Nine remarkable men produced inventions that changed the world. The printing press, the telephone, powered flight, recording and others have made the modern world what it is. But who were the men who had these ideas and made reality of them? As David Angus shows, they were very different quiet, boisterous, confident, withdrawn but all had a moment of vision allied to single-minded determination to battle through numerous prototypes and produced something that really worked. It is a fascina...

Macbeth, Shakespeare’s last great tragedy, has remained one of the most popular plays since it’s first performance in 1606 probably in front of King James. This exciting new audiobook production is directed with fresh imagination by Fiona Shaw who breaks the conventional strait jacket that has hampered the development of Shakespeare on audio. We are as much in the twenty-first century as in medieval Scotland the tensions, the politics, the struggle for power and dark ambition is part of ou...

Bellerophon and the winged horse Pegasus launch into the blue sky in search of the dreaded three-headed Chimera, but will success go to the hero’s head? Orpheus, devastated by the death of his wife, Eurydice, dares the dangers of the Kingdom of the Dead in an attempt to bring her back to life. Echo loves Narcissus but he only loves himself: a story that can only end in sadness. These and other colourful legends from Ancient Greece are retold in lively form by Benjamin Soames, with classica...

The great myths of Ancient Greece have inspired mankind for centuries. Each of the heroes has to undergo trials of strength and courage to prove his valour against a host of monsters the Minotaur, half man, half bull; Hydra, the many-headed serpent; Medusa the Gorgon. Meanwhile, the gods, lead by Zeus the Thunderer from his seat on Mount Olympus, watch, encourage, help and sometimes hinder. In this new retelling, the tales come alive more vividly than ever with the added drama of popular m...

These two great poems date from Shakespeare’s early years and are full of passion and invention. In Venus and Adonis, the goddess of love pleads with the beautiful boy to submit to her advances and become her love but he only wants to hunt boar. In the more serious Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare draws on the Roman take of the Emperor Tarquin’s desire for Lucrece and its tragic consequences. These poems give prominent parts to the two heroines, and Clare Corbett and Eve Best shine.

The Adventures of Odysseus is the story of what happened after the Trojan War when Odysseus, the most cunning of all the Greek heroes, left Troy and made his way back to his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus. It was first told by a poet named Homer nearly three thousand years ago and is retold in this new version especially for younger listeners.

Hamlet, which dates from 1600-1601, is the first in Shakespeare’s great series of four tragedies, the others being Othello (1603), King Lear (1605) and Macbeth (1606). In writing this extraordinary play Shakespeare effectively reinvented tragedy after an interval of roughly two thousand years we have to go back to the Greek dramatists of fifth-century Athens to find anything of comparable depth and maturity.

The tales of the Norse gods, of the giants, demons, trolls and dwarves, still have the power to fascinate more than a thousand years after they were first told. Here are the stories of the one-eyed god Odin, the all-seeing, who from his throne in Asgard the home of the gods, has to prepare for Ragnarok, the final conflict between good and evil. There are tales too of Tyr the god of war, of the cunning Loki, of Thor the mighty thunder god and a host of others. These retellings of the old ta...

How did the great scientists make their remarkable discoveries? And what kind of men were they? This companion volume to Great Inventors and their Inventions introduces the work of ten men to younger readers, and range from the world of Ancient Greece to the twentieth century discovery of DNA. Among them are the crucial discovery that the earth goes around the sun (Galileo), the principle of gravity (Newton), the evolution of the species (Darwin) and the principle of inherited characterist...

Shakespeare’s Sonnets, one of the most remarkable collections of poetry, was first published in 1609, 400 years ago, by Mr Thomas Thorpe. Naxos AudioBooks marks the occasion with a selection of 80 of the finest, read by leading actors. The selection includes famous ones such as ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’ as well as lesser well-known sonnets though of equally fine stature.

A witty, bawdy, erotic but classic collection of poetry designed to celebrate the most sensual of human pleasures. Over the ages many poets have put pen to paper in celebration of that most raw and yet most beautiful of human instincts erotic love. This anthology includes verse by Herrick, Marlowe, Jonson, Byron, Verlaine, Whitman, Yeats, Cummings and, from our own time, John Betjeman. All aspects of erotic love are to be found in these poems from the bawdy to the sensuous and tender.

The tree, the fireside, the candles, the presents and the festive food may be the main features of the traditional Christmas, but so were the stories, the poems, and the traditional tales. Here, is a delightful confection of Christmas texts: the story of The Nutcracker told with Tchaikovsky’s immortal music, Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales, as well as nineteenth and twentieth century poems and the always affecting tale of The Little Match Girl. An enchanting collection for those...