Audiobooks narrated by Charles Featherstone

From The Norman Conquest To The Death Of King John, 1066-1216

The second in an uproarious, sardonic and incisive look through English history. In this volume, we discover the actions of the Normans and King Richard, giving clear reasons why we history should hold them in nothing but contempt. It also covers the signing of the Magna Carta, the first bill of rights in England, which came about because a powerless king tried to go to war, realised that he had no-one behind him, and was bullied into signing in order to not simply be executed. Covers: William The Conqueror, and the thugs and mercenaries who bought titles and became England's gentry. William Rufus, and his utterly ridiculous death. Henry The First, Surnamed Beauclerc, his conquest of Normandy, and death from a finger wound. Stephen. Henry The Second, Surnamed Plantagenet, and his constant battles with both the church and his own family. Richard The First, Surnamed Cour De Lion, and how truly awful he was in every respect. John, Surnamed Sansterre, Or Lackland, and how tried to lead an army that deserted him and was forced into signing the Magna Carta.

Gilbert Abbott à Beckett (Author), Charles Featherstone (Narrator)

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From The Britons to the Battle Of Hastings: prehistory to 1066

A captivating, uproarious and informative journey through the beginnings of British history. Gilbert Abbott à Beckett was one of the great journalists of his time, being a descendant of Thomas Becket who edited Figaro, was a founder member of Punch, and wrote for The Times, The Morning Herald, and The Illustrated London News. He also wrote around fifty plays, as well as two operas, and is best known for this history of England. This volume covers: The Britons—The Romans—Invasion By Julius Cæsar Invasion By The Romans Under Claudius—Caractacus—Boadicea—Agricola—-Galgacus—Severus—Vortigern Calls In The Saxons. The Saxons—The Heptarchy. The Union Of The Heptarchy Under Egbert. The Danes—Alfred. From King Edward The Elder To The Norman Conquest. Edmund Ironsides—Canute—Harold Harefoot—Hardicanute—Edward The Confessor—Harold—The Battle Of Hastings.

Gilbert Abbott A'Beckett (Author), Charles Featherstone (Narrator)

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Fancies versus Fads

The last volume of Chesterton's collected essays, Gathered from the London Mercury, the New Witness, and the Illustrated London News, it is the only volume from after WWI, and is most serious, philosophical, and socially direct collection. 'The problem is not so much Prohibition with a large P as prohibition with a small one. I mean, I am interested not so much in liquor as in liberty. I want to know on what principle the prohibitionists are proceeding in this case, and how they think it applies to any other case. And I cannot for the life of me make out. They…do not attack liquor; they do quite simply attack liberty. I mean that they are satisfied with saying about this liberty what can obviously be said about any liberty – that it can be, and is, abominably abused. If that had been a final objection to any form of freedom, there never would have been any form of freedom.' 'So long as we combine ceaseless and often reckless scientific speculation with rapid and often random social reform, the result must inevitably be not anarchy but ever-increasing tyranny. There must be a ceaseless and almost mechanical multiplication of things forbidden. The resolution to cure all the ills that flesh is heir to, combined with the guesswork about all possible ills that flesh and nerve and brain-cell may be heir to – these two things conducted simultaneously must inevitably spread a sort of panic of prohibition. Scientific imagination and social reform between them will quite logically and almost legitimately have made us slaves.'

G.K. Chesterton, GK Chesterton (Author), Charles Featherstone (Narrator)

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The End of Empire: 1805-1862

No discussion of the 19th Century is complete without Napoleon. We begin with Charles Phillips’ eulogy, summarizing the strangeness and contradiction of the most influential man of his time. Followed by 7 brief speeches by Napoleon himself. Two speeches chronicle the injustice and tyranny of British rule. Robert Emmet’s Speech From The Dock in 1803 is a classic of Irish Republicanism, given after sentence of death has been pronounced upon him for treason against the British. It is a speech intended for history, and sums up the fires that kept his homeland fighting for another century for their liberation. O’Connell’s Justice For Ireland, given 33 years later, shows that the passion that drove Emmett remained in the Irish heart, given in a more measured and technical tone, but driven by the same certainty that only with freedom could justice be found for the Irish people. Red Jacket’s speech contrasts the belief system of the Native Americans with that of the Christian invasion from Europe. It is paired with a speech about the hypocrisy of government and the selective application of the rule of law, Douglass’ speech given about slavery on the 4th of July (America’s independence day). Following is Douglass’ most renowned speech, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” This powerful statement of self-determination continues to resonate today. Garrison’s speech on the death of John Brown is given after the Harper’s Ferry incident, which was the first event ever communicated by telegraph, and rang the starting bell for the American civil war. Next is a rousing speech from Italy by Garibaldi, calling mankind to arms in a new era of revolution and social change. Lastly a humorous speech from George Vest in tribute to dogs. After all, however dark the world seems, however much revolution and madness taint the air…we will always be blessed by the love and loyalty of our four-footed friends.

