fledgling career in Event Management kicks off with the wedding of a Hollywood superstar. Of course the fact that this particular Hollywood star is marrying her best friend might have had something to do with the fact that former art gallery owner Kit Davies landed the job. That, and the fact that she was about to become homeless and penniless. But organizing her friend Victory's big fat Hollywood wedding in the small yachting haven of Dartmouth without alerting the media is not for the faint hearted.

The Roman empire shaped the culture of the Western world against which all other great powers are compared. Stretching from the north of Britain to the Sahara, and from the Atlantic coast to the Euphrates, it imposed peace and prosperity on an unprecedented scale. However, the exception lay in the east, where the Parthian and then Persian empires ruled over great cities and the trade routes to mysterious lands beyond. This was the place Alexander the Great had swept through, creating a dream of glory and conquest which tantalized Greeks and Romans alike.

Italy, 1351. English knight Gerard Fox and the resourceful Willa have come through a death-defying journey across war-torn Europe. Now looking towards their future together, they must first find a way to reconcile with their difficult pasts. In a small village between Florence and Siena, Fox and Willa are caught up in a deadly ambush. After rescuing the enigmatic woman who is the target of the attack, they take refuge in her opulent villa and learn her heartbreaking story—a tale of loss, deception... and a burning desire for freedom.

Spanning millennia, oceans and continents, countries and cultures, Around the World in Eighty Games gleefully explores how mathematics and games have always been deeply intertwined. Renowned mathematician Marcus du Sautoy investigates how games provided the first opportunities for deep mathematical insight into the world, how understanding math can help us play games better, and how both math and games are integral to human psychology and culture.

On 28 November 1911, a retired showman died violently at his home in North London. Known to the world as Lord George Sanger, he was once the biggest name in show business, and was venerated as a national institution. The death of Britain's wealthiest showman read like a popular crime thriller: a merciless killer, a famous victim, a desperate manhunt and a dramatic denouement few could have anticipated. But for over a century, questions have persisted about the murder.

Mr Horniman's Walrus tells the story of the rise and fall of three generations of a remarkable and dysfunctional Victorian family—the Hornimans—exploring the lives and loves behind their extraordinary and varied legacies. Drawing on her years of research and unfettered access to the family archive, Clare Paterson has written a riveting tale of trade, collecting, the stage, sex and politics in Victorian Britain.

Moving away from their lovely apartment in Munich isn't nearly as wrenching an experience for Frau Greta Hahn as she had feared. Their new home is even lovelier than the one they left behind and life in Buchenwald would appear to be idyllic. Lying just beyond the forest that surrounds them is the looming presence of a work camp. Frau Hahn's husband has been assigned as the camp's administrator. When Frau Hahn's poor health leads her into an unlikely and poignant friendship with one of Buchenwald's prisoners, her naIve ignorance about what is going on so nearby is challenged.

After his sudden rise to power in the summer of 2019 amid the Brexit deadlock, Boris Johnson presided over the most dramatic period of British history in almost a century. From the controversial prorogation of Parliament in August 2019 to the historic landslide victory later that year, the agonising upheaval of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic—and the scandals unleashed by both—the Afghanistan crisis, and the conflict in Ukraine, Johnson's premiership was more turbulent than any other in living memory.

The Vikings on the Cotentin try to live in peace with their neighbours, the Franks, but when they are attacked they have to fight. Aided by fellow Vikings they begin to make inroads into the land of the Franks until disaster strikes and the new allies meet defeat. When the full force of the Franks descends upon the Haugr every member of the clan must fight to prevent their extinction.

Reverend Augustus Shackleford's mission in life (aside from ensuring the collection box was suitably full every Sunday) was to secure advantageous marriages for each of his eight daughters. A tall order, given the fact that in the Reverend's opinion they didn't possess a single ladylike bone in the eight bodies they had between them. Quite where he would find a wealthy titled gentleman bottle headed enough to take any of them on remained a mystery and indeed was likely to test even his legendary resourcefulness.

When Faith Shackleford found herself in the unenviable position of having to accompany her irascible father to convalesce in the genteel seaside town of Torquay, she envisioned three months of wearying monotony. She certainly wasn't expecting to be intrigued by the forlorn empty house situated next to their own elegant villa, especially when she discovered it belonged to a handsome captain in the Royal Navy who was currently away at sea. Unfortunately, she never imagined that fascination might cost her her life.

Reverend Shackleford was at a loss. He'd truly believed that in marrying his eldest daughter Grace to an extremely wealthy peer of the realm, his problems would be over. But as the Reverend was now beginning to realize, it wasn't sufficient to have a wealthy Duke in the family if the daughter he was trying to marry off had the manners of a stable hand. And to Reverend Shackleford's knowledge, his second eldest daughter Temperance is the exact opposite of her name and a harpy to boot.

Star humans were engineered to exist within the mantle of a star, mere tools of their Earth-evolved makers in a war against the Xeelee, owners of the universe. Stephen Baxter's third novel in his magnificent Xeelee Sequence is an exotic and endearing story of an abandoned people. Abandoned to their fate, their history lost along with contact with their makers, Star people survive in an environment that is possibly the strangest in science fiction.

First there were good times: humankind reached glorious heights, even immortality. Then there were bad times: Earth was occupied by the faceless, brutal Qax. Immortality drugs were confiscated, the human spirit crushed. Earth became a vast factory for alien foodstuffs. Into this new dark age appears the end of a tunnel through time. Made from exotic matter, it is humanity's greatest engineering project in the pre-Qax era, where the other end of the tunnel remains anchored near Jupiter.

Andrew Lauder is one of British record business's most significant and highly influential figures but outside the music industry few people will probably know his name. He's always retained a fan's perspective which, combined with an exceptional knowledge of music, meant he was at ease around musicians and never happier than spending time with them. During the later '60s and throughout the '70s in particular (working at the legendary United Artists), he had a knack of being one step ahead of the next trend.

Marx and Engels were right when they observed in the Communist Manifesto that free markets had in a short time created greater prosperity and more technological innovation than all previous generations combined. A century and a half later, all the evidence shows that capitalism has lifted millions and millions from hunger and poverty. Today's story about global capitalism, shared by right-wing and left-wing populists, but also by large sections of the political and economic establishment, does not deny that prosperity has been created, but it says it ended up in far too few hands.