Peter Davison Books

This is another wonderful books of Gerald Durrell's memories of his time on the island of Corfu prior to the Second World War. He takes us back to another time and place before the world changed for good.

Each chapter is a separate story and rememberence of those days when as a young man he marvels at not only the natural world around him, but also the various people he encounters and learns to appreciate. It is easy to get lost in one of these stories and feel like you are there with him on a hot summer day with his faithful dogs tagging along beside him.

I recommend this book to anyone who not only loves nature, but also can appreciate a time gone by when people were different and even strangers were looked as guests. This book is one that I intend to read again and again in the coming years and will appreciate the stories just much each time as the first time.

I have been a huge fan of Gerald Durrell's books since childhood, especially the ones that his family features in, predominantly. This is the follow up to My Family and Other Animals and it is just as much fun!
Highly recommended.

The books arrived in perfect condition and in very good time. I am completely satisfied.

Gerald Durrell is the younger brother of Lawrence Durrell. The island of Corfu lies off of the Albanian and Greek coastlines. The family settled there to escape the deary English weather.

Gerald's mother fought a losing battle with the Greek language. The family members became familiar with all of the peasants in the region. Gerald had a tutor named George who was an adept of fencing and an adult scientist friend named Theodore.

Gerald visited the rock pools while his sister swam. Margo's sun bathing bothered a church functionary, a monk. Gerald sought permission to follow a fisherman, to accompany him in his boat when he fished at night. The fisherman used a trident to catch scorpios.

There was a myrtle forest near the family's house. Gerald received a rich dark brown donkey for his birthday. The donkey was used by Gerald to transport things. Larry brought home friends, artists and writers, and brought home an artist who could play the accordian, Sven.

Theordore had told a countess that Gerald, who was a fairly young boy at the time, was a naturalist and had a number of pets. The countess offered to give him a white owl who had an injured wing. Gerald went to fetch it and to meet her on his donkey.

He wanted to add baby hedgehogs to his menagerie. When he went away for a weekend his sister overfed them and they died. The book is joyous and colorful. The snippets above are used to give the reader a sense of what to expect.

I eagerly read this after "My Family and Other Animals" (which I had enjoyed immensely). It contains stories which were omitted from "My Family" and while the offerings were still magical and wonderfully well-written and sometimes hilarious (especially the story about the turtle), it lacked the memorability of its predecessor. There was also no real structure in the order of the stories, this is more of a miscellaneous collection.

This "radio" show has "The Doctor" (Peter Davison - sometimes sounding very much like Jonathan Pryce) and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) accidentally landing on the beknighted world of Mondas. As any "Doctor Who" fan knows, "Mondas" was the birthplace of the dreaded "Cybermen", the half-man, half-machine menace that rose to near conquest of the universe. In this story, the Doctor finds the Cybermen are at an early stage in their genesis - a development forced by the dire conditions imposed on the inhabitants when Mondas was dislodged from its orbit and sent careening through space. At first, Mondas's population found survival by abndoning the now uninhabitable surface for cities recreated in the planets caverns. With worsening conditions and a desperate plan to create a mammoth propulsion system as the only way to return Mondas to its home-system (which requires work on the surface), the inhabitants develop the science of cybernetic augmentation. The cities, governed by a committee of the world's brightest minds linked by cybernetic technology, slowly become graveyards. And the graveyards themselves become storehouses for the survivors' desperate need for...spare parts.

This is (at least) the second time the Who-niverse has explored the origins of the Cybermen. The new "Dr. Who" nearly ended its 2nd season with "Age of Steel" a 2-parter showing the Cybermen being created on a parallel Earth. However, "Spare" easily beats "Steel", which borrows liberally from the classic serial "Genesis of the Daleks" and even relies on an almost classically unconvincing villain for their creator. Here, we've got a more original story, one which explores the painful and yet undeniable realities that bred the Cybermen, eschews any easy villains or easy answers. The script makes the most of being a sound-only affair with excellent sound effects, music and some great dialog. The actors connote more expression through their tones-of-voice than you'd get on a season of watching "Star Trek: The Next Generation". This is not simply great "Dr. Who" - it's great radio drama.

In the annals of Doctor Who there are few things fans like more then debating the origins of the Cybermen, the half human half machine race from Earth's long lost win planet Mondas. So it seems natural that Big Finish would eventually take the Doctor and companion to Mondas at the point of the Cybermen's birth. What doesn't seem natural, is what writer Marc Platt did with the story. Spare Parts isn't just another Doctor Who adventure by any means. It's a compelling blend of science fiction and drama in a story that asks one fo the most basic questions of human nature: how far would we go to survive?

The performances: nothing short of astonishing. Peter Davison gives his single best performance as the fifth Doctor, going from reluctant innocent abroad to the man trying to change history for the better. Late in the story there's a plot twist that shocks the Doctor and Cybermen battle to its core and Davison plays it incredibly well. Spurring him on is companion Nyssa, played to perfection by Sarah Sutton who also gives her single best performance in the role. It's her friendship with the Hartley family that makes her force the Doctor to make that change. The performances of these two give the story much of its emotional depth and make it even more compelling.

The supporting cast are just as phenomenal. The Hartley family as played by Paul Copley ( as the Dad), Kathryn Guck (as the optimistic and sickly Yvonne), and Jim Hartley (as the impatient Frank) serve as a microcosm of the people of Mondas, trying to remain hopeful in a world fast running out of hope. On the other side of the spectrum is Darren Nesbit as the spare (body) parts dealer Thomas Dodd, the shady businessman thriving on the pain and suffering. Yet he's the sane one when compared to Doctorman Allan (Sally Knyvette) and Sisterman Constance (Pamela Binns), just two of many scientists and doctors slowly converting the population into Cybermen for work on the surface...or so it starts out. Then there's the voice of the Cybermen, Nicholas Briggs. Briggs provides the voice not just for the various Cybermen but for the Central Committee who runs the city and there's something about the voices (based on the voices from the Cybermen's debut in The Tenth Planet way back in 1966) that sends chills down the spine and makes one listen.