Charles Phillips, Daniel O'Connell, Frederick Douglass, George Graham Vest, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Napoleon Bonaparte, Red Jacket, Robert Emmet, William Lloyd Garrison (Author), Charles Featherstone (Narrator)

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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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Demosthenes: History's Greatest Orator, 344-324BCE

Demosthenes is generally acknowledged as the greatest orator in history. He overcame a stammer and the theft of his inheritance by his legal guardians to become as foundational to oratory as his contemporaries Plato and Aristotle are to philosophy. Much like a major contemporary political figure, he overcame a stammer on his journey to greatness, with “inarticulate and stammering pronunciation.” He was known as “a water drinker”; a stern and serious presence at all times. His great battle was against the waning of Athenian democracy, which slowly disintegrated into oligarchy and treason over his lifetime. As a legislator, ambassador, and leader he fought against the inexorable rise of Philip of Macedon and, later, Philip’s son Alexander. Fighting for the peace, democracy and equality that Athenian ancestors brought to all Greece, his tale ends in ruin as Athens finally falls, after more than thirty years trying to hold the line. In historical terms, many of the patterns, descriptions and arguments presented here will seem eerily familiar, like listening to Songs In The Key Of Life for the first time. Every part of it has been reused a thousand times by people ever since its creation, so you are intimately familiar with the style, even if you have never come across it before. After a prestigious career of public service, the tide turned against him. An accusation of bribery leads to his most famous speech, On The Crown. This defense of his career as the tides turned against him has been described as “the greatest speech of the greatest orator in the world.” After his conviction, he escaped from prison and went on the run. He was exiled, brought back, then sentenced to death; eventually, fleeing the city again, this time to the island of Kalaureia (modern-day Poros). Discovered by Archias, he asked for time to write a letter to his family, and took poison from a reed.

Demosthenes, Dinarchus (Author), Charles Featherstone (Narrator)

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The Rise of Socialism: 1884-1918

The birth of liberation movements in the C19th saw a rise in fighting for the rights of workers. William Morris believed decries the belief “not that Commerce was made for man, but that man was made for Commerce”, with the profit motive that renders all work miserable when “It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious.” Edward Carpenter demands of those whose only question is “Does It Pay?” to know why any action is undertaken. On starting a farm, he found, “that if I was happy in the life..., and if we were cultivating genuine and useful products… that it might really pay me better to get 1%, than 10% with jangling and wrangling.” Annie Besant attacks a reactionary appeal to the ‘natural’ role of men and women by pointing out that it is equality of opportunity and representation that women want. Eduard Bernstein confronts a misunderstanding that people still have today. Marx and Engels realized in their lifetimes that society was further away than they initially thought from a genuine socialism – that many small revolutions would be necessary, and that a single grand rewriting of society could not work. The next writer also refers to it, in saying that “A few.. only know what Socialism is, and they are Socialists. The rest are opposed to it because the little they know about it is not true.” Eugene Debs rails against the approach government takes in promoting “equality” between capitalist and labourer. We end with Debs' response to being sentenced to ten years imprisonment, for the crime of “opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune, while millions work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence. .”

Annie Besant, Eduard Bernstein, Edward Carpenter, Eugene Debs, William Morris (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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The Era of Faith: 632-1667CE

Five speeches from a millennium shaped by faith and empire. 632CE. In Muhammed’s farewell address, he lauds his people for their achievements and virtues, and gives them his final instructions for living within the faith. In 1095, Pope Urban II’s Against The Infidels speech launches the Crusades, which lasted for another two hundred years. In it the Pope exhorts his clergy to make true the promise of Christianity and rise against their weaker natures and the enemy in the east. Pico della Mirandola’s Oration On The Dignity Of Man has been described as “the manifesto of the Renaissance”, and is an introduction to his 900 Theses, which was the first printed book ever banned by the Church. Written in 1486, it weaves together philosophy and theology from across history and the world. While Christian, it is a review of the philosophies and religions of the ages. The first section details man’s supremacy over all other beings but God, due to his inherent mutability. The second section dives into the value of philosophy and theology, preparing a discussion of Christian magic and mystery. The final section explores a positive conception of Christian magic, placing it in ancient traditions of magic. In 1588, Elizabeth I’s speech rouses her forces against the Spanish Armada. The Armada came to conquer England and re-establish Catholicism as the state religion. The ensuing conflict is one of England’s great military victories. It includes the famous line “I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too”. John Milton, Satan’s First Speech, Paradise Lost, 1667. We end the volume with a speech against faith and monarchy, which gives us the phrase “Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.” Paradise Lost explores the limits of both divinity and monarchy, and marks the end of an age where the two combined to rule the world.

