Showing titles in Arts & Entertainment

The era of the LP began in 1967, with Sgt Pepper; The Beatles didn’t just collect together a bunch of songs, they Made an Album. Henceforth, everybody else wanted to Make an Album. The end came only 15 years later, coinciding with the release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. By then the Walkman had taken music out of the home and into the streets, and the record business had begun trying to reverse engineer the creative process in order to make big money. Nobody would play music or listen to it in quite the same way ever again.

Four more extended episodes from the award-winning BBC Radio 4 series, specially compiled by producer Jon Naismith. Another collection of episodes from the famous antidote to panel games now in its 18th edition. Jack Dee challenges regular panellists Tim Brooke-Taylor, and Barry Cryer, with a series of silly games against which to pit their wits. In tribute to Jeremy Hardy, a long-running guest panellist on the show who passed away in 2019, he features in every episode.

Commissioned in 1750, the Palazzo Venier was planned as a testimony to the power and wealth of a great Venetian family, but the fortunes of the Venier family waned, and the project was left abandoned and unfinished. Yet in the early 20th century, it attracted three fascinating women: Luisa Casati, Doris Castlerosse and Peggy Guggenheim.

The buildings designed in our lifetimes encapsulate the dreams and aspirations of our culture, while also revealing the sobering realities. Whether modest or monumental, they offer a living history of Britain, symbols of the forces that have shaped our modern landscape and icons in their own right. Iconicon is an enthralling journey around the Britain we have created since 1980: the horrors and delights, the triumphs and failures.

Like a treasured piece of furniture, Just a Minute has graced the living rooms and kitchens of radio listeners for more than 50 years. Comfortable, relaxing and easy to sink into, it has long been the seat of sparkling comedy, infectious laughter and intelligent humour. We invite you once again to enjoy the fine patina of another top-drawer collection of classic episodes.

The Wicked Wit of Queen Elizabeth II is a celebration of the Queen's reign through some of her wittiest, most sarcastic and most humorous observations, revealing a fascinating side of her personality that often remains hidden from the public. When thinking of the Queen, our perception is often one of dignity and authority. She is seen as a serious figure: the British monarch, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and the head of the Commonwealth. But as anyone who has ever met her will tell you, in person she has wicked sense of humour.

No one knows the writer's Hollywood more intimately than William Goldman. Two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter and the best-selling author of Marathon Man, Tinsel, Boys and Girls Together, and other novels, Goldman now takes you into Hollywood's inner sanctums...on and behind the scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and other films...into the plush offices of Hollywood producers...into the working lives of acting greats such as Redford, Olivier, Newman, and Hoffman...and more.

Dame Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer star as old flames Jean Pargetter and Lionel Hardcastle. Their love story was all set for a happy ending in the 1950s when Jean was a student nurse and Lionel, a young army officer. But he was posted abroad and they lost touch. Thirty-eight years later, Lionel has returned to London to publish his autobiography and, through a strange coincidence, he is reunited with Jean who has set up a secretarial agency.

Women’s identity has long been stifled by a limited set of archetypes, found everywhere in pictures from art history’s classics to advertising, while women artists have been overlooked and held back from shaping more empowering roles. In this impassioned book, art historian Catherine McCormack asks us to look again at what these images have told us to value, opening up our most loved images - from those of Titian and Botticelli to Picasso and the Pre-Raphaelites.

Stanley Kubrick, the director of a string of timeless movies from Lolita and Dr. Strangelove to A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Full Metal Jacket, and others, has always been depicted by the media as the Howard Hughes of filmmakers, a weird artist obsessed with his work and privacy to the point of madness. But who was he really?

In this searching and funny memoir, based off his popular New Yorker article, renowned pianist Jeremy Denk traces an implausible journey. Life is difficult enough as a precocious, temperamental, and insufferable six-year-old piano prodigy in New Jersey. But then a family meltdown forces a move to New Mexico, far from classical music’s nerve centers, and he has to please a new taskmaster while navigating cacti, and the perils of junior high school. Escaping from New Mexico at last, he meets a bewildering cast of college music teachers, ranging from boring to profound.

Grammy Winner for Best Spoken Comedy Album
Performed by George Carlin himself, and filled with thoughts, musings, questions, lists, beliefs, curiosities, monologues, assertions, assumptions, and other verbal ordeals, Brain Droppings is infectiously funny.

New! Don't miss our AudibleComedy combo, featuring original humor from standups Greg Proops and Steve Marmel.

January 1970: the Beatles assemble one more time to put the finishing touches on Let It Be; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are wrapping up Déjà Vu; Simon and Garfunkel are unveiling Bridge Over Troubled Water; James Taylor is an upstart singer-songwriter who's just completed Sweet Baby James. Over the course of the next twelve months, their lives---and the world around them---will change irrevocably.

In this breathtaking cultural history filled with exclusive, never-before-revealed details, celebrated rock journalist Joel Selvin tells the definitive story of the Rolling Stones' infamous Altamont concert in San Francisco, the disastrous historic event that marked the end of the idealistic 1960s.

Stanley Kubrick revolutionized Hollywood with movies like Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange, and electrified audiences with The Shining and Full Metal Jacket. David Mikics takes listeners on a deep dive into Kubrick's life and work, illustrating his intense commitment to each of his films.

Paper Cuts is the inside story of the slow death of the British music press. But it's also a love letter to it, the tale of how music magazines saved one man's life. Ted Kessler left home and school around his 17th birthday, determined 'to be someone who listened to music professionally'. That dream appeared forlorn when he was later arrested for theft behind the counter of the record shop he managed during acid house's long hot summer of love.

In this musically rich 24-lecture series, Professor Greenberg guides you in a deep encounter with these majestic works of art, offering you the rare opportunity to grasp the musical riches and spiritual greatness of the quartets in a clear and accessible way. Each of these lectures is a rare and life-enriching opportunity to know the scope of Beethoven's genius, his most unforgettable music, and the profound humanity and beauty that live through them.

Gallifrey is in a state of crisis, facing destruction at the hands of an overwhelming enemy. And the Doctor is involved in three different incarnations - each caught up in a deadly adventure, scattered across time and space. The web of time is threatened - and someone wants the Doctor dead. The three incarnations of the Doctor must join together to set time back on the right track - but in doing so, will they unleash a still greater threat?

Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers is the first book to celebrate the classic-era Motörhead lineup of Lemmy Kilmister, "Fast" Eddie Clarke, and Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor. Through interviews with all of the principal troublemakers, Martin Popoff celebrates the formation of the band and the records that made them legends.

The Sound of Music is a classic film cherished in the hearts of millions. It won five Oscars, including Best Picture, upon its release in 1965. This tribute to a Hollywood classic is sure to thrill everyone who's ever sung along to "My Favorite Things" at one of the many screenings that still take place today. Through interviews with the cast and crew, in-depth access to memorabilia and personal scrapbooks, and archival research at Fox Studios, author Julia Antopol Hirsch reveals the lively human story behind the making of the von Trapp family film.