Risultati letto da "Tony Robinson" in Tutte le categorie

Reality is all very well in small doses. It's a perfectly conventional and convenient way of neutralising the imagination. But sometimes when there's more than one reality at play, imagination just won't be neutralised, and the walls between realities come tumbling down. Unfortunately there's usually a damned good reason for there being walls between them in the first place. To keep things out. Things who want to make mischief and play havoc with the natural order.

All is not well within the Unseen University. The endemic politics of the place have ensured that it has finally got what it wished for: the most powerful wizard on the disc - which could mean that the death of all wizardry is at hand. And that the world is going to end, depending on whom you listen to. Unless, of course, one inept wizard can take the University's most precious artefact, the very embodiment of magic itself, and deliver it halfway across the disc to safety.

"Look after the dead," said the priests, "and the dead will look after you." Wise words in all probability, but a tall order when you have just become the pharaoh of a small and penniless country whose largesse, and indeed treasury, is unlikely to stretch to the building of a monumental pyramid to honour your dead father. And particularly when your only visible means of support is a recently acquired qualification from the Guild of Assassins.

Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but that looks completely different. It plays by different rules. Certainly it refuses to succumb to the quaint notion that universes are ruled by pure logic and the harmony of numbers. But just because the Disc is different doesn't mean that some things don't stay the same.

Brought to you by Penguin. 'The people next door oppress me all night long. I tell them, I work all day, a man's got to have some time to learn to play the tuba. That's oppression, that is. If I'm not under the heel of the oppressor I don't know who is.' An aura of mean-minded resentfulness is...

Through the ages of Britain, from the 15th century to the 21st, Edmund Blackadder has meddled his way along the bloodlines, aided by his servant and sidekick, Baldrick, and hindered by an assortment of dimwitted aristocrats. Now the complete history of Blackadder is collected together, including the four TV series: The Black Adder, Blackadder II, Blackadder the Third and Blackadder Goes Forth.

Although the scythe isn't pre-eminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants' revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome. For Mort however, it is about to become one of the tools of his trade. From henceforth, Death is no longer going to be...

Clive King's wonderful classic, Stig of the Dump, is now available to download, read by the brilliant Tony Robinson. Barney is a solitary little boy, given to wandering off by himself. One day he is lying on the edge of a disused chalk-pit when it gives way and he lands in a sort of cave. Here...

It's the night before Hogswatch. And it's too quiet. There's snow, there're robins, there're trees covered with decorations, but there's a notable lack of the big fat man who delivers the toys... He's gone. Susan the governess has got to find him before morning, otherwise the sun won't rise. And...

'I thought: opera, how hard can it be? Songs. Pretty girls dancing. Nice scenery. Lots of people handing over cash. Got to be better than the cut-throat world of yoghurt, I thought. Now everwhere I go there's...' Death, to be precise. And plenty of it. In unpleasant variations. This isn't real...

They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. There are some situations where the correct response is to display the sort of ignorance which happily and wilfully flies in the face of the facts. In this case, the birth of a baby girl...

'Death has to happen. Tha'ts what bein' alive is all about. You're alive, and then you're dead. It can't just stop happening.' But it can. And it has. So what happens after death is now less of a philosophical question than a question of actual reality. On the disc, as here, they need Death. If...

Brought to you by Penguin. Eric is the Discworld's only demonology hacker. Pity he's not very good at it. All he wants is his three wishes granted.Nothing fancy - to be immortal, rule the world, have the most beautiful woman in the world fall madly in love with him, the usual stuff. But instead...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'No one mixes the fantastical and mundane to better comic effect or offers sharper insights into the absurdities of modern endeavour' Daily Mail The Discworld is very much like our own - if our own were to consist of a flat planet balanced on the back of four elephants...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'The work of a prolific humorist at his best' Observer The Discworld is very much like our own - if our own were to consist of a flat planet balanced on the back of four elephants which stand on the back of a giant turtle, that is . . . ____________________ 'Sorry?'...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'What's so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone? The real work's already been done. You ought to make yourself useful and find the man who put the sword in the stone in the stone in the first place.' Fate is a word that springs to the lips when to call something...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'What shall we do?' said Twoflower. 'Panic?' said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was the best means of survival. As it moves towards a seemingly inevitable collision with a malevolent red star, the Discworld could do with a hero. What it doesn’t need...

'Just because you can't explain it, doesn't mean it's a miracle.' Religion is a controversial business in the Discworld. Everyone has their own opinion, and indeed their own gods. Who come in all shapes and sizes. In such a competitive environment, there is a pressing need to make one's presence...

'A foot on the neck is nine points of the law' There are many who say that the art of diplomacy is an intricate and complex dance between two informed partners, determined by an elaborate set of elegant and unwritten rules. There are others who maintain that it's merely a matter of who carries...

Things like crowns had a troublesome effect on clever folks; it was best to leave all the reigning to the kind of people whose eyebrows met in the middle. Three witches gathered on a lonely heath. A king cruelly murdered, his throne usurped by his ambitious cousin. A child heir and the crown of...