Audiobooks Narrated by Robert Maskell

The Stratagem

Edward Alexander Crowley was born on 12th October 1875 to wealthy parents in Royal Leamington Spa in Warwickshire.He was educated at Malvern College, Tonbridge School, Eastbourne College and finally Trinity College, Cambridge where he focused on his passions of mountaineering and poetry and published several volumes.Life for Crowley was to abandon his parents’ Christian faith and instead to inject himself into Western esotericism. In 1898, he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and was trained in ceremonial magic before studying both Hindu and Buddhist practices in India.On his Egyptian honeymoon in 1904 he claimed contact with an entity―Aiwass―who gave him the sacred Book of the Law which served as the basis for the Thelema religion where he identified as its prophet. During the Great War, which he spent in the United States, he claimed to be working for British Intelligence but by the 1920s he had decamped to pursue a libertine lifestyle in Sicily, and in the ensuing scandals was evicted by the Italian Government.He divided the following two decades between France, Germany, and England, and the continuing promotion of Thelema.During his life he gained widespread notoriety for his drug use, his bisexuality, and his alarming views on society. In short, polite society frowned on his ways, his thoughts and his influence but to many others his stance had much of value. Even after death he was a darling for the 60’s counterculture but his influence has since waned. His literary works were both prolific and covered many topics. In the early part of his career he published many poetry books, even plays, before his darker and more forceful works came to dominate his output.Aleister Crowley died on 1st December 1947 at Hastings in England. He was 72

Aleister Crowley (Author), Robert Maskell (Narrator)

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The Shadow of a Shade

Tom Hood was born on the 19th January 1835 at Lake House, Leytonstone just outside of London, the son of the famed poet Thomas Hood.Hood was educated at University College School and Louth Grammar School before attending Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1853 to study for a career in the Church. Despite passing all of his exams he never graduated.Hood began writing at Oxford and first published soon after his arrival there. Much of his work is humourous or for children (which his sister co-authored) but he also wrote novels, two books on English verse composition and short stories as well as many pieces for magazines and periodicals. Hood was also a talented artist and illustrated several of his father's comic verses.In 1860 he began a five-year stint for the War Office before leaving to edit the weekly ‘Fun Magazine’. Many of his wide range of friends including W S Gilbert and Ambrose Bierce contributed to this very popular weekly magazine.Tom Hood died suddenly at his cottage at Peckham Rye, Surrey on the 20th November 1874. He was 39.

Tom Hood (Author), Robert Maskell (Narrator)

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The Shadow on the Blind

Louisa MacDonald was born in 1845, one of eleven children of part Scottish descent. Together with three of her sisters they were known as the ‘MacDonald sisters’ primarily because of their marriages to well-known men. In 1866 she married the wealthy industrialist Alfred Baldwin in a double wedding with her sister Anne. After giving birth to Stanley on the 3rd August 1867, who would go on to become Prime Minister, she drifted into an unhappy life in her then residence in Worcestershire. She had at least one miscarriage and days alone depressed and in darkness.During the 1870’s the couple travelled to find a lasting cure and tried a variety of treatments which led to her recovery in 1883. She now became a leading figure in her local village of Wilden, near Stourbridge.Her writing career of novels, short stories and poetry is often overlooked, as was the case with so many women, yet her works reveal many talents and a gift for melding odd and weird circumstances into seemingly everyday life. Louisa Baldwin died in 1925.

Louisa Baldwin (Author), Robert Maskell (Narrator)

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Fernandino Eboli

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born on the 30th August 1797 in Somers Town, London.Her mother, the famous feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft died when Mary was only 11 days old and she was raised by her father, the philosopher, novelist, journalist, and perpetually in debt, William Godwin.Though Mary received little formal education her father taught her a broad range of subjects and added to her bright and curious personality she easily absorbed a good and broad education.In July 1814, after conducting a secret affair with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had earlier promised to pay off yet another round of her father’s business debts, the pair eloped to France. Within two months, penniless and pregnant they returned to England.Her husbands’ affairs caused her frequent heartbreak but despite all the travails, including the loss of her own child, Shelley’s recent inheritance gave them the opportunity to journey again to Europe.It was here that ‘Frankenstein’ was born and established Mary’s own name in literature.Her life hereafter was plagued with loss; the death of two further children and then her husband in a boating accident. Her writing continued through novels, travel pieces and biographies. Her short stories, some based in Europe, tackle difficult situations and genres as well the obstacles that women were burdened with in society. Her editorship of her late husband’s poetry was also widely praised. Mary’s radical politics continued to guide her journey throughout her life but, by 1840, illness had begun to haunt her years, depriving her of energy and vigour. Mary Shelley died on the 1st February 1851, at Chester Square, London of a suspected brain tumour. She was 53.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Author), Robert Maskell (Narrator)

