Showing results by author "Dan Smith" in All Categories

Dan Smith (Bastille) and Emma Nagouse (You're Dead To Me) discuss the people in the songs on Dan's new project, Ampersand. Each episode is a conversation about history, music, mythology and popular culture, and how those things overlap. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In July 1964, the Sunday Mirror ran a front-page story headlined: Peer and a Gangster: Yard Enquiry. While withholding the names of the principal subjects, the newspaper reported that the Metropolitan Police had ordered an investigation into an alleged homosexual relationship between ‘a household name’ from the House of Lords and a leading London underworld figure. Bob Boothby was the Conservative lord in question and Ronnie Kray the gangster.

When Pete, Nancy and Krish arrive at Heathland Camp for a school trip, they’re in for an adventure – just not the kind they were expecting. Nearby sits the abandoned Harwood Institute. The crumbling buildings are out of bounds but strange screams come from the surrounding forest at night. Mystery shrouds the events that took place at the institute during the war, so Pete and his friends make it their mission to find out the truth. But the forest is hiding a sinister secret, and the trio could be in real danger. Are some mysteries best left undisturbed?

A young Viking girl is swept by a storm on to a desolate English beach. Cruelly orphaned there, Ylva becomes set on revenge, tracking a killer through dangerous hinterland. She wants only the favour of the Norse gods and the comfort of her stories. But when a stranger decides to protect Ylva - seeming to understand her where others cannot - Ylva must decide if her own legend will end in vengeance or forgiveness.

Ever since the fracking site closed, Nancy’s parents have been acting weird. Their eyes are blank, they won’t eat – it’s like they’re no longer themselves. And now the symptoms are affecting others as well. Nancy and her friends Pete and Krish are determined to find out what’s going on. But the deeper they dig, the scarier the mystery gets. A dark presence is spreading its tendrils across Crooked Oak. Can they stop it before it takes over the whole town?

Berlin, 1961. Anja and Monika are best friends–they even share a cat called Otto. When a huge barbed wire fence is built between their apartment blocks, everything changes; their city and family are divided by the Berlin Wall. In the West, Anja is sure it will be taken down, but Monika is afraid. Her world is changing: neighbours keep disappearing, others become spies and shadowy threats lurk around every corner.

Nigel Shirazi, the Speaker of the Merc Guild, knows that war is coming and he’s not ready. He needs to build up the mercenary forces after years of war, and he’s proclaimed the Phoenix Initiative to give people who want to start new companies the opportunity to do so. CASPers are cheaper and financed at lower rates, and the government of Earth is offering bounties to take the mercs from alien races off the planet. Now is the time!

Summer, 1941. When a German plane is shot down over the woods, Peter rushes to the crash site to find something exciting to keep. But what he finds instead is someone: a young and injured German airman. The enemy. Here. And in trouble. Suddenly, helping him seems like the right thing to do.

1942. Nisha's Malayan home has been destroyed by war. She and her mother, Amma, flee to her father's ancestral house in England, perched on a cliff top on the cold Northern coast. When Amma falls gravely ill, Nisha is left to face her formidable grandmother alone. The old woman's rules are countless, including forbidding Nisha to climb the Weeping Tree - a claw of leafless, twisted branches jutting upwards from the crag. But when a ghost child beckons Nisha to sit under its boughs and promises her Amma's life in return for three truths, the tree's pull proves irresistible.

In 1977, the Alpine Heights tower block where Kyle Dempsey and his sister Lauren live with their mum and stepdad becomes the site of a horrific infestation. Believing their stepdad, Connor, to have been killed in action in Northern Ireland, Kyle and Lauren are shocked to find him at home in their flat. But Connor is changed. Following a secret military experiment, he has been infected with some kind of alien life form, which is using him as a host to infect the other residents of the tower block with gruesome results.

When a meteorite crashes to Earth near Crooked Oak, Pete, Nancy and Krish are determined to find it. But they’re not the only ones. After spotting one of their teachers up on the moor where the meteorite landed, they start to wonder if his strangely altered behaviour and appearance might be connected to the arrival from outer space. But nothing could prepare them for the horror they uncover deep down in Killburn Mine.

Germany, 1941. Twelve-year-old Karl Engel is looking forward to joining the Hitler Youth, like all boys his age. But when his father is killed, his rebellious older brother, Stefan, shows him things that leave his faith in the Fuhrer shaken. What does it mean to be a good German? What does it mean to wear the mysterious flower sewn inside his brother's jacket? Who is the real enemy?

From out of the whiteness, a dark figure comes.... December 1930, Ukraine. After the horrors of war, Luka wants a quiet life with his family. His village has, so far, remained hidden from the advancing Soviet brutality - but everything changes the day a stranger arrives, pulling a sled bearing a terrible cargo: the bodies of two children. When the villagers' fear turns deadly, they think they have saved themselves.

Russia, 1920: Kolya has deserted his Red Army unit and returns home to bury his brother and reunite with his wife and sons. But he finds the village silent and empty. The men have been massacred in the forest. The women and children have disappeared. In this remote, rural community the folk tales mothers tell their children by candlelight take on powerful significance and the terrifying legend of The Deathless One begins to feel very real. Kolya sets out on a journey through dense, haunting forests and across vast plains as bitter winter sets in, in the desperate hope he will find his family.

Kidnapped and drugged, Ash wakes up on a remote tropical island. His mum - a genetic scientist - has been imprisoned and infected with a deadly virus. He sets out to cross the jungle to find out and rescue his mother. Soon he realises he's quicker and sharper than before. But there's something else.... Why are the animals watching him, and how can he use the jungle to his advantage?

13-year-old Oskari is sent into the cold wilderness on an ancient test of manhood. He must survive armed only with a bow and arrow. But instead, he stumbles upon an escape pod from a burning airliner: Air Force One. Terrorists have shot down the President of the United States. The boy hunter and the world's most powerful man are suddenly the hunted, in a race against a deadly enemy.

In 2020, engineering firm Velentium faced an unprecedented ask: partner with a small medical device company and a very large vehicle manufacturer to increase emergency ventilator production from hundreds per month to thousands per week—in just twenty-eight days.

Photographers Chris Smith and Dan Wilson explore how nudity affects the photography and modelling industry. As Melbourne based photographers themselves, they discuss a range of relevant topics and feature special guests that join in the open and honest chats.It's a funny, insightful and relatable podcast that would appeal to creatives in the industry Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emerging generations in the West are more diverse than ever—ethnically, socioeconomically, educationally, and politically. And as church attendance among younger generations declines rapidly, research shows that one of their primary sticking points is the lack of diversity in most churches. In Church for Everyone, pastors Dan Kreiss and Efrem Smith address this phenomenon head-on. In this research-based and theologically informed book, they explore the younger generations' expectations and disappointments with church and hold out a vision for true diversity taken from the pages of Scripture.

Our beloved uncle, Morris Venden, regularly claimed in camp meeting sermons: “For sure I believe in ‘Once Saved, Almost Always Saved!’” The parable of the Prodigal Son promises assurance even to the confused and disaffected child. King David was not a lost soul even while committing the twin crimes of adultery and murder. What, then, would a rebel have to do in order to actually depart from God’s eternal kingdom anchored by Amazing Grace?