David Rintoul has narrated 84 audiobooks on Listento.it by 57 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 362 ratings. The most-rated is Munich.
Munich
Summary
September 1938 Hitler is determined to start a war. Chamberlain is desperate to preserve the peace. The issue is to be decided in a city that will forever afterward be notorious for what takes place there. Munich. As Chamberlain's plane judders across the Channel and the Fürher's train steams relentlessly south from Berlin, two young men travel with secrets of their own. Hugh Legat is one of Chamberlain's private secretaries, Paul Hartmann a German diplomat and member of the anti-Hitler resistance. Great friends at Oxford before Hitler came to power, they haven't seen one another since they were last in Munich together six years earlier. Now, as the future of Europe hangs in the balance, their paths are destined to cross again. When the stakes are this high, who are you willing to betray? Your friends, your family, your country, or your conscience?
©2017 Robert Harris (P)2017 Penguin Random House Canada
The Forgotten Highlander
Summary
Alistair Urquhart was a soldier in the Gordon Highlanders captured by the Japanese in Singapore. He not only survived working on the notorious Bridge on the River Kwai , but he was subsequently taken on one of the Japanese ‘hellships’ which was torpedoed. Nearly everyone else on board died and Urquhart spent 5 days alone on a raft in the South China Sea before being rescued by a whaling ship. He was taken to Japan and then forced to work in a mine near Nagasaki. Two months later a nuclear bomb dropped just ten miles away . . . This is the extraordinary story of a young men, conscripted at nineteen and whose father was a Somme Veteran, survived not just one, but three close encounters with death - encounters which killed nearly all his comrades.
©2010 Alistair Urquhart (P)2010 Hachette Digital
Yes to Life
Summary
Find hope even in these dark times with this rediscovered masterpiece, a companion to his international best seller Man's Search for Meaning. Eleven months after he was liberated from the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor E. Frankl held a series of public lectures in Vienna. The psychiatrist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience, and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity. Published here for the very first time in English, Frankl's words resonate as strongly today - as the world faces a coronavirus pandemic, social isolation, and great economic uncertainty - as they did in 1946. He offers an insightful exploration of the maxim "Live as if you were living for the second time", and he unfolds his basic conviction that every crisis contains opportunity. Despite the unspeakable horrors of the camps, Frankl learned from the strength of his fellow inmates that it is always possible to "Say yes to life" - a profound and timeless lesson for us all.
©2020 Viktor E. Frankl (P)2020 Random House Audio
An Officer and a Spy
Summary
They lied to protect their country. He told the truth to save it. A gripping historical thriller from the best-selling author of Fatherland. January 1895: On a freezing morning in the heart of Paris, an army officer, Georges Picquart, witnesses a convicted spy, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, being publicly humiliated in front of 20,000 spectators baying ‘Death to the Jew!’ The officer is rewarded with promotion: Picquart is made the French army’s youngest colonel and put in command of ‘the Statistical Section’ - the shadowy intelligence unit that tracked down Dreyfus. The spy, meanwhile, is given a punishment of medieval cruelty: Dreyfus is shipped off to a lifetime of solitary confinement on Devil’s Island - unable to speak to anyone, not even his guards, his case seems closed forever. But gradually Picquart comes to believe there is something rotten at the heart of the Statistical Section. When he discovers another German spy operating on French soil, his superiors are oddly reluctant to pursue it. Despite official warnings, Picquart persists, and soon the officer and the spy are in the same predicament.... Narrated by Picquart, An Officer and a Spy is a compelling recreation of a scandal that became the most famous miscarriage of justice in history. Compelling, too, are the echoes for our modern world: an intelligence agency gone rogue, justice corrupted in the name of national security, a newspaper witch hunt of a persecuted minority, and the age-old instinct of those in power to cover-up their crimes.
©2013 Robert Harris (P)2013 Random House Audiobooks
Fermat's Last Theorem
Summary
'I have a truly marvellous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.' It was with these words, written in the 1630s, that Pierre de Fermat intrigued and infuriated the mathematics community. For over 350 years, proving Fermat's Last Theorem was the most notorious unsolved mathematical problem, a puzzle whose basics most children could grasp but whose solution eluded the greatest minds in the world. In 1993, after years of secret toil, Englishman Andrew Wiles announced to an astounded audience that he had cracked Fermat's Last Theorem. He had no idea of the nightmare that lay ahead. In Fermat's Last Theorem Simon Singh has crafted a remarkable tale of intellectual endeavour spanning three centuries, and a moving testament to the obsession, sacrifice and extraordinary determination of Andrew Wiles: one man against all the odds.
