Showing results by narrator "Kobna Holdbrook Smith" in All Categories

In the darkest months of the Second World War, Churchill approved what seemed to many like a suicide mission. Under orders to attack the St Nazaire U-boat base on the Atlantic seaboard, British commandos undertook 'the greatest raid of all', turning an old destroyer into a live bomb and using it to ram the gates of a Nazi stronghold. Drawing on official documents, interviews, unknown accounts and the astonished reactions of French civilians and German forces, The Greatest Raid recreates in cinematic detail the hours in which the 'Charioteers' fought and died.

Belfast-born Jimmy Walker is a career criminal, desperate to leave the world of organised crime behind. He’s made just enough money to think about going straight. He wants to be a family man. He wants to stay alive for his wife and son. He wants to be the man they deserve. He reluctantly agrees to one final job with the intention that it will be his last. Little does Jimmy know that he’s been set-up. The sins of his past are about to catch up with him.

We join the action just as our ‘hero’ Tom, (early thirties, reads the ‘news’ on the radio) finds out that his girlfriend has not left him. Tom, I have not left you. But I am gone. Please carry on as normal. Love always, Hayley. Has Hayley gone or hasn’t she? Is she coming back? If she has gone, but is coming back, when is she coming back? And what is he supposed to bloody do in the meantime? And what if she’s never coming back?

Harold Pierce didn't mean to kill his baby brother all those years ago. He didn't intend to incinerate him in a fire but he did and he has spent most of his adult life in a psychiatric hospital because of that. Upon release he is given a job as a hospital porter but that job involves the burning of aborted foetuses and the memories of what happened to his brother begin to torment Harold. In the small town where he lives the terror is mounting because of the escape from prison of psychopath Paul Harvey.

On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. Here begins the epic story of a small African nation, told by a mysterious swarm-like chorus that calls itself man’s greatest nemesis. The tale? A playful panorama of history, fairytale, romance and science fiction. The moral? To err is human. In 1904, in a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy.

The American Classics Collection is a century-spanning collection of 17 classic novels, short stories, essay, and poetry by American authors, read by a cast of incredible narrators including Kobna Holdbrook-Smith; Nathan Osgood; Robert G. Slade; Jonathan Keeble, and more. Included here are stories by some of the greatest writers of all time, including Ernest Hemingway; Mark Twain; F. Scott Fitzgerald; Edith Wharton; Frederick Douglass; and H.P. Lovecraft, amongst a host of others.

Ursula K. Le Guin was one of the most revered and influential writers of the 20th century. Her Earthsea books have sold millions of copies and been translated into numerous languages, while her trailblazing novel The Left Hand of Darkness was a landmark in feminist science fiction and ranks among the greatest SF novels of all time. This BBC collection brings together the magical radio retellings of both these seminal classics.

His companions, scattered, are making for Malarkoi—the city of the Mistress, the Master's most powerful enemy. Hoping to find welcome there, or at least safety, they find neither... and instead become embroiled in a life and death struggle against assassins, demi-gods, and the cunning plans of the Mistress.

A poignant story about friendship, betrayal, obsession and second chances – this novel is an immensely powerful portrayal of human resilience. Sierra Leone: civil war has left an entire population with terrible secrets to keep. In the capital's hospital Kai, a gifted young surgeon, is plagued by demons. Elsewhere in the hospital lies Elias Cole, a university professor who recalls the love that drove him to acts that are far from heroic. As past and present intersect, Kai and Elias are drawn unwittingly closer and into the path of one woman at the centre of their stories.

Haunting, uplifting, beautiful: the final work from Helen Dunmore. Helen Dunmore passed away in June 2017, leaving behind this remarkable collection of short stories. With her trademark imagination and gift for making history human, she explores the fragile ties between passion, love, family, friendship and grief, often through people facing turning points in their lives.

During an archaeological dig, a hidden chamber filled with the skulls of children is discovered. At first glance they seem to have been there for thousands of years but closer examination reveals a more shocking secret. The opening of the chamber triggers a series of horrific murders, each victim mutilated and their entrails used to form a different letter of the alphabet. Who is behind this outrage? And how is it linked to a subterranean chamber thousands of years old? Inspector Stephen Wallace must unmask this crazed killer.

It is the end of the 19th Century and the world is awash with marvels. But there is nothing so marvellous as the Wastelands: a terrain of terrible miracles that lies between Beijing and Moscow. Nothing touches this abandoned wilderness except the Great Trans-Siberian Express: an impenetrable train built to carry cargo across continents, but which now transports anyone who dares to cross the shadowy Wastelands. On to the platform steps a curious cast of characters. But the old rules are changing, and there are whispers that the train isn't safe.

Darkness threatens to overtake Earthsea: the world and its wizards are losing their magic. Despite being wearied with age, Ged Sparrowhawk - Archmage, wizard, and dragonlord - embarks on a daring, treacherous journey, accompanied by Enlad's young Prince Arren, to discover the reasons behind this devastating pattern of loss. Together they will sail to the farthest reaches of their world - even beyond the realm of death - as they seek to restore magic to a land desperately thirsty for it.

One hundred and fifty years from now, in a world where Africa is the dominant technological and economic power, and where crime, war, disease and poverty have been banished to history, Geoffrey Akinya wants only one thing: to be left in peace, so that he can continue his studies into the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But Geoffrey's family, the vast Akinya business empire, has other plans.

A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis - an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life - including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door - becomes increasingly unpredictable.

Mariana Andros is a psychologist struggling to make sense of life after the death of her husband. So when her niece, Zoe, calls - traumatised by the murder of her best friend - Mariana rushes to be with her and away from her own grief. St. Christopher's College, Cambridge, is a closed world to most - but it's where Mariana and her late husband met as students. Days which seem long buried rise to the surface, as memory and mystery entangle Mariana in the secretive society of campus.

As a member of the Counter Terrorist Unit, Sean Doyle thought he'd seen it all. Every violent act, every depraved action man could perpetrate against man but he is to discover that there are much worse things in this world than even he has encountered. Tracking a group of renegade terrorists from London to the Republic of Ireland, Doyle and his partner must discover who is funding these men and why. What he discovers is beyond even his experience and threatens not just his life but his sanity too.

Things will never be the same again... Ben is driving on the motorway, on his usual commute to the school where he works. A day like any other, except for Adam, who in a last despairing act jumps in front of Ben's car, and in killing himself, turns the teacher's world upside down. Wracked with guilt and desperate to clear his conscience, Ben develops a friendship with Alice, Adam's widow, and her seven-year-old son, Max. But as he tries to escape the trauma of the wreckage, could Ben go too far in trying to make amends?

Inventive, intriguing and atmospheric, this eclectic selection of crime, mystery and psychological dramas immerses us in a series of diverse worlds where nothing is what it appears to be, and nobody is quite what they seem. Wide in scope and disparate in style, the stories range from a police procedural and a dark, dystopian eco-thriller to a shocking tale of modern-day slavery, based on real-life events. Created by a host of writers, including BAFTA Award-winning playwright Neil McKay, they are by turn chilling, surreal, haunting and darkly comic.

Eleven-year-old Kofi Offin has dreams of water, of its urgent whisper that beckons with promises and secrets. He has heard the call on the banks of Upper Kwanta, West Africa, where he lives. He loves these things above all else: his family, the fireside tales of his father’s father, a girl named Ama, and, of course, swimming. But when the unthinkable – a sudden death – occurs during a festival between rival villages, Kofi ends up in a fight for his life. What happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea, and away from everything he loves.