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Richard Middleton - A Short Story Collection

Richard Barham Middleton was born on the 28th October 1882 in Staines, Middlesex.His education was primarily at Cranbrook School in Kent before he began work as a clerk, in 1901, at the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation in London. There he struggled with constraints and boundaries and by night he took to a bohemian lifestyle. Middleton moved into rooms in Blackfriars and joined the New Bohemians club where his literary contacts grew.He became an editor at Vanity Fair where he told a fellow editor, the notorious Frank Harris, that he wanted to pursue a career as a poet. Shortly afterwards Harris published Middleton’s poem ‘The Bathing Boy’.As an author he is most remembered for his short ghost stories.Richard Middleton died on 1st December 1911. He was 29.

Richard Middleton (Author), Robert Maskell (Narrator)

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Owen Oliver - A Short Story Collection

Owen Oliver was born Joshua Albert Flynn in Sheerness, Kent, on 15th September 1863. He was the eldest son of Albert Spencer Flynn and benefitted from a good education at private schools and then on to graduating at King's College, London. Writing came after he had established himself as a senior civil servant and after he married Ada Parkinson who he had two sons and three daughters with. Flynn served in South Africa as financial adviser to Lord Kitchener, worked for the Admiralty and the War Office from 1885 and was appointed director-general of finance at the Ministry of Pensions in 1916. He excelled professionally and was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1910 and knighted in 1919. Under his pen name, Owen Oliver, he contributed over 250 short stories in different genres that were published in the popular magazines of the day. Science fiction mainly in the Yellow Magazine, romance in the Windsor Magazine and numerous adventure stories in the London Magazine and Cassell’s. In 1918, he published the novel "An Author's Daughter" followed by A Knight at Heart, which delved into themes of chivalry, honour and love, set against the backdrop of historical events. Through his evocative prose and engaging narratives Oliver transported readers to different worlds, inviting them to experience the thrill of adventure and life in possibly a simpler time. He wrote one further novel as well as a non-fiction book on the civil service that included the idea of widening recruitment outside of the elite universities.Joshua Albert Flynn, aka Owen Oliver, died in Streatham, south London on 8th October 1933. He was 70.1 - Owen Oliver - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction2 - The Cloud-Men by Owen Oliver3 - Days of Darkness by Owen Oliver4 - The Awakening by Owen Oliver5 - An Unsolicited Contribution by Owen Oliver6 - The Specification by Owen Oliver

Owen Oliver (Author), Robert Maskell (Narrator)

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The Ghost-Ship

Richard Barham Middleton was born on the 28th October 1882 in Staines, Middlesex.His education was primarily at Cranbrook School in Kent before he began work as a clerk, in 1901, at the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation in London. There he struggled with constraints and boundaries and by night he took to a bohemian lifestyle. Middleton moved into rooms in Blackfriars and joined the New Bohemians club where his literary contacts grew.He became an editor at Vanity Fair where he told a fellow editor, the notorious Frank Harris, that he wanted to pursue a career as a poet. Shortly afterwards Harris published Middleton’s poem ‘The Bathing Boy’.As an author he is most remembered for his short ghost stories.Richard Middleton died on 1st December 1911. He was 29.

Richard Middleton (Author), Robert Maskell (Narrator)

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The Missing Model

Lettice Galbraith is yet another of those mysterious women of British literature of whom little was recorded.Lizzie Susan Gibson was born on the 27th January 1859 in Kingston-Upon-Hull in Yorkshire into a comfortable middle-class family.Her education was primarily private but at fifteen her father died, and life became rather different.After several years in London, she moved with her mother to Reigate in Surrey. In 1885 she published her first story anonymously and her pseudonym ‘Lettice Galbraith’ only appeared from late 1892.Although her canon of works is small, she mainly achieved her reputation on a single volume of ghost and supernatural stories entitled ‘New Ghost Stories’.After her mother’s death in 1901 she moved to London and continued to write, this time moving on from the short story to the novel, as well as reverting to her given name.For the last two decades of her life, she did not continue her literary career.Lettice Galbraith died on 8th July 1932 at Downe, then in Kent. She was 73

Lettice Galbraith (Author), Robert Maskell (Narrator)