©2012 Simon Singh (P)2016 Audible, Ltd
The Socratic Dialogues Middle Period, Volume 1
Summary
Here are three important but very different Dialogues from the Middle Period. Symposium, the most well-known in this collection, is concerned with the theme of love. In the house of Agathon, a group of friends - each very different in personality and background - meet to consider and discuss various kinds of love. Each one, Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes (the playwright) and Agathon (a prize-winning tragic poet), presents his particular view in a short discourse until Socrates speaks at greater length. This would be the end except that, unexpectedly, Alcibiades (the vain general and controversial statesman) arrives, rather worse for drink, and makes his loud contribution with direct references to his personal relationship with Socrates. Symposium is an absorbing Dialogue, related, however, by one man - Apollodorus. It is read here by Hugh Ross. Phaedo is a very different Dialogue. It contains the moving account of the last hours of Socrates. Condemned to death by the Athenian court for impiety and the corruption of youth, he has been ordered to commit suicide. Friends gather around him on this last day, but even at such a moment Socrates chooses to spend the time considering the nature of the soul, whether it is immortal and what may happen after death. It concludes with a description of his final moments. In Theaetetus, Socrates engages with a young mathematician on the definition of knowledge, the examined life, and how the active life compares with the contemplative life. Translation by Benjamin Jowett.
Public Domain (P)2017 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Dictator
Summary
There was a time when Cicero held Caesar’s life in the palm of his hand. But now Caesar is the dominant figure, and Cicero’s life is in ruins. Exiled, separated from his wife and children, his possessions confiscated, his life constantly in danger, Cicero is tormented by the knowledge that he has sacrificed power for the sake of his principles. His comeback requires wit, skill and courage - and, for a brief and glorious period, the legendary orator is once more the supreme senator in Rome. But politics is never static, and no statesman, however cunning, can safeguard against the ambition and corruption of others. Riveting and tumultuous, Dictator encompasses some of the most epic events in human history yet is also an intimate portrait of a brilliant, flawed, frequently fearful yet ultimately brave man - a hero for his time and for ours.
©2015 Robert Harris (P)2015 Random House AudioBooks
The Devil's Alternative
Summary
Whichever option I choose, men are going to die. When the entire Soviet Union wheat crop is destroyed by a devastating string of failures, the population faces starvation. The USA is quick to offer assistance. They devise a plan to trade vital food resources with the Russians in exchange for sensitive political information. But the Politburo has other ideas: the invasion of Western Europe to commandeer the food for them... As the paths of communication breakdown the president of the United States and leaders from around the world face an appalling choice: Should they allow the loss of thousands to save the lives of many more? This is the Devil's Alternative and in this incomparable and gripping thriller the Cold War giants must fight a battle to the death.
©1979 Frederick Forsyth (P)2012 Random House AudioGo
The Department of Sensitive Crimes
Summary
From the beloved and best-selling author of the number one Ladies' Detective Agency series comes a lighthearted, comedic novel about a Swedish police department tasked with solving the most unusual, complicated, and, often, insignificant crimes. The detectives who work in Malmo Police's Department of Sensitive Crimes take their job very seriously. The lead detective, Ulf Varg, prioritizes his cases above even his dog's mental health. Then, there are detectives Anna Bengsdotter, who keeps her relationship with Varg professional even as she realizes she's developing feelings for him...or, at least, for his car, and Carl Holgersson, first to arrive in the morning and last to leave, who would never read his colleagues' personal correspondence - unless it could help solve a crime, of course. Finally, there's Erik Nykvist, who peppers conversations with anecdotes about fly fishing. Along with an opinionated local police officer named Blomquist, the Department of Sensitive Crimes takes on three extremely strange cases. First, the detectives investigate how and why a local business owner was stabbed...in the back of the knee. Next, a young woman's imaginary boyfriend goes missing. And, in the final investigation, Varg must determine whether nocturnal visitations at a local spa have a supernatural element. Using his renowned wit and warmth, Alexander McCall Smith brings a unique perspective on Scandinavian crime. Equal parts hilarious and heartening, The Department of Sensitive Crimes is a tour de farce from a literary master.
