Audiobooks by Edmund Burke

From Enlightenment To Revolution: Pitt, Burke & Robespierre, 1766-1794

History is often concentrated into short bursts of change, with long periods of shifting before and waves of alteration afterwards. Nowhere is this more obvious than the thirty year interregnum between the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. In this period, three figures stand tall; Pitt, the elder stateman who saw the need for genuine constitutionalism; Burke, the consummate parliamentarian, speaking for the glory of empire; and Robespierre, the legendary and controversial frontman of the French Revolution. William Pitt The Elder speaks about the need for key changes to the body politic. The first speech here predates the interregnum, being from 1738, when he was merely thirty, and covers a key factor in Britain’s colonial problems for the next two centuries, being the complete internal corruption of the army. Edmund Burke represents the height of Royalist sympathy as the age of revolution gets underway. He speaks on the need for conciliation with America after the disaster of the Stamp Act and revolution, on the need to punish Warren Hastings for treating his Asian holdings as his own empire to fill with his own corruption, and on the end of an era with the passing of Marie Antoinette. Finally, the age of revolution, both industrial and political, has begun. Robespierre argues for the dignity of man; for rejecting the divinity of royal authority in favour of that of the human spirit; against the death penalty, as being below the dignity of a truly humanist state; on enemies, internal and external, who push the people to reject their own interests for those of the powerful. This is but a small selection of the man’s incredible output - in 1791 alone, he gave three hundred and twenty-eight speeches. Spitting bile and flame in his last speech, which closes this volume, Robespierre truly inaugurates the era when revolution against centuries-old powers brought their end, and their nations found their renewal.

Edmund Burke, Maximillian Robespierre, William Pitt (Author), Charles Featherstone (Narrator)

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The Era of Revolution: 1775-1796

Six speeches about freedom and revolution from the American, French and Irish revolutions. The first two speeches are from the American Revolutionary war (1775-1783). Patrick Henry’s “Give me Liberty or give me death” is recognized even today, two centuries since Henry spoke at the Second Virginia Convention to an audience including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. The speech is credited with providing troops from Virginia for the revolutionary war. In the Newburgh Address, Washington and implores his army to put their faith in him. A mutiny was proposed because Congress has not paid them as promised. Washington needed to make clear to his generals that there was no option to surrender or turn away to unsettled lands, and that he was with them and on their side in the thick of both war and politics. Next is William Wilberforce’s Abolition Speech to the British parliament in 1789, the apex of a campaign that led to slavery being outlawed across the British Empire. Speeches from the French revolution then follow. First, there is the reaction from the aristocracy in England; a valediction from Edmund Burke, an MP in the British Parliament, on the beauty of Marie Antoinette and his sadness at her passing. Four speeches follow by Maximilien de Robespierre, a foundational member of the French Revolution, who laid down the political philosophy of liberty and the moral law over divinity and customary law. The speeches are filled with a passion for direct democracy and the rule of the people, not the elites. The volume ends with a more measured, but no less impassioned, address by the Irish lawyer and statesman John Curran. It was given in Curran’s defence of Archibald Rowan, who was sentenced to transportation to Australia for his treasonous activities fighting for Irish independence. While unsuccessful, this rallying cry for genuine self-determination and free speech captures the heart of the conflicts that defined the era.

Edmund Burke, George Washington, John Curran, Maximilien de Robespierre, Patrick Henry, William Wilberforce (Author), Charles Featherstone (Narrator)

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From Enlightenment To Revolution: Pitt, Burke & Robespierre, 1766-1794

Edmund Burke, Maximillian Robespierre, William Pitt (Author), Charles Featherstone (Narrator)

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Reflections on the Revolution in France

Written in the form of a letter to a Frenchman, Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France is an impassioned attack on the French Revolution and its hasty destruction of the Church, the old elites and the Crown. Burke tackles the new republic and its allegiance to principles such as liberty and equality, as well as its failure to recognize the complexities of human nature, society, and wisdom accumulated over time, contending that gradual change and adjustment is far better than immediate upheaval. Burke's treatise later became the target of Thomas Paine's own reflections on the French Revolution in Rights of Man, a devastating work that predicted more revolutions to come.

Edmund Burke (Author), Matt Addis (Narrator)

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A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful

In A Philosophical Enquiry... Edmund Burke sets out to define the nature of beauty and sublimity, and establish an objective criterion for discussing aesthetics. His definition of beauty as rooted in pleasure and sexuality, and the sublime in pain and survival, aligned him with the empiricists John Locke and David Hume, as he replaced the metaphysics of Plato's aesthetics with a psychological and physiological perspective. According to Burke, the sublime and the beautiful are experiences that can be explained by biological and sensual factors; thus he proceeds to explain how smooth lines, sweet tastes and middle frequencies of sound can be considered beautiful, and the terror created by high mountains and dark forests can be sublime. These revolutionary ideas ushered in the age of Romanticism, and the Gothic genre of novels, with their delight in horror and fright, and continue to influence aesthetic theories today.

Edmund Burke (Author), Matt Addis (Narrator)

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Reflections on the Revolution in France

This famous treatise began as a letter to a young French friend who asked Edmund Burke’s opinion on whether France’s new ruling class would succeed in creating a better order. Doubtless the friend expected a favorable reply, but Burke was suspicious of certain tendencies of the Revolution from the start and perceived that the revolutionaries were actually subverting the true “social order.” As a Christian––he was not a man of the Enlightenment––Burke knew religion to be man’s greatest good and established order to be a fundamental pillar of civilization. Blending history with principle and graceful imagery with profound practical maxims, this book is one of the most influential political treatises in the history of the world. Said Russell Kirk, “The Reflections must be read by anyone who wishes to understand the great controversies of modern politics.” “Burke’s views are as pertinent today as they were two hundred years ago. His comments and criticisms of the French Revolution can be applied to twentieth-century revolutions. It is interesting that his reflections are echoed by so many revisionist French Revolution historians in the past several years.”—Professor Jeanne A. Ojala, University of Utah

Edmund Burke (Author), Bernard Mayes (Narrator)

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Reflections on the Revolution in France

This famous treatise began as a letter to a young French friend who asked Edmund Burke's opinion on whether France's new ruling class would succeed in creating a better order. Doubtless the friend expected a favorable reply, but Burke was suspicious of certain tendencies of the Revolution from the start and perceived that the revolutionaries were actually subverting the true "social order." As a Christian--he was not a man of the Enlightenment--Burke knew religion to be man's greatest good and established order to be a fundamental pillar of civilization. Blending history with principle and graceful imagery with profound practical maxims, this book is one of the most influential political treatises in the history of the world. Said Russell Kirk, "The Reflections must be read by anyone who wishes to understand the great controversies of modern politics."

Edmund Burke (Author), Bernard Mayes (Narrator)

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