Showing results by narrator "Philip Bird" in All Categories

A Victorian family gathers round the hearth, and one by one they tell each other their Winter's tales. Charles Dickens begins 'the round of stories they were to relate, as they sat in a goodly circle by the Christmas fire', and then hands over to Elizabeth Gaskell, Samuel Sidney and other respected contributors to the Christmas 1852 number of Household Words.

The moment Angelique arrives in Paris, she is taken prisoner by the SS. In a lonely little room, she is put in a chair with leather straps and a bloodstained seat and ordered to tell her captors everything she knows about the resistance. But Angelique knows nothing. She cares only for Martin, the boy who has been unable to speak since the bombs first fell during the Blitzkrieg. He has a secret - and she will protect it until her dying breath.

A wonderfully amusing and engaging account of the escapades of a naive student thrown into university life amongst the hallowed halls of Oxford c. 1850. Widely regarded as a comic masterpiece of its time (it sold over 200,000 copies) it brings to mind the writing of Jerome K Jerome or an adventure PG Woodhouse might have penned for a slightly more academic Bertie Wooster. Cuthbert Bede, B.A. is the nom de plume of the Rev. Edward Bradley.

A completely charming rediscovered collection of ten short stories, four by Dickens himself, others by Chalres Allston Collins , Arthur Locker, John Oxenford and Julia Cecelia Stratton. Together they gradually uncover the identity of the owner of the lost luggage.

We have the impression that the solar system is perfectly regular like a clock or a planetarium instrument. On a short time scale it is. But seen in a longer perspective, the planets and their satellites have exciting lives, full of events - for example, did you know that Saturn's moon, Titan, boasts lakes which contain liquid methane surrounded by soaring hills and valleys, exactly as the earth did before life evolved on our fragile planet? 

Here is a comic look at the curious habits and customs of the inhabitants of 'Stage Land', dedicated to 'that highly respectable but unnecessarily retiring individual, of whom we hear so much but see so little, "the earnest student of drama".

Welcome to the bizarre and dangerous world of Victorian London, a city teetering on the edge of revolution. Its people are ushering in a new era of technology, dazzled each day by new inventions. Airships soar in the skies over the city, whilst ground trains rumble through the streets and clockwork automatons are programmed to carry out menial tasks in the offices of lawyers, policemen and journalists.

In this final installment of the Adventures of Mr Verdant Green, the eponymous hero finds himself perplexed thricefold: by travelling North, by events at Oxford, and by his confused and loving heart. A tale told with enormous charm and wit.

In this second adventure, our hero learns more useful lessons at Oxford and experiences the first disconcerting flutters of his heartstrings. A joyous alternative to the satirical university novel. Philip Bird, narrator, numbers Charles Dickens and PG Wodehouse among his favourite writers and has found Mr Verdant Green to be a very agreeable mixture of the two. Cuthbert Bede, B.A. is the nom de plume of the Rev. Edward Bradley.