Showing results by narrator "Peter Marinker" in All Categories

"To inherit a great fortune. To inherit a great misfortune." These words, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's notebook, neatly encapsulate the theme of The House of the Seven Gables - that of a family whose fortunes are poisoned by its past misdeeds.

Heavy snow falls on San Piedro and impedes the progress of Kabuo Miyomoto's trial. Hatsue, Kabuo's wife and Ishmael, a journalist on the case, find themselves reckoning with the past and their lost love.

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.

Alien Abduction: Some 2,740 US citizens claim to have been abducted by aliens each day. That's an incredible 2% of a population of 300 million. Surely statistically some of these cases must bear truths?Area 51: It is rumoured that Area 51 houses the UFO disc found at Roswell, as well as other crashed alien spaceships. What is the truth? The Babylonian Brotherhood: Twelve-foot lizards from the planet Draco have colonized Earth and seek world domination.

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?

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.

The Phantom of the Opera goes to New York. Forsyth picks up the story following the phantom's escape to the New World, where he begins his new and secret life in a place where he carves out a kingdom of fortune and power. He builds the most glittering opera house in the world, a place to lure Christine.

In the sequel to the "The Jesus-Video", the video has caused for some changes and it is a blessing and a curse for Stephen Foxx and Judith Menez. Meanwhile, a man named Samuel Barron is trying something else entirely. He wants to recreate the time travel and sends back his son and three companions. They are to bring back Jesus Christ to the present time. If they can bring back the Son of God, will that fulfil the prophesized return of Jesus and more importantly, will it cause the Apocalypse?

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.

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.

Alistair Cooke was the greatest of all twentieth century reporters of life in America to the rest of the world. This book presents the cream of his writings on the events that shaped modern American history, from the end of the Second World War through to the assassination of John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy (Cooke was actually present), the moon landings and the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

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.

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?

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?

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?

Ben Given's wife has died, he, a heart surgeon, is unwell and life for him is not worth living. He sets off into the wilds bent on dying out there only to find himself caught up in an eye-opening, life-enhancing diversion.

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.

It's the late 1930s, and even on the remote island of St Martin's in the Isles of Scilly, war seems inevitable. But the islanders have their own battles to contend with, stuck on a rock flung 27 miles out into the Atlantic with only their natural grit and gallows humour to see them through. When a Penzance GPO man arrives to check on the post office, the islanders decide he must be the undertaker come to deal with the body of the late Post Office manager.

Since America's founding, the US Supreme Court had issued a vast number of decisions on a staggeringly wide variety of subjects. And hundreds of judges have occupied the bench. Yet as Cass R. Sunstein, the eminent legal scholar and best-selling co-author of Nudge, points out, almost every one of the Justices fits into a very small number of types regardless of ideology: the hero, the soldier, the minimalist, and the mute.