Showing results by narrator "R D Watson" in All Categories

Charles Dickens' classic novel David Copperfield is loosely based on the life of the author. It tells the story of David Copperfield’s life from childhood to adulthood with all of the hardships, changes, and good fortune that David encounters on his life journey. It focuses on the relationships he develops with a huge cast of characters who he meets as he travels from rags to riches and back again.

Film producer Pero Baltazar thought he was taking a Berlin filming assignment. He needed the work, needed to get back in the saddle after fighting off a life-threatening experience in East Africa - al-Shabaab had attacked his crew, intent on a much larger terrorist attack. Suddenly he finds himself under orders from his part-time employers at the State Department and the CIA when he is handed a mysterious package. It's an assignment he doesn't want. The problem is, it is a job contracted by mysterious patrons.

Every adventure starts at the fringes of civilization. For expert safari guide Mbuno and wildlife television producer Pero Baltazar, filming in the wild of East Africa should have been a return to the adventure they always loved. This time they'd be filming soaring vultures in Northern Kenya and giant sea crocodiles in Tanzania with Mary, the daughter of the world's top television evangelist, the very reverend Jimmy Threte.

Dead, dead, dead. Say it enough times and it becomes just another word. What would you do? Could you kill a killer? Does the death of one appease the deaths of a hundred? What about that hundred against a thousand? What if you had no choice? Meet Sin. No, not that sort of sin, but Sin, crazy as a loon (you ask Sister Moon), and proud of it. Sin locks himself away in an asylum and, every so often, gets violent. That's only so they'll give him those nice drugs, though. The ones that help him forget. It's a pity they don't work.

In the second segment of David Arrowsmith's dramatic narrative, nectar - the wine that flows between England and France during the 14th century - truly turns to venom as Jean Créton continues to record the man's scintillating account. This as they nervously await Hugh Lawrence of Colchester to reveal himself at the Scottish friary and reclaim the panel of saints in David's possession. The story resumes in the year 1370, when David has married the ravishing Eleanor, taken over the Pelican Tavern Inn in London, and recommenced his apprenticeship in the wine trade.

In the chaos of 14th-century England and France, wine is the nectar of angels - a valuable commodity buttressing kingdoms and vaulting vast fortunes. A mysterious old archer named David Arrowsmith recounts his tale to an eager French chronicler, Jean Créton, when the latter learns that his mission to Scotland seems a failure. The burden of Arrowsmith's story rests with Créton, who suddenly finds himself writing about a seemingly cursed infant that barely escapes the grip of the Black Death in rural Wales when his family dies.

There is darkness and madness in each of us. We must do battle with our own demons. But - what if those demons opened the door in the back of your mind and stepped out. What if they became real? If the night, the shadows, the reflections, and Death himself walked among us? And what if they were watching you? Waiting? Thirsting? Dark Places. Thirteen stories. Thirteen poems. Thirteen doorways.

Whether reporting from the London cinema, Cotswolds villages, second-hand bookshops, war zones or political trouble spots, Graham Greene's novelistic gifts for detail, drama and compassionate curiosity provide unique and resonant insights into his life and times. To know war on any continent, listen to ‘A Memory of Indo-China’; to glimpse high political chicanery, listen to ‘The Great Spectacular’; to feel the flush and aftermath of revolutionary change, take up his pieces about Cuba.