Showing results by narrator "Nicholas Boulton" in All Categories

In this audiobook, Oxford biologist John Parrington proposes a radical new theory of human consciousness, arguing that a qualitative leap in consciousness occurred during human evolution as language and tool use transformed our brains. Rejecting outdated views of the brain as a hard-wired circuit diagram, he draws on the latest insights from neuroscience to show that meaning is created within our heads through a dynamic interaction of oscillating brain waves.

A BBC Radio 4 bittersweet romantic drama by award-winning writer Lou Ramsden, starring Kathryn Hunt and Nicholas Boulton, originally broadcast as the 'Afternoon Play' on 15 April 2011. Hazel (Kathryn Hunt) spends her life describing plays for visually impaired people. But when she starts to describe the real world to her new friend Davy (Nicholas Boulton), is she giving an accurate picture of the world around her?

After Captain John Carlisle’s dance with death, he’s retreated to the serenity of the Oneida village with his beloved Dellis McKesson to hide from the inevitable truth that war is coming to the Mohawk River Valley. When duty calls, and John’s expertise is needed to negotiate a treaty with the Six Nations of the Iroquois and the Crown, he’ll once again be forced to decide between his conscience and his king.

Beneath the sea, over millennia, sentient beings await our final mistakes: soon they will make their move. Seaweed Rising follows an amateur seaweed collector who is convinced that algae are taking over the human race. From a Cornish fishing village to the Spanish coast, up to the blinding glacial landscape of the Arctic, human society falls under the microscope in this genre-bending existential drama.

Trevelyan d'Augustin and Lady Callista Talliafaire were secret sweethearts, until the day her father dismissed him with a whip across the face. Ten years and three jiltings later, shy Callie is resigned to a quiet village life as the late earl's spinster daughter. But now Trev has returned from his estates in France, upending everything, dragging her into adventures, stealing Hubert the prize-winning bull, and flinging Callie's heart into mayhem again.

Is there any music more instantly recognizable and beautifully scored than Tchaikovsky’s wildly popular ballet Swan Lake? These and other works have become enduring classics, yet they were not uncontroversial in Tchaikovsky’s day, and there are those that still wonder if his style is fundamentally European or ardently Russian. Find out more about Tchaikovsky’s childhood obsession with music, his turbulent relationships with friends and colleagues, and how he overcame the deepest of personal crises to transcend all with an ambition that has left us with some of the greatest music ever written.

Tim, Meredith and Harry are three sassy, 30 something traders who, tired of making money for someone else, combine to launch a new hedge fund. But it doesn't take long before they get seriously above themselves, losing a small fortune and making some pretty heavy enemies in the City markets.

The Bayreuth Festspielhaus stands today as a testament to Richard Wagner’s ambition and self-importance—a theatre designed and built solely for the performances of his immersive ‘music dramas’. From the influence of Beethoven to the transcendental properties of his greatest music, Wagner’s work became a cornerstone of European musical culture, but what kind of journey took him towards this remarkable achievement?

One of the greatest love stories ever written, Jane Eyre is the tale of a young woman entangled with the powerful Mr. Rochester. What lurks in the attic at Thornfield, the ancestral home of the surly Mr. Rochester? Will the governess Jane Eyre discover his secret–and having discovered it, live to regret that knowledge? Battling inside Jane are passion and prudence; she struggles to survive the turmoil they cause.

Enter a post-apocalyptic world of paradise with M1-The Black Key, the genre-bending debut novel of the Millennium series by Staci Morrison. One thousand years of Edenic paradise have been shattered by a brutal betrayal and murder, setting the stage for an epic fiction series that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

The music of Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák is suffused with natural nobility, fluency and freshness, and embodies the spirit of his native land. This revealing biography portrays Dvořák as a complex and wide-ranging composer, and explores the creation and performance of his music as well as its reception on both sides of the Atlantic, tracing his art in all its richness and variety.

Evie, a phenomenally bright but socially marginalised fifteen year-old, has had it with Western Civilization. Self-educated in the ideas of the Luddites, Mao and T.E. Lawrence, she wants to launch a mission against technology and the damage she believes it has wrought on the human race. She's taken a look at human history and decided it's time things changed. For good. But can she get her mobile-addicted classmates to join with her? Written by Philip de Gouveia.

Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks and Water Music, two of his greatest orchestral achievements, have become synonymous with mid-18th-century England and with the pomp, ceremony and tradition of British royalty. But is this music necessarily synonymous with Handel? Where did his eclecticism and experimentalism come from? How and why did he conquer the emerging genre of the English oratorio and what were the circumstances that allowed him to become one of opera’s greatest composers?

The Great Gate of Kiev resounds to the tumultuous bell rings that end Pictures an an Exhibition, one of the most magnificent and virtuosic of all piano pieces. However, to some of his contemporaries, Modest Mussorgsky was ‘insane’ and ‘a perfect idiot’. Born into a wealthy land-owning family, what drove this tormented man and why did he suffer psychological breakdowns and alcoholism? How did he achieve his command of the realist idiom in his stage works? d, of course, Pictures at an Exhibition.