Showing results by narrator "Verona Westbrook" in All Categories

Author, critic and traveler, Marina Vaizey, in her third lockdown essay, reflects on the books of figures in the changing façade of English society and the establishment. Missing people, even with telephones and emails. And music and theatre even with the incredibly generous digital provision.

Both men and women enjoy thrillers, mystery, and crime. Yet it may still feel not quite respectable, somehow a guilty (sorry!) pleasure. Do these novels so often categorized as genre offer something the literary novel does not? The market is enormous, perhaps the largest in publishing. It is a cliché which may be true that only the Bible – say - outsells Agatha Christie. And then there are films and television, either original or adapted from novels.

When savage family sickness, and the unscrupulous embezzling steward, Mr. Craven, steals the Boone's family fortune, he snatches Sandra Boone’s idyllic childhood from her innocent hands. The heartbroken child finds herself in a place she never thought possible – destitute and begging on the dirty, dangerous streets for her next meal. When opportunity opens the door for a life of servitude to a wealthy family, Sandra, crushed by the harshness of her unfair years, finally thinks fortune may be turning her way. Instead, a fire of controversy unfolds, forcing her to flee.

Elias, the handsome Duke of Westhampshire, has courted many women, but not for long. He doesn’t believe in commitment and flits from woman to woman, until he lays eyes on beautiful maid, Maria. Thinking her an easy target, he is shocked when she refuses his advances which angers, yet intrigues, him. Can the duke change his rake ways and open his heart? Will Maria be able to ever trust him?

Meet Lulu the Terrible and find out how she fell from grace; shudder at the menace of the cat who howls in the night and laugh with the irrepressible stationery cat; learn how the ancient Cabriole won his lady love, and how she rewarded him, and listen, with the wide-eyed kitten, to the mew-moirs of the cat who has been here before.

A viewing room by room of Bill Viola/Michelangelo at the Royal Academy of Arts on Monday March 4, 2019. Encounter the video works by Bill Viola on the theme of life, death, and rebirth and the drawings by Michelangelo from the 1530s to 1560s on religious and spiritual themes.

A recorded visit to Elizabethan Treasures during the press view at the National Portrait Gallery London. Inspect miniature portraits by Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver of Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Frake, Henry Wriothesley and others, and the celebrated icon of Queen Elizabeth I.

The reputation of Cecil Beaton hardly rests on the fact that he was the most prolific and productive of official war photographers both on the home front and abroad during World War II; rather, he is thought of as a royal-society- and celebrity-portrait photographer, designer for stage and film - recipient of three Oscars and a Tony - prolific author, and gossipy and fascinating diarist.

Lady Daphne Rosamond never thought of herself as missing out. She believes that love will find her when the time is right. That is until she visits a fortune teller. Now, she is determined to create her own future. Marcus made her a promise years ago, and she's ready for him to make good on it. He would give Daphne her first kiss once she was of an appropriate age. Not one to turn down a beautiful woman, he delivers on the promise. One passionate moment that neither will soon forget follows, but how could either of them have guessed where one stolen moment would lead?

With her third London season drawing to a close, the shy Eliza Malcolm seems unlikely to find any husband, let alone a titled one. But when the hunting-crazed Duke of Brockenhurst invites the Malcolms to visit Harrowhaven, Eliza's father jumps at the chance to gain a wealthy son-in-law. Surrounded by quarreling parents, tactless acquaintances, the aloof dowager, and the unsettling duke, Eliza looks for one person kind enough to help her navigate the murky waters of Harrowhaven's secrets.

She has beauty, poise and intelligence, a diamond of the first water, a prize of great value, but she is not happy. Lady Davina Woodburn feels totally uprooted. A country girl at heart, she is a better judge of horse-flesh than any man, enjoys the wild freedom of her rural life, and is not afraid to attend the births of the farm animals, or patch up a wound in either man or beast. Nineteen-year-old Davina feels quite out of place in London.

When the out of work governess, Miss Philpott, meets Francine once more, she could never guess how her life could be transformed. In the brand new Edwardian age there are many changes for women. But Miss Philpott is now 40 and feels that all the innovations of the new century have little to do with her. But how wrong she is. With Francine's help she is about to become a modern woman and discover that she has talents she could never have dreamed of. Her abilities are only limited by her imagination, and as an avid reader, Miss Philpott's imagination is prodigious.