Audiobooks narrated by James Maccallum

Impossible Monsters: How the Discovery of Dinosaurs Changed the World

"Brought to you by Penguin. Impossible Monsters is the captivating story of the discovery of the dinosaurs and how it upended our understanding of the origins of the world. In 1811, a twelve-year-old girl uncovered some strange-looking bones in Britain’s southern shoreline. They belonged to no known creature and were buried beneath a hundred feet of rock. How this was possible was unclear, but over the next two decades, as several more of these ‘impossible monsters’ emerged from the soil, the leading scientists of the day were forced to confront one profoundly disturbing implication: as a historical account of creation, the Bible was wildly wrong. This is the dramatic story of the crisis that engulfed science and religion when we discovered the dinosaurs. It takes us into the lives and minds of the extraordinary men and women who made and grappled with these heretical discoveries, those who resisted them as well as those pioneering thinkers, Darwin most famous among them, who took great risks to construct a new account of the earth’s and mankind’s origins. It took seventy years for them to win their case: that the earth was millions of years old and that man, like every other living being, was an accident of evolution. Doing so had plunged Britain into a crisis of faith, liberated science from the authority of religion and ushered in the secular age. Impossible Monsters is the riveting story of a group of people who not only thought impossible things but showed them to be true. In the process they revolutionised the way mankind thinks about itself, and so they changed the world. ‘Truly marvellous ... an intellectual thriller’ RICHARD HOLMES ‘The most talented young historian around ... A triumph’ SATHNAM SANGHERA ‘An astonishing book about an extraordinary subject' PETER FRANKOPAN ©2024 Michael Taylor (P)2024 Penguin Audio"

Michael Taylor (Author), James Maccallum (Narrator)

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The Quiet Gentleman

"Brought to you by Penguin. When Gervase Frant, Seventh Earl of St Erth, returns at last from Waterloo to his family seat at Stanyon, he enjoys a less than welcome homecoming. Only Theo, a cousin even quieter than himself, is there to greet him - and when he meets his stepmother and young half-brother he detects open disappointment that he survived the wars. But the dangers of the Lincolnshire countryside are quite different to those of the battlefield. Georgette Heyer was the most successful and best-loved novelist of her day, and The Quite Gentleman displays all the skills which won the hearts of her large and enduring audience. © Georgette Heyer 1951 (P) Penguin Audio 2021"

Georgette Heyer (Author), James Maccallum (Narrator)

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The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery

"Brought to you by Penguin. SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING A DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR A riveting narrative history that shows for the first time how the campaign to end slavery divided Britain, convulsed its politics and was almost thwarted by some of the most powerful and famous figures of the era. In 1807, Parliament outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire. But for the next 25 years more than 700,000 people remained enslaved, due to the immensely powerful pro-slavery group the 'West India Interest'. This ground-breaking history discloses the extent to which the 'Interest' were supported by nearly every figure of the British establishment - fighting, not to abolish slavery, but to maintain it for profit. Gripping and unflinching, The Interest is the long-overdue exposé of one of Britain's darkest, most turbulent times. 'A critical piece of history and a devastating exposé' Shashi Tharoor, author of Inglorious Empire 'Thoroughly researched and potent' David Lammy MP 'Essential reading' Simon Sebag Montefiore © Michael Taylor 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020"

Michael Taylor (Author), James Maccallum (Narrator)

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Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future – Lessons from the World’s Limits

"Brought to you by Penguin. To understand how humans react and adapt to economic change we need to study people who live in harsh environments. From death-row prisoners trading in institutions where money is banned to flourishing entrepreneurs in the world's largest refugee camp, from the unrealised potential of cities like Kinshasa to the hyper-modern economy of Estonia, every life in this book has been hit by a seismic shock, violently broken or changed in some way. People living in these odd and marginal places are ignored by number crunching economists and political pollsters alike. Science suggests this is a mistake. This book tells the personal stories of humans living in extreme situations, and of the financial infrastructure they create. Here, economies are not concerned with the familiar stock market crashes, housing crises, or banking scandals of the financial pages. In his quest for a purer view of how economies succeed and fail, Richard Davies takes the reader off the beaten path to places where part of the economy has been repressed, removed, destroyed or turbocharged. By travelling to each of them and discovering what life is really like, Extreme Economies tells small stories that shed light on today’s biggest economic questions. (c) 2019, Richard David (P) 2019 Penguin Audio"

Richard Davies (Author), James Maccallum (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Moonstone: Penguin Classics

"Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Jessie Buckley, Richard Cordery, Julian Wadham, David Sturzaker, Hugh Fraser, Bruce Alexander, Oscar Batterham, Matthew Spencer, James MacCallum, Stewart Clarke and Jot Davies. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Sandra Kemp. The Moonstone, a priceless yellow diamond, is looted from an Indian temple and maliciously bequeathed to Rachel Verinder. On her eighteenth birthday, her friend and suitor Franklin Blake brings the gift to her. That very night, it is stolen again. No one is above suspicion, as the idiosyncratic Sergeant Cuff and the Franklin piece together a puzzling series of events as mystifying as an opium dream and as deceptive as the nearby Shivering Sand. T. S. Eliot famously described THE MOONSTONE as 'the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels', but, as Sandra Kemp discusses in her introduction, it offers many other facets, which reveal Collins's sensibilities as untypical of his era. (c) 1868, Wilkie Collins (P) 2019 Penguin Audio"

Wilkie Collins (Author), Bruce Alexander, Hugh Fraser, James Maccallum, Jessie Buckley, Jot Davies, Julian Wadham, Matthew Spencer, Oscar Batterham, Richard Cordery, Stewart Clarke (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by James Maccallum