Information Technology is becoming harder to control. Every year, organisations introduce new applications, cloud services, platforms, suppliers, data sources, and technologies. Individually, these decisions are often justified. Collectively, they create increasing complexity, rising costs, growing dependency, and reduced organisational agility. Most organisations respond with transformation programmes, cost-reduction initiatives, or technology modernisation projects. While these efforts o...

Margaret Thatcher is one of the most iconic politicians of the twentieth century. With the possible exception of Winston Churchill, no other Prime Minister has had such an impact on modern British history. Like it or not, her radical social and economic policies have made Britain the country it is today. Without Margaret Thatcher there could have been no New Labour, no Tony Blair and no David Cameron.Now Robin Harris, for many years Thatcher's speechwriter, trusted adviser and the ...

BBC Radio productions of the first seven books in Patrick O'Brian's hugely popular Napoleonic naval series - plus bonus materialWidely regarded as the most engaging historical novels ever written, the 21 books in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series have garnered millions of fans since the publication of the first volume over 50 years ago. Included here are BBC radio adaptations of the first seven thrilling stories.Master and Commander

The tragic but doomed love of Marguerite and Armand, recounted so passionately in La Dame aux Camélias, became one of the great love stories from its first publication in 1848. The title role of the consumptive heroine and her ultimate sacrifice inspired actresses from Sarah Bernhardt to Greta Garbo and Giuseppe Verdi to write La Traviata. In this sound dramatisation, the story of passion and conflict is as fresh and compelling as when it was first written.

Five BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of John Buchan's espionage thrillers featuring gentleman spy Richard HannayThe forerunner to James Bond, secret agent Richard Hannay is a thoroughly British action hero, pursuing ruthless villains, foiling deadly plans and risking life and limb for his country. This gripping collection encompasses all five of Hannay's adventures, adapted for radio with superb casts including Tom Baker, Clive Merrison, Stuart Milligan, Jasmine...

The politics of love, the intrigues of desire … love and murder, moved obscurely in the dark corners of Alexandria’s streets and squares, brothels and drawing-rooms moved like a great congress of eels in the slime of plot and counter-plot…’ In Balthazar, the second volume in Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, the story and the characters come more clearly into focus. Darley, the reflective Englishman, receives from Balthazar, the pathologist, a mass of notes which attempt to explain what really...

Justine is the first volume in The Alexandria Quartet, four interlinked novels set in the sensuous, hot environment of Alexandria just before the Second World War. Within this polyglot setting of richly idiosyncratic characters is Justine, wild and intense, wife to the wealthy business man Nessim, a mari complaisant. Her emotional and sexual wildness fuels a highly-charged atmosphere which, caught famously by Durrell’s poetic language, made Justine (1957), and the three novels that complet...

This widely-studied play is one of the best sellers of the Shakespeare canon. This production is the seventh Shakespeare play in the series undertaken by Naxos AudioBooks in conjunction with Cambridge University Press.

Lady Susan was the first of Jane Austen’s novels to be completed. An epistolary novel in eighteenth-century style, it tells the story of the recently widowed Lady Susan Vernon, intelligent but highly manipulative, who is intent on gaining financially secure relationships for both herself and her wayward but shy teenage daughter Frederica. Less known than Austen’s six great later novels, it demonstrates the wit and sharp observations of Jane Austen and is shown at its best in audiobook form...

‘I knew that Clea would share everything with me, withholding nothing not even the look of complicity which women reserve only for their mirrors.’ In Clea, the concluding part of The Alexandria Quartet, Darley returns to Alexandria now caught by war-fever. The conflagration has its effect on his circle on Nessim and Justine, Balthazar and Clea, Mountolive and Pombal a clarity of purpose emerges as the story moves towards its cadence.

In this audiobook, Nigel Anthony narrates the gripping history of the polar continent, from the great discoveries of the nineteenth century to modern scientific breakthroughsAntarctica, the ice kingdom hosting the South Pole, looms large in the human imagination. The secrets of this vast frozen desert have long tempted explorers, but its brutal climate and glacial shores notoriously resist human intrusion. Land of Wondrous Cold tells a gripping story of the...

Crime and Punishment is set in the claustrophobic slums of St Petersburg in the heat of the summer. The novel's setting mirrors the inner life of the main characters as they struggle with their problems of grinding poverty. Central to the plot are the thoughts and actions of Rodion Raskolnikoff, an embittered yet idealistic student who is disastrously influenced by new ideas on morality. He is finally redeemed through the love of Sonia, a prostitute who is also a devout Christian, and the ...