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King Kong

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born on the 1st April 1875 in Greenwich, London. Leaving school at 12 because of truancy, by the age of fifteen he had experience; selling newspapers, as a worker in a rubber factory, as a shoe shop assistant, as a milk delivery boy and as a ship’s cook. By 1894 he was engaged but broke it off to join the Infantry being posted to South Africa. He also changed his name to Edgar Wallace which he took from Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur. In Cape Town in 1898 he met Rudyard Kipling and was inspired to begin writing. His first collection of ballads, The Mission that Failed! was enough of a success that in 1899 he paid his way out of the armed forces in order to turn to writing full time. By 1904 he had completed his first thriller, The Four Just Men. Since nobody would publish it he resorted to setting up his own publishing company which he called Tallis Press. In 1911 his Congolese stories were published in a collection called Sanders of the River, which became a bestseller. He also started his own racing papers, Bibury’s and R. E. Walton’s Weekly, eventually buying his own racehorses and losing thousands gambling. A life of exceptionally high income was also mirrored with exceptionally large spending and debts. Wallace now began to take his career as a fiction writer more seriously, signing with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921. He was marketed as the ‘King of Thrillers’ and they gave him the trademark image of a trilby, a cigarette holder and a yellow Rolls Royce. He was truly prolific, capable not only of producing a 70,000 word novel in three days but of doing three novels in a row in such a manner. It was in, estimating that by 1928 one in four books being read was written by Wallace, for alongside his famous thrillers he wrote variously in other genres, including science fiction, non-fiction accounts of WWI which amounted to ten volumes and screen plays. Eventually he would reach the remarkable total of 170 novels, 18 stage plays and 957 short stories.Wallace became chairman of the Press Club which to this day holds an annual Edgar Wallace Award, rewarding ‘excellence in writing’. Diagnosed with diabetes his health deteriorated and he soon entered a coma and died of his condition and double pneumonia on the 7th of February 1932 in North Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. He was buried near his home in England at Chalklands, Bourne End, in Buckinghamshire.

Edgar Wallace (Author), Robert Maskell (Narrator)

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Lettice Galbraith - A Short Story Collection

Lettice Galbraith is yet another of those mysterious women of British literature of whom little was recorded.Lizzie Susan Gibson was born on the 27th January 1859 in Kingston-Upon-Hull in Yorkshire into a comfortable middle-class family.Her education was primarily private but at fifteen her father died, and life became rather different.After several years in London, she moved with her mother to Reigate in Surrey. In 1885 she published her first story anonymously and her pseudonym ‘Lettice Galbraith’ only appeared from late 1892.Although her canon of works is small, she mainly achieved her reputation on a single volume of ghost and supernatural stories entitled ‘New Ghost Stories’.After her mother’s death in 1901 she moved to London and continued to write, this time moving on from the short story to the novel, as well as reverting to her given name.For the last two decades of her life, she did not continue her literary career.Lettice Galbraith died on 8th July 1932 at Downe, then in Kent. She was 73

Lettice Galbraith (Author), Robert Maskell (Narrator)

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The Bat King

The novelist and screenwriter James Hilton was born in 1900. He is best remembered for the novels ‘Lost Horizon’ and ‘Goodbye, Mr. Chips. He earned an Oscar for co-writing Mrs. Miniver in 1942.

James Hilton (Author), Robert Maskell (Narrator)

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The Professor's Mummy

Ferguson Wright Hume was born in Powick, Worcestershire on the 8th July 1859.When he was three the family emigrated to Dunedin in New Zealand. Here he started his education at the Otago Boys' High School before studying law at the University of Otago. Hume was admitted to the New Zealand bar in 1885. He moved to become a barrister’s clerk to Melbourne and once there also began writing plays. The local theatres were not interested in his works, and it was only after one was stolen and presented as being by someone else that his stock rose at all. Hume now moved in a different direction and wrote a novel based on those that were proving popular in Melbourne at that time. The result ‘The Mystery of a Hansom Cab’ with its vivid descriptions of poor urban life was initially self-published and became a great success, albeit that was only after he had sold the copyright for a mere £50. This Victorian age detective novel pre-dated Sherlock Holmes but is said to have inspired Conan Doyle. Shortly thereafter Hume returned to England and began a writing career that would eventually exceed over 130 novels as well as short story collections, plays, song lyrics and even book reviews for the plethora of literary journals of the day. Most of his output was detective stories, thrillers and mysteries.Hume was known to be deeply religious as well as intensely private and avoided almost all publicity, except in later life, when he lectured at debating societies and young people’s clubs. He travelled regularly to Europe and primarily to Italy, France and Switzerland. Fergus Hume died on the 12th July 1932 at Thundersley in Essex. He was 73 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Fergus Hume (Author), Robert Maskell (Narrator)

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