Audio 2001
File Updated: 31/01/02
New Audio Titles 2001


But at Amazon.co.uk Jeremy Paxman The English Published October 2001 by Penguin Audio at £12.99 ISBN: 0 14 280334 7
Read by Jeremy Paxman
A Portrait of a People
At one time the English had a strong sense of national identity based on empire and the love of tea and the hot-water bottle instead of sex. Today, we don’t seem so sure...
So what are the defining features of Englishness? To answer this question, Jeremy Paxman looks for clues in the English language, literature and lukewarm religion. He explores attitudes to women, intellectuals, the French, the countryside and the weather. Bringing together insights from novelists, historians, gentlemen farmers, and a banker with an enthusiasm for the ‘English vice’ of flagellation, he traces the invention of Englishness to its current crisis and concludes that for all their characteristic gloom, the English may have developed a form of nationalism for the twenty-first century.
Jeremy Paxman was born in Yorkshire. He grew up thinking of himself as ‘English’ despite being one-quarter Scottish. A journalist and writer, he is best known as a presenter of Newsnight and Start the Week. He is currently working on a book about politicians.
4 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 5 hrs 45 mins Abridged by Kati Nicholl Produced by Richard Carrington
About The Author
Jeremy Paxman was born in Yorkshire. He grew up thinking of himself as ‘English’ despite being one-quarter Scottish. A journalist and writer, he is best known as a presenter of Newsnight and Start the Week. He is currently working on a book about politicians.
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Elizabeth

But at Amazon.co.uk David Starkey Elizabeth Published February 2001 by HarperCollins Audio at £8.99 ISBN: 0-00-711319-6
Read by Patricia Hodge
A brilliant and compelling account of the apprentice years of Elizabeth I.
An abused child, yet confident of her destiny to reign, a woman in a man’s world, passionately sexual yet - she said - a virgin. Elizabeth I was to be famed as England’s most successful ruler. This absorbing story concentrates on the early years from her birth in 1533 to her accession in 1558.
In her youth she had experienced every vicissitude of fortune and every extreme of condition. She had been Princess and inheritrix of England – then bastardized and disinherited. At sixteen she was the head of a great princely household. Not much later she was an accused traitor on the verge of execution in the Tower. Among all this, she had been taught the most advanced curriculum of the day. But it was her lessons in the school of life that mattered more -and that taught her humanity.
Dr David Starkey recreates a host of extravagant characters, mad-cap schemes and tragic plots, while using original documents to point up the importance of the rituals of power and life at court. This brilliant book contrasts the daughters of Henry VIII: the pious Catholic Mary and her clever sister. The key to understanding Elizabeth is her determination not to make the same mistakes as Mary.
2 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 3 hrs
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