©2019 Alexander McCall Smith (P)2019 Recorded Books
East West Street
Summary
When human rights lawyer Philippe Sands received an invitation to deliver a lecture in the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv, he began to uncover a series of extraordinary historical coincidences. It set him on a quest that would take him halfway around the world in an exploration of the origins of international law and the pursuit of his own secret family history, beginning and ending with the last day of the Nuremberg Trials. Part historical detective story, part family history, part legal thriller, Philippe Sands guides us between past and present as several interconnected stories unfold in parallel. The first is the hidden story of two Nuremberg prosecutors who discover, only at the end of the trials, that the man they are prosecuting, once Hitler's personal lawyer, may be responsible for the murder of their entire families in Nazi-occupied Poland, in and around Lviv. The two prosecutors, Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, were remarkable men whose efforts led to the inclusion of the terms crimes against humanity and genocide in the judgement at Nuremberg, with their different emphasis on the protection of individuals and groups. The defendant was no less compelling a character: Hans Frank, Hitler's personal lawyer, friend of Richard Strauss, collector of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, and governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland. A second strand to the book is more personal, as Sands traces the events that overwhelmed his mother's family in Lviv and Vienna during the Second World War and led his grandfather to leave his wife and daughter behind as war came to Europe. At the heart of this book is an equally personal quest to understand the roots of international law and the concepts that have dominated Sands' work as a lawyer. Eventually he finds unexpected answers to his questions about his family in this powerful meditation on the way memory, crime, and guilt leave scars across generations.
©2016 Philippe Sands (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Buddenbrooks
Summary
First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author's former neighbours in his native Lübeck. As he charts the Buddenbrooks' decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic decadence and madness, Mann ushers the reader into a world of rich vitality, pieced together from births and funerals, weddings and divorces, recipes, gossip and earthy humour. It is perhaps the first great family saga of modern literature, and it brought to public notice a writer of world stature who, three decades later, was to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. David Rintoul gives one of his finest performances in this committed and deeply moving reading.
©1993 Alfred A Knopf (P)2016 Ukemi Productions Ltd
The Socratic Dialogues: Early Period, Volume 1
Summary
Here are the Socratic Dialogues presented as Plato designed them to be - living discussions between friends and protagonists, with the personality of Socrates himself coming alive as he deals with a host of subjects, from justice and inspiration to courage, poetry and the gods. Plato's Socratic Dialogues provide a bedrock for classical Western philosophy. For centuries they have been read, studied and discussed via the flat pages of books, but the ideal medium for them is the spoken word. Some are genuine dialogues while some are dialogues reported by a narrator supposedly at a later date. Ukemi Audiobooks presents all of the Socratic Dialogues in a series of recordings divided into Early Period (Volumes 1 & 2), Middle Period (Volumes 1 & 2) and Late Period (Volume 1) - based on their likely composition by Plato. This opening volume starts with perhaps the most famous speech, The Apology, Socrates' doomed defence against the charge of heresy and corrupting the young. It is followed by Crito, in which Socrates' friend offers to spirit him out of Athens to avoid execution. Among the others are discussions on Courage (Laches), and Friendship (Lysis). The role of Socrates is taken by David Rintoul, a widely admired and experienced audiobook reader who studied philosophy at university before taking a different path to RADA, TV, theatre and film. He is joined by a broad range of readers, most known to Audible listeners. Each Dialogue is prefaced with a short introduction to set the scene for newcomers to Plato. Translation: Benjamin Jowett.
