Showing results by narrator "Dugald-Bruce Lockhart" in All Categories

Britain. The near-future. A right-wing government believes it has the answer to society’s ills—the Sanctity of Marriage Act, which actively encourages marriage as the norm, punishing those who choose to remain single. But four couples are about to discover just how impossible relationships can be when the government is monitoring every aspect of our personal lives, monitoring every word, every minor disagreement...and will use every tool in its arsenal to ensure everyone will love, honour and obey.

Five years in the making, Cameron at 10 is the gripping inside story of the Cameron premiership, based on over 300 in-depth interviews with senior figures in 10 Downing Street, including the Prime Minister himself. As dusk descended on 11 May 2010, David Cameron entered 10 Downing Street as the youngest prime minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. He stood at the head of the first Coalition government in 65 years, with the country in dire economic straits following a deep financial crisis.

In the summer of 1968, the year of Prague Spring with a Cold War winter, Oxford students James Borthwick and Eleanor Pike set out to hitchhike across Europe, complicating a budding friendship that could be something more. Having reached southern Germany, they decide on a whim to visit Czechoslovakia, where Alexander Dubcek's 'socialism with a human face' is smiling on the world.

A lone figure stands silhouetted atop the Mausoleum of Hadrian. Behind him, the sun is setting over the centre of the known world. Far below, the river is in full flood. The City of Rome lies spread out before him on the far bank. Footsteps pound up the stairs. He's been set up. An enemy is closing in; he is cornered. He jumps.

Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction in 2011 and the Authors' Foundation Roger Deakin Award in 2011. A stunning debut in the tradition of Robert Macfarlane and Helen Macdonald. Of all the birds of the British Isles, the raptor reigns supreme, sparking the imagination like no other. In this magnificent hymn to these beautiful animals, James Macdonald Lockhart explores all 15 breeding birds of prey on these shores....

Explore ecology in this accessible introduction to how the natural world works and how we have started to understand the environment, ecosystems and climate change. Using a bold approach, The Ecology Book explores and explains over 85 of the key ideas, movements and acts that have defined ecology and ecological thought.

What happened after the Queen married her handsome prince? Did they live happily ever after, or did their marriage, like so many royal marriages past and present, fizzle into a loveless bond of duty? Victoria and Albert were the royal couple that broke the mould - it may have been an arranged match, yet their union was a passionate, tempestuous relationship between two extremely strong-willed individuals.

From where does Homer come? And why does Homer matter? His epic poems of war and suffering can still speak to us of the role of destiny in life, of cruelty, of humanity and its frailty, but why they do is a mystery. How can we be so intimate with something so distant? The Mighty Dead is a magical journey of discovery across wide stretches of the past, sewn together by some of the oldest stories we have - the great ancient poems of Homer and their metaphors of life and trouble.

Since its publication in 2003, The Great Deception has taken on the role of the Eurosceptics' bible, with the third edition helping to fuel the debate during the 2016 EU Referendum. This fourth edition celebrates the moment when the UK broke away from the European Union, having been extensively re-edited to incorporate newly available archive material and updated to include the tumultuous events of recent years.

To everyone who knows her now, Zoe Maisey - child genius, musical sensation - is perfect. Yet several years ago Zoe caused the deaths of three teenagers. She served her time, and now she's free. Her story begins with her giving the performance of her life. By midnight, her mother is dead. The Perfect Girl is an intricate exploration into the mind of a teenager burdened by brilliance and a past that she cannot leave behind.

On the 18th June, 1815, the armies of France, Britain, and Prussia descended upon a quiet valley south of Brussels. In the previous three days the French army had beaten the British at Quatre Bras and the Prussians at Ligny. The Allies were in retreat. The blood-soaked battle of Waterloo would become a landmark in European history, to be examined over and again, not least because until the evening of the 18th, the French army was close to prevailing on the battlefield.

When Valens, a junior officer in the Roman Army, joins a crack squad of soldiers on a dangerous mission, little does he know what's in store for him. Tasked with rescuing the young Prince Sasan, who has been imprisoned in the impenetrable Castle of Silence, the troops set out across Mesopotamia and into the mountains south of the Caspian Sea. Deep in hostile territory, inexperienced Valens finds himself in charge. And as one by one his soldiers die or disappear, he begins to suspect that there is a traitor in their midst and that the rescue is fast becoming a suicide mission.

Across the world governments proclaim they will never "negotiate with evil". And yet they always have done and always will. Why then do we ignore the lessons of this history of clandestine communication, often with devastating consequences? Jonathan Powell has spent nearly two decades mediating between governments and terrorist organisations. Here he argues that with attention to the lessons of the past, patience, and above all political leadership, these conflicts can be solved.

Drawing on a wealth of previously classified intelligence archives, in multiple countries and languages, it reveals how Western and Eastern governments used spies, sabotage, subversion, and information warfare to battle each other during the conflict that dominated the twentieth century. Far from being a closed historical chapter, however, it shows that conflict's ghosts are still alive.

AD 265, Gaul—The Roman Empire is on the brink. Emperor Gallienus has amassed a huge army across the Alps to seize back the mountains from the usurper Posthumus. War has come. Ballista and his cavalry are on the frontline, battling in the most brutal of conditions. But if he is to survive the campaign and finally retire to his beloved Sicily, it's not just the battlefield he needs to navigate. As he and Praetorian Prefect Volusianus lay siege to Posthumus' armies, it becomes clear the greatest threat to Ballista's life might just come from within his ranks.

Mia is not sure what she is, but she isn't human. Smarter, stronger than her peers, all she knows are the rules: there can never be three for too long; always run, never fight. When she finds herself in Germany 1945, she must turn the Nazis' most trusted scientist with an offer: abandon the crumbling Nazi party, escape Germany with your life, come to work for the Americans building rockets. But someone is watching her work. An enemy who's smarter, stronger, and decidedly not human....

Admiral Lord Collingwood, the eldest son of a Newcastle merchant, went to sea in 1761 at the age of 13. In his nearly fifty years in the Navy Collingwood's service took him to Boston, where he lived and fought during the American War of Independence; to Antigua, where he and Nelson both fell in love with Mary Moutray; to Corsica; Sicily; and Menorca, where he ended his career as the effective viceroy of the Mediterranean.

In Putin's People, former Moscow correspondent and investigative journalist Catherine Belton tells the untold story of the rise of Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him. Delving deep into the workings of Putin's Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the free-wheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs who in turn subverted their country's economy and legal system and expanded its influence in the West.

A shocking investigative journey into the way the resource trade wreaks havoc on Africa, The Looting Machine explores the dark underbelly of the global economy. Africa: the world's poorest continent and arguably its richest. While accounting for just 2 percent of global GDP, it is home to 15 percent of the planet's crude oil, 40 percent of its gold, and 80 percent of its platinum. A third of the Earth's mineral deposits lie beneath its soil. But far from being a salvation, this buried treasure has been a curse.

We have lived with seabirds for at least 300,000 years. From the beginning our view of them has been double, as creatures that are both deeply distant and yet strangely connected to us, both oceanic in what they represent and a mirror of what we are. They stand in for our relationship with nature as a whole. We use them and love them, nurture them and destroy them, revere them and make toys and hats and dinner out of them. It is a pattern that has evolved over history, and our relationship with seabirds has moved through these phases like steps in a game of hopscotch.