Sinclair McKay has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 5 ratings. The most-rated is The Fire and the Darkness.
The Fire and the Darkness
Summary
“Beautifully-crafted, elegiac, compelling - The Fire and the Darkness delivers with a dark intensity and incisive compassion rarely equalled. Authentic and authoritative, a masterpiece of its genre.” (Damien Lewis, author of Zero Six Bravo) A gripping work of narrative nonfiction recounting the history of the Dresden Bombing, one of the most devastating attacks of World War II. On February 13, 1945 at 10:03 p.m., British bombers began one of the most devastating attacks of WWII: the bombing of Dresden. The first contingent killed people and destroyed buildings, roads, and other structures. The second rained down fire, turning the streets into a blast furnace, the shelters into ovens, and whipping up a molten hurricane in which the citizens of Dresden were burned, baked, or suffocated to death. Early the next day, American bombers finished off what was left. Sinclair McKay’s The Fire and the Darkness is a pulse-pounding work of history that looks at the life of the city in the days before the attack, tracks each moment of the bombing, and considers the long period of reconstruction and recovery. The Fire and the Darkness is powered by McKay’s reconstruction of this unthinkable terror from the points of view of the ordinary civilians: Margot Hille, an apprentice brewery worker; Gisela Reichelt, a 10-year-old schoolgirl; boys conscripted into the Hitler Youth; choristers of the Kreuzkirche choir; artists, shop assistants, and classical musicians, as well as the Nazi officials stationed there. What happened that night in Dresden was calculated annihilation in a war that was almost over. Sinclair McKay’s brilliant work takes a complex, human view of this terrible night and its aftermath in a gripping audiobook. A Macmillan Audio production fron St. Martin's Press "McKay’s rich narrative and descriptive gifts provide us with an elegant yet unflinching account of that terrible night...to be recommended as a very readable and finely crafted addition to the literature on one of modern history’s most morally fraught military operations.” (Wall Street Journal)
©2020 Sinclair McKay (P)2020 Macmillan Audio
The Secret Lives of Codebreakers
Summary
A remarkable look at the day-to-day life of the codebreakers whose clandestine efforts helped win World War II. Bletchley Park looked like any other sprawling country estate. In reality, however, it was the top-secret headquarters of Britain’s Government Code and Cypher School - and the site where Germany’s legendary Enigma code was finally cracked. There, the nation’s most brilliant mathematical minds - including Alan Turing, whose discoveries at Bletchley would fuel the birth of modern computing - toiled alongside debutantes, factory workers, and students on projects of international importance. Until now, little has been revealed about ordinary life at this extraordinary facility. Drawing on remarkable first-hand interviews, The Secret Lives of Codebreakers reveals the entertainments, pastimes, and furtive romances that helped ease the incredible pressures faced by these covert operatives as they worked to turn the tide of World War II.
©2010 Sinclair McKay (P)2013 Gildan Media LLC
The Lady in the Cellar
Summary
Number 4 Euston Square was a respectable boardinghouse, like many others in Victorian London. But beneath this ordinary veneer lurked a murderous darkness. On 8th May 1879, the corpse of former resident Matilda Hacker was uncovered in the coal cellar. The investigation that followed stripped bare the shadow-side of Victorian domesticity, throwing the lives of everyone within into an extraordinary maelstrom. Someone in Number 4 Euston Square must have killed Matilda Hacker. How could the murderer prove so elusive? Best-selling author Sinclair McKay delves into this intriguing story to shed light on a mystery that baffled Scotland Yard.
©2018 Sinclair McKay (P)2019 Oakhill Publishing
The Secret Life of Bletchley Park
Summary
Bletchley Park was where one of the war’s most famous - and crucial - achievements was made: the cracking of Germany’s “Enigma” code in which its most important military communications were couched. This country house in the Buckinghamshire countryside was home to Britain’s most brilliant mathematical brains, like Alan Turing, and the scene of immense advances in technology - indeed, the birth of modern computing. The military codes deciphered there were instrumental in turning both the Battle of the Atlantic and the war in North Africa. Plenty has been written about the boffins, and the code breaking, fictional and non-fiction. Sinclair McKay’s book is the first history for the general listener of life at Bletchley Park, and an amazing compendium of memories from people now in their 80s - of skating on the frozen lake in the grounds, of a youthful Roy Jenkins, useless at code breaking, of the hijinks at nearby accommodation hostels - and of the implacable secrecy that meant girlfriend and boyfriend working in adjacent huts knew nothing about each other’s work.
©2012 Sinclair Mckay (P)2012 Audible Ltd