Elizabeth I, John Milton, Muhammad, Muhammed, Pico della Mirandola, Pope Urban II (Author), Charles Featherstone (Narrator)

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Tremendous Trifles: 'Perhaps the best introduction to Chesterton'

A wonderful and whimsical collection of short essays on everything from sketching on brown paper and building toy theatres to the nature of Englishness and faith. 'Tremendous Trifles contains simply some of the best essays Chesterton ever wrote. They originally appeared in the Daily News, which Chesterton contributed to from 1901 to 1913, and which explains why people bought that paper. Which is an idea so large it spills over into another essay, “A Piece of Chalk.” Here Chesterton describes how he has set out to do some drawing with his chalks, but is distressed to find that he has forgotten his white chalk. White is essential. White is a color. It is not merely the absence of color. It is “a shining and affirmative thing…it draws stars.” As white is to art, so is virtue to religion. Virtue is a positive thing; not merely “the absence of dangers or the avoidance of moral dangers…Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.” In this book, Chesterton looks at the ordinary, common things and asks us to see how extraordinary and uncommon they are. The things in his pockets, the objects in a railway station, the people in the street. With these simple, random things he can defend Christianity, Western Civilization and Democracy. “Whatever is it that we are all looking for?” he asks at the beginning of an essay entitled “A Glimpse of My Country.” He suggests that what we are looking for lies very close; we just don’t manage to see it. It is a theme throughout the book, and throughout Chesterton’s writings that what appears to be a trifle is actually tremendous. In the title essay Chesterton crystallizes this truth in a perfect sentence that would go on to be inscribed on buildings and quoted by popes: “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.” -- Dale Ahlquist, lecture for Chesterton University

G.K. Chesterton, GK Chesterton (Author), Charles Featherstone (Narrator)

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Alarms & Discursions: Reflections on Englishness and humanity

The fragments of futile journalism or fleeting impression which are here collected are very like the wrecks and riven blocks that were piled in a heap round my imaginary priest of the sun. They are very like that grey and gaping head of stone that I found overgrown with the grass. Yet I will venture to make even of these trivial fragments the high boast that I am a medievalist and not a modern. That is, I really have a notion of why I have collected all the nonsensical things there are. I have not the patience nor perhaps the constructive intelligence to state the connecting link between all these chaotic papers. But it could be stated. This row of shapeless and ungainly monsters which I now set before the reader does not consist of separate idols cut out capriciously in lonely valleys or various islands. These monsters are meant for the gargoyles of a definite cathedral. I have to carve the gargoyles, because I can carve nothing else; I leave to others the angels and the arches and the spires. But I am very sure of the style of the architecture, and of the consecration of the church. -- From the introduction

G.K. Chesterton, GK Chesterton (Author), Charles Featherstone (Narrator)

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Reports From The First World War: Articles written while crossing the wastelands of 1919 (Nowadays,

Includes the collections Nowadays, Tales of War, & Unhappy Far-Off Things The great fantasy writer Lord Dunsany wrote very little in the way of fantasy after the onset of the First World War. This was partly because he was busy, having volunteered in 1915 and becoming a Captain in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in Derry. However, the reality of the world bore in on our hero at this time, and it is not difficult to imagine that his heart moved to more serious concerns. Dunsany’s days of high fantasy, it seems, ended with the emergence of civil unrest in his nation. This is why the non-fiction section is included at the end of this collection; while he wrote the odd fantasy work in later years, they were written by a distinctly different man, with a very different life. For a week, he lay in a hospital bed, listening to the sounds of the riots as the British forces became increasingly violent and shelled the centre of Dublin with artillery. His military belt was left in the hospital, and eventually buried with the Nationalist leader Michael Collins. This, it seems, was the trigger for his change of heart, as expressed in ‘Nowadays’, towards poetry as the essence of writing. “In January 1917, under the stimulant of shellfire, I turned to poetry and wrote two poems in Plug-Street Wood”. After initially being refused forward positioning, he eventually served in the trenches. In this time, his literary output was focused on writing propaganda material for the War Office, some of which is collected in the non-fiction section of this volume.

Lord Dunsany (Author), Charles Featherstone (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Charles Featherstone