Audiobooks by Ralph Barker

An Audio Bundle: Explore & Rescue Audiobook

Explore offers first-hand accounts from the world’s boldest explorers, men and women encountering storms, starvation, cannibals, predators and disease in their pursuit of adventure. Their stories are immediate, passionate and dramatic accounts of contact with the unknown, discovered in the Himalaya, the ruins of Peru, the jungles of New Guinea and the Amazon, the ice flows of the Arctic, along with death in the big city. With selections from Tim Cahill, Redmond O’Hanlon, John Long, Fridtjof Nansen and Harold Brodkey, Explore will take you off the map to those few refuges where true discovery is still possible. Rescue: Stories of Survival From Land and Sea offers stories about what happens when things go terribly wrong in some of the world’s most perilous places: Himalayan peaks, African plains, vast oceans, remote Arctic wilderness. But mostly, Rescue is about what humans can endure and achieve in the face of overwhelming duress. Both Explore and Rescue are Publishers Weekly 'Listen Up' Award winners.

Alan Kesselheim, Dorcas S. Miller, Dwight Brooks, Fridtjof Nansen, Gene Savoy, Geoffrey Childs, Harold Brodkey, Jack Olsen, John Long, Kenneth Grahame, Lawrence Millman, Nina Mazuchelli, Pete Sinclair, Ralph Barker, Redmond O’hanlon, Sir Wilfred Grenfell, Thomas James, Tim Cahill (Author), Anne Flosnik, Colleen Delany, David Elias, Gary Telles, Graeme Malcolm, Grover Gardner, Nick Sampson, Terence Aselford (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Hurricats

The Incredible True Story of Britain's 'Kamikaze' Pilots of World War Two 'An unforgettable tale of high-stakes action, ingenuity and raw courage. This war story's got it all' Rowland White, Author of Vulcan 607 'IF WE FAIL IN THIS, THEN WE LOSE THE WAR' With the Battle of Britain won, Winston Churchill and his military chiefs faced an even more fearsome challenge in the Battle of the Atlantic. Thwarted in his plans to invade, Hitler decided he would starve Britain into submission instead. Operating in conjunction with U-Boats, long-range Condor aircraft manned by élite German airmen attacked Allied ships far beyond the range of any land-based RAF fighters, with devastating results. To counter the Luftwaffe threat, men from the RAF and Fleet Air Arm were asked to volunteer to be catapulted from the foredecks of merchant ships in specially modified Hawker Hurricanes. But with nowhere to land afterwards, it was a one-way mission. If the British fighter pilots survived combat, they would have no option but to bail out into the North Atlantic and hope they were picked up by the one of the convoy escorts. Survival was anything but certain ... 'Extraordinary ... excitingly told' Sunday Express 'Masterly' Daily Telegraph

Ralph Barker (Author), Andrew Cullum (Narrator)

Audiobook

Children of the Benares: Digitally narrated using a synthesized voice

This recording has been digitally produced, by DeepZen Limited, using a synthesized version of an audiobook narrator’s voice under license. DeepZen uses Emotive Speech Technology to create digital narrations that offer a similar listening experience to human narration. When the passenger liner City of Benares sailed from Liverpool on Friday, 13 September 1940 she was carrying 90 evacuee children from the bombed cities of Britain, bound under a government-sponsored scheme for a safe haven in Canada. Her sinking by U-boat four days later, without warning, in total disregard of the plight of survivors and in defiance of international law, shocked and horrified the civilised world. Of 406 people on board 256 were lost — including, at a first count, 83 of the evacuee children. In Britain and the Commonwealth the reaction was one of righteous indignation, accompanied by an intense desire for retribution. Nor was the propaganda value neglected, a broadcast by King George VI the day after the news broke being clearly directed at neutral America. ‘The world,’ he said, ‘could have no clearer proof of the wickedness against which we fight than this foul deed.’ Suspicions subsequently arose, however, that the British authorities had quite as much to answer for as the Nazis. Parents who, despite many misgivings, had entrusted their children to the scheme when invasion threatened, began to ask questions when they learned that the promised naval escort had abandoned the convoy twenty-one hours before the Benares was sunk. Allegations that crew members had rushed the boats, that emergency equipment had failed, and that the whole voyage had been undertaken under the blight of racial prejudice, demanded a formal investigation. But somehow this was avoided, and the scandal was successfully hushed up. Children of the Benares is a vivid and poignant reconstruction of the disaster, as well as an investigation into what really happened behind the scenes at the Admiralty and the Ministry of Shipping. The result is a harrowing story of human fallibility and human survival.

Ralph Barker (Author), William Birch (male Synthesized Voice) (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Last Blue Mountain: The great Karakoram climbing tragedy

‘When an accident occurs, something may emerge of lasting value, for the human spirit may rise to its greatest heights. This happened on Haramosh.’ The Last Blue Mountain is the heart-rending true story of the 1957 expedition to Mount Haramosh in the Karakoram range in Pakistan. With the summit beyond reach, four young climbers are about to return to camp. Their brief pause to enjoy the view and take photographs is interrupted by an avalanche which sweeps Bernard Jillott and John Emery hundreds of feet down the mountain into a snow basin. Miraculously, they both survive the fall. Rae Culbert and Tony Streather risk their own lives to rescue their friends, only to become stranded alongside them. The group’s efforts to return to safety are increasingly desperate, hampered by injury, exhaustion and the loss of vital climbing gear. Against the odds, Jillott and Emery manage to climb out of the snow basin and head for camp, hoping to reach food, water and assistance in time to save themselves and their companions from an icy grave. But another cruel twist of fate awaits them. An acclaimed mountaineering classic in the same genre as Joe Simpson's Touching the Void, Ralph Barker’s The Last Blue Mountain is an epic tale of friendship and fortitude in the face of tragedy.

Ralph Barker (Author), Stewart Crank (Narrator)

Audiobook

Goodnight, Sorry for Sinking You: Digitally narrated using a synthesized voice

Ralph Barker (Author), William Birch (male Synthesized Voice) (Narrator)

Audiobook