Showing results for "Benjamin Soames"

‘In a Nutshell’, the new 1-CD audiobook series from Naxos AudioBooks, continues with a fascinating history of Afghanistan. For centuries it has been the playground of big powers, from Alexander the Great to the British Empire and the Soviet Union. It has been torn by internal strife and ideological differences, yet Afghans, tribal though they may be, remain a proud nation. Here is a short history, setting the background to the current situation.

Illness, disease and injury prompted the development of medicine from the earliest days of mankind: useful herbs, methods for treating wounds and even setting bones were passed down the generations by word of mouth. With the growth of civilization came more scientific methods, generally discovered by significant individuals. This informative and entertaining audiobook presents the major figures in the history of medicine, from Hippocrates in Ancient Greece to the Roman doctor Galen, the me...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream must be one of the most enduringly popular of Shakespeare’s plays, and it is not difficult to see why: the work blends several kinds of comedy with a powerful atmosphere of magic and mystery and a satisfying set of contrasts between city and country, reason and imagination, love and infatuation.

Classic Poems for Boys comprises a delightfully varied set of poems for 5-10-year olds. From rousing favourites like Felicia Dorothea Hemans’s Casabianca and John Keats’s A Song About Myself, to dreamy, thoughtful poems by Rudyard Kipling and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, this is a collection to be treasured.

Classic Poems for Girls is a collection of over 25 funny, whimsical and moving poems for 510-year olds, designed to fuel the imagination. From the adventures of the Jumblies, who sail away in a sieve, to the sticky end of a girl named Matilda, to the courtship of a maiden who lived long ago in a kingdom by the sea, there’s a poem to suit any feeling or mood. Seasoned Naxos AudioBooks readers Roy McMillan, Laura Paton, Anne-Marie Piazza, and Benjamin Soames work their magic on the works of ...

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.

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.

Lemuel Gulliver sets out on a series of travels, but each time he finds himself shipwrecked in new and unfamiliar lands. And how unfamiliar … In Lilliput, everyone is tiny, and it takes thousands of them to capture him; in Brodingnag, they’re huge and treat him as a sort of living toy; in Laputa, they live on a floating island inventing impossibly mad projects; and the Houyhnhnms are horses! But through all his adventures, Gulliver learns to see humans in a different way, too. One of the w...

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.

There was once a time, nearly four thousand years ago, when the tall towers of a city called Troy reached gleaming into the sky; when its proud king fought against an invading army in a desperate siege. The Tale of Troy was so important to the ancient Greeks that its author, Homer, became a kind of hero. Long after his death artists, thinkers and ordinary people still look to his tale for inspiration. This exciting version of the famous story is retold especially for eight- to thirteen-yea...

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...

The glory of Ancient Greece is all around us, even in the 21st century, because Greece was the cradle of Western civilisation. We know about the gods and their characters Zeus, Athene, Apollo, Ares, Aphrodite and their heroes, both legendary (Heracles) and historical (Alexander the Great). Architecture, mathematics, politics, philosophy, observation of nature and the cosmos and much more emerged in Ancient Greece. Hugh Griffith’s entertaining but informative account of the people and the h...