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Although the Grand Alliance was now in place, Churchill knew that it would take precious time before it would be able to effectively engage and subdue the enemy. Disaster was upon him almost at once. With the entrance of Japan into the global conflict, our Far East possessions were under immediate threat. Singapore and the Philippines fell. In Africa, Rommel took Tobruk. At sea, the loss of ships mounted. His task seemed ever greater, but his spirit, his resolve, his belief in his people's ability to overcome the terrible evil of Nazism was unshakeable.

The Blitz continued to rain down on the shell and morale of the Nation’s defences. In the cold grey waters of the North Atlantic wolfpacks of enemy U boats hunted down with ruthless efficiency the supply lines that could keep Britain in the war. Through the year the enemy produced many of their grandest victories but Britain was able to stabilise its position in the Middle East although setbacks at the hands of the newly arrived Rommel, the Desert Fox, were encountered in North Africa.

Reprising his film role in this memorable classic James Stewart has a perfect life. A loving wife, Mary (Donna Reed), four young children, and his own business, which he inherited from his father. Facing a financial crisis one Christmas Eve he contemplates suicide. This being Hollywood he is saved at the last moment by the intervention of his guardian angel who takes him on a tour of how the world would be without him. His friendly Main Street America town is sad, impoverished and bleak.

Heroes or villains? You decide.... In the 1960s, London’s gangland was ruled by two men: Reggie and Ronnie Kray. Building an empire of crime by intimidation, extortion, and terror on a scale never seen before or since, they feted stars of stage and screen, sportsmen, and even politicians to gain the respectability they craved. Read by acclaimed actor Martin Shaw, this is the true story of their rise and fall.

These four stories test Father Brown in many ways, creating headaches a plenty. However, Father Brown is nothing if not redoubtable and whilst Chesterton's stories are, in his own words, "very slight and improbable", his method is all his own. Bill Wallis captures perfectly the mood and tone of Father Brown in this collection.

Spanning nearly half a century, The Old Wives Tale is epic in scale and scope, tracing as it does the effects of time on two sisters and their surroundings. The novel is a domestic story told with tenderness, and is concerned not with heroic statesmen or soldiers, but with small details of daily life in a way which demonstrates Bennett’s great debt to French realist writers. The action is concentrated mainly within the provincial town of Bursley, a startling contrast to Paris where Sophia and Gerald elope.

In this short and intense period of the war, Churchill’s sense of history is profound. 'If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say this was its finest hour.' In this second volume, Britain stands alone in combat against the mortal threat posed to civilisation, liberal democracy, and human decency. Between May 1940 and January 1941, the world witnessed some of the most spectacular military victories of all time.

It is strange to consider that, although The Hound Of The Baskervilles is Conan Doyle’s most popular novel, his hero is absent for much of the time. Notice how he sets up an atmosphere of supernatural horror right from the start through Dr Mortimer’s reading of the ancient curse, and how he then presents as assortment of bizarre clues – in particular, the riddle of the missing boots – which Holmes will have to unravel.

Richard Hannay finds a corpse in his flat, and becomes involved in a plot by spies to precipitate war and subvert British naval power. The resourceful victim of a manhunt, he is pursued by both the police and the ruthless conspirators. The Thirty-Nine Steps is a seminal chase thriller, rapid and vivid. It has been widely influential and frequently dramatised: the film directed by Alfred Hitchcock became a screen classic.

The Importance of Being Earnest is undoubtably Oscar Wilde's best known play probably due to its sharp wit that cannot help but enchant and entertain any reader, theatregoer or listener with this performance.

These five chilling tales make perfect night time listening - and, for the fearful, can be heard in a group, rather than experienced as solo bedtime reading. Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, W. L. George, A. M. Burrage, and Guy de Maupassant provide the terrifying text; Ian Holm and Julie Peasgood provide the spoken spooks.

In the Second World War every bond between man and man was to perish. Crimes were committed by the Hitler regime which find no equal in scale and wickedness with any that have darkened the human record. It was a simple policy to keep Germany disarmed after the struggle of the First World War and the Victors adequately armed in vigilance. But errors were soon made.

Stan Barstow's A Kind of Loving finds Vic Brown in a bleak Yorkshire industrial town, striving for maturity in his relationship with girlfriend Ingrid and her small-town ways. The story examines in great detail his feelings as the relationship develops.

Richard Huw perfectly captures the mood and the character in his reading.

Anais Nin is undoubtedly a great writer. In Delta of Venus she welcomes us into a world of new experiences where she demands that 'sex be mixed with tears, laughter, promises....new faces, dancing and wine.' This ground breaking collection of stories explores aspects of female sexuality long unexposed until Anais opened what she herself was to call 'that Pandora's box.' It is brave, fearless and compelling.

Alan Sillitoe was an integral part of the Angry Young Men movement of the fifties that focused on its authentic depiction of real working class people. This book is true to their ideals in its raw sharp writing of the story of a young man framed by his brutal experience in the army and as a factory worker. Fuelled by a bleak aggressive outlook on life the book centers around a boozy, philandering weekend which is graphically captured by Sillitoe's clever prose and Linus Roache's strong reading.

Settled in Germany in a Stalag-like hut on a desolate building site, a very long way from home, the three 'likely lads' from Newcastle ricochet from one disaster to another, with their four very unlikely companions - a gentle giant from Somerset, an over-sexed Cockney, a bike-riding Brummie and a dodgy Scouser.... An exceptionally talented actor, Christopher Fairbanks brings The Magnificent Seven to life with great warmth and humour.

Tropic of Cancer is regarded as a masterpiece, with Time magazine rating it as one of the 100 most important novels of the 20th century. It is an unforgettable, confessional, warts and all novel of the author and his friends riotous adventures in Paris during the Depression. It changed censorship laws in the US where it was published decades after it was written, and reading it today amplifies the debt that modern writers owe Miller.

More than any other writer, Gilbert White (1720-1793) has shaped the relationship between man and nature. A hundred years before Darwin, White realised the crucial role of worms in the formation of soil and understood the significance of territory and song in birds. His precise, scrupulously honest, and unaffectedly witty observations led him to interpret animals’ behaviour in a unique manner. Here, a collection of his letters to Daines Barrington and Thomas Pennant.

Thanks to the mindless actions of Teddy Deakin, a group of mismatched rail passengers find themselves stranded in a dark and isolated station, having missed the last connection of the night. Tales of superstition prevail as the local station master - unable to persuade them to leave - reveals that very night, 20 years ago, a train crashed leaving a number of passengers dead. Legend has it, that the station is still haunted as the train relives its final moments as it roars through the station to its demise.

Anais Nin wrote her diary at the end of 1931, at the close of a sexually tumultuous and emotional year as part of a ménage a trois with fellow writer Henry Miller and his beautiful wife June Mansfield. 'I really believe that if I were not a writer, not a creator, not an experimenter, I might have been a very faithful wife.' Nin's passionate and consuming relationship with Henry & June transformed a previously monogamous wife into an uninhibited and sexually liberated woman.