Public Domain (P)2017 Ukemi Audiobooks
The Magic Mountain
Summary
It was The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) that confirmed Thomas Mann as a Nobel prizewinner for literature and rightly so, for it is undoubtedly one of the great novels of the 20th century. Its unusual story - it opens with a young man visiting a friend in a tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps - was originally started by Mann in 1912 but was not completed until 1924. Then, it was instantly recognised as a masterpiece and led to Mann’s Nobel Prize in 1929. Hans Castorp is, on the face of it, an ordinary man in his early 20s, on course to start a career in ship engineering in his home town of Hamburg, when he decides to travel to the Berghof Santatorium in Davos. The year is 1912, and an oblivious world is on the brink of war. Castorp’s friend Joachim Ziemssen is taking the cure, and a three-week visit seems a perfect break before work begins. But when Castorp arrives he is surprised to find an established community of patients, some of whom have been there for years, and little by little, he gets drawn into the closeted life and the individual personalities of the residents. Among them are Hofrat Behrens, the principal doctor, the curiously attractive Clavdia Chauchat and two intellectuals: Ludovico Settembrini and Leo Naphta with their strongly contrasted personalities and differing political, ethical, artistic and spiritual ideals. Hans Castorp’s stay is extended, once, twice and still further, as he appears to develop symptoms which suggest that his health, once so robust, would benefit from the treatments and the mountain air. As time passes, it becomes clear that the young man, with a particular interest in shipbuilding and not much else, finds his outlook and knowledge broadened by his mountain companions, his intellect stretched and his emotional experience deepened and enriched. Hans Castorp is changing, day by day, month by month, year by year, sometimes imperceptibly, sometimes with a sudden advance, as he encounters the varied range of sparkling characters, their comedies and tragedies, their aspirations and their defeats. The Magic Mountain is a classic bildungsroman, an educational journey of growth - a genre that began with an earlier novel in the German tradition: Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. It is presented here in the acclaimed modern translation by John E. Woods and is told by David Rintoul with his particular understanding for Thomas Mann as displayed in his widely praised Ukemi recording of Buddenbrooks.
©1996 Knopf Translation (P)2020 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Hunting the Eagles
Summary
Five long years have passed since the annihilation of three Roman legions in the wilds of Germania. Varus, the general who led the ill-fated army, is long dead, and the bones of his 15,000 legionaries moulder in the forests. But not all the Romans were slain in the ambush. Centurion Tullus, a seasoned veteran, survived, and now he lives for revenge upon the tribal chieftain Arminius, who masterminded the ambush. Tullus will stop at nothing to kill his bitterest enemy or to recover his legion's lost Eagle. At first, fortune seems to be with the Romans. Germanicus, the general appointed to lead punitive campaigns against the tribes, is resourceful and courageous. His armies are vast, dwarfing those of the enemy, and the initial clashes are won by the legions. Yet Arminius is far from defeated. Charismatic and determined, he gathers together thousands of warriors for a second time. Their purpose is to visit death and destruction upon Rome's legions, to repeat what was done five years before. Stalking Germanicus' forces day and night, they watch and wait for the perfect moment to strike. Can Tullus prevent another disaster? And will he ever recover his legion's Eagle?
©2016 Random House Audiobooks (P)2016 Random House Audiobooks
V2
Summary
The first rocket will take five minutes to hit London. You have six minutes to stop the second. From the best-selling author of Fatherland and Munich comes a WWII thriller about a German rocket engineer, a former actress turned British spy, and the Nazi rocket program. Rudi Graf is an engineer who always dreamed of sending rockets to the moon. But instead, he finds himself working alongside Wernher von Braun, launching V2 rockets at London for the Nazis from a bleak seaside town in occupied Holland. As the SS increases its scrutiny on the project, Graf, an engineer more than a soldier, has to muster all of his willpower to toe the party line. And when rumors of a defector circulate through the German ranks, Graf becomes a prime suspect. Meanwhile, Kay Caton-Walsh, a young English intelligence officer, is living through the turmoil of war. After she and her lover, an RAF officer, are caught in a V2 attack, she volunteers to ship out for newly liberated Belgium. Armed with little more than a slide rule and a few equations, Kay and her colleagues hope to locate and destroy the launch sites. But at this stage in the war it’s hard to know who, if anyone, she can trust. As the death toll soars, these twin stories play out against the background of the German missile campaign during the Second World War. And what the listener comes to understand is that Kay’s and Graf’s destinies are on a collision course
©2020 Robert Harris (P)2020 Random House Audio
The Consolation of Philosophy
Summary
The Consolation of Philosophy is one of the key works in the rich tradition of Western philosophy, partly because of the circumstances in which it was written. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c480-c524) was of aristocratic Roman birth and became consul and then master of offices at Ravenna, one of the highest posts under the Ostrogothic Roman ruler Theodoric. But Boethius was unjustly charged with treason in 524, and this led to house arrest, then torture and execution. It was while he was imprisoned and anticipating his fate that he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, a remarkably personal document in which, through alternating passages of poetry and prose, he considers the lot of humankind. He draws on classical Greek and Roman philosophy, emphasising the fragility of worldly position and that true happiness can only come from within. As a practising Christian, he placed this within a Christian perspective. The work is all the more effective because it is presented as a dialogue between the despairing Boethius and a figure known as Lady Philosophy, who constantly questions, guides and supports the former statesman, leading him to a place of understanding and equilibrium. The work has proved a continuing influence through the ages, having been translated by figures as disparate as Alfred the Great, Chaucer, Elizabeth I and many others. The translation by H. R. James has been revised and modernised for this recording.
Public Domain (P)2016 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Skidamarink
Summary
Alors que le vol de La Joconde fait la une de tous les journaux, quatre personnes qui ne se connaissent pas reçoivent un fragment découpé de la célèbre œuvre de Léonard de Vinci, accompagné d'un mystérieux rendez-vous dans une chapelle de Toscane. Pourquoi eux ? Qui les a choisis ? Quel plan se cache derrière ce coup d'éclat ? Ils l'ignorent encore, mais à l'instant même où ils décident de résoudre ensemble cette énigme, leur vie prend un tournant dangereux, exaltant et sans retour. Depuis Skidamarink, paru en 2001, Guillaume Musso a publié dix-sept romans qui ont conquis des dizaines de millions de lecteurs dans le monde. Il est aujourd'hui l'auteur le plus lu en France, pour la dixième année consécutive. Ce tout premier thriller, mêlant mystère, suspense, amour et aventure, révèle déjà son talent sans pareil pour raconter une histoire à la croisée des genres.
©2020 Calmann-Lévy (P)2020 Audiolb
Dogs of War
Summary
An astonishing discovery is made in the remote African republic of Zangaro, one which could change the course of a nation's history forever. But such a discovery cannot be kept secret for long and Sir James Manson will stop at nothing to protect this find. A ruthless and bloody-minded tycoon, Manson immediately hires an army of mercenaries and with this deadly crew behind him he sets out to topple the government and replace its dictator with a puppet president. But news of the discovery has reached Russia – and suddenly Manson finds he no longer makes the rules in this power game. A game in which win or lose means life or death.
©2011 Frederick Forsyth (P)2011 Random House Audio Go
The Socratic Dialogues Early Period, Volume 2
Summary
Here, in this second collection of Socratic Dialogues from Plato's Early Period, read by David Rintoul as Socrates with a full cast, are contrasting six works. Often, as with Gorgias, which opens the recording, Socrates combats the popular subjects of sophistry and rhetoric, in direct conversation with Gorgias (a leading sophist teacher), and with one of his pupils, Callicles. In Meno, Socrates encounters another Gorgias pupil, Meno, and a debate on 'virtue' ensues. Virtue is also the topic in Protagoras, though this dialogue is largely narrated by Socrates (David Rintoul), who 'reports' the conversation which had taken place shortly before. Euthydemus is one of the most entertaining of all the Socratic Dialogues, with the two vastly overconfident brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, supposedly capable wrestlers, boxers and musicians, who have come to Athens to teach sophistry. They enter into philosophical debate with Socrates, who at times is almost amazed by their brash sense of superiority. The Lesser Hippias dialogue considers issues of morality, truth and lies, with reference to Homer's great characters Achilles and Odysseus, while the Greater Hippias enquires into the nature of beauty. Translation: Benjamin Jowett.
Public Domain (P)2017 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Eagles at War
Summary
Based on real historical events. A time for vengeance. German frontier: Close to the Rhine, a Roman centurion, Lucius Tullus, prepares to take his soldiers on patrol. On the opposite side of the river, German tribes are resentful of the harsh taxes about to be imposed upon them. Suspicious that there might be unrest, Tullus knows that his men's survival will be determined not just by their training and discipline, but by his leadership. A time for war. What neither Tullus nor his commander, Governor Varus, realise is that ranged against them is the charismatic chieftain and trusted ally of Rome, Arminius, who has long been plotting to drive the Romans from the tribal lands east of the Rhine. A time to die. As Varus' legions prepare to leave their summer encampment, thousands of warriors - directed by Arminius - are massing nearby. Eager to throw off the Roman yoke, the tribesmen prepare a deadly ambush. Only the gods can save the Romans now....
©2015 Ben Kane (P)2015 Random House Audiobooks