If the performances weren't enough, Marc Platt's script is enough reason to consider this story a classic. Platt made the smart choice not to do a Cybermen version of the classic TV story Genesis Of The Daleks (not that's a bad idea: see the new series two parter Rise Of The Cybermen / Age Of Steel) but to do a story entirely different. At its heart Spare Parts is the story as old as history of a civilization on the verge of collapse desperate to survive by any means possible. The means in this case is the use of saws and laser scalpels to remove emotions and insert cold logic, in essence the death of humanity and the birth of machine with human bodies.

In fact, the most chilling sequence of the story comes when a member of the Hartley family finds themselves in the assembly line for that process. To hear those saws and lasers coupled with screams, tears, and cries for help makes for a moment where even the most hardened listener stops to feel the shiver going up one's spine. Platt plays the horror of that and when coupled with how closely Mondas is like our own world (television and even a form of Christmas) there's only one description for it: chilling. The dilemma faced by the people of Mondas is only slightly different from the questions we face regarding genetics and other scientific advances that give us reason for pause.

The fundamental question of Spare Parts is how far must we go to survive and what must we sacrifice to do so? Marc Platt's script asks that question and gives us a horrifying answer. That script, when coupled with the excellent performances, makes for one of the best Doctor Who stories ever. Science Fiction works best when its not just adventure but a question of moral importance. There are few examples as great as Spare Parts. Perfect for old fans and those new to Doctor Who ( I recently had two friends sitting around a CD player listening to it they for the full length), Spare Parts may well be Big Finish's best Doctor Who story. If not, it's defiantly the most disturbing.

I was a little bit nervous about purchasing any Doctor Who audio adventures because I'm so used to watching them instead of only listening to them. But I thought I'd give them a shot and pick up the one with the best reviews and I wasn't disappointed. The audio adventure Spare Parts is a Fifth Doctor(Peter Davidson)adventure;inwhich the Doctor and Nyssa arrive in an underground city on "Earth" but later they come to discover that they have not landed on Earth but rather it's twin, The Tenth Planet Mondas.

I will try not to give too much away but this audio adventure is on par with Genesis of the Daleks. The story is well written and is very Dark and sad. The voice actors Peter Davidson, Nicholas Briggs and company are Fantastic as are the sound effects and music. We see in this story the struggles and lengths the "Government" (the Central committee) is willing to go to ensure the "survival" of the inhabitants of the planet, and the horror, sadness and lost that results from that.

The planet Mondas has been hurtling through space for many generations and so the surface is frozen wasteland. All of the inhabitants have moved to cities underground, while suffering under watchful eye's of the Central committe and its police taskforce of Cybermen.We meet the Hartley family, inwhich the Son Frank wishes to be selected by the Central Committee to reach the surface of the planet and explore it. But as fate would have it his younger sister Yvonne is proven to be a better candidate for the "expedition". During all of this the Doctor is exploring the city and trying to see if perhaps there is anything he can do to save the inhabitant's of Mondas and expose the central committee's ambition's.

I reccomend this audio adventure for anyone who is a fan of Doctor who and wants to give the audios adventures a try. Spare parts will remove any doubts you may have about the quality of tales woven for the audio adventures and let's hope that doubt is the only emotion that it removes....

Usually, when people who are not familiar with Big Finish ask something like 'What's the best one they've done?' or 'Where's a good place to start?', more likely than not the answer they get is "Spare Parts". And for good reason. This is a solid story with a clever script, some very good acting, good sound design, and it gives you a window into the origin of the Cybermen that is highly affecting and disturbingly plausible.

The Doctor and Nyssa find themselves on a very Earth-like planet. The Doctor quickly begins to suspect where they've actually landed, but Nyssa is in the dark. As they meet a few of the locals and (naturally) get separated, the truth begins to dawn on Nyssa: they have arrived not on Earth at all, but on Mondas, and are witnessing the birth of the Cybermen.

At the point we enter the story, the Cybermen are used mainly as a police force, patroling the city and enforcing a curfew at night, and as work crews who are involved in some task on the planet's surface that would be impossible for 'normal' Mondasians (who dwell in cities underground) to accomplish.

The Mondasian society is very well portrayed. We meet citizens from an average family who, during the course of the story, has their daughter 'selected' and taken from them and turned into a Cyberman (alongside her older brother who wishes it would have been him), to the medical specialist in charge of the selections (herself a member of a society of Sisters that, she's been assured, is exempt from the selections), to one of the scientists working on developing and refining the Cyberization process.

The Cybermen themselves are fascinating, and are shown to be in variant stages of development: the voices we hear mainly are those from "The Tenth Planet", with their mechanical sing-song pattern. But as we get more into the story, we begin to encounter variations, mainly in the Committee, which sounds more like the Troughton-era Cybermen, particularly the disembodied Cyber-voice barking orders to Tobias Vaughan in "The Invasion". You also get hints of different looking Cybermen via the dialogue.

Both Davison and Sutton are brilliant in this story, delivering very convincing portrayals of their characters caught up in deadly and frightening circumstances, with Nyssa recognizing that the evolution of the Cybermen will eventually spell the death of Adric, and the Doctor wrestling with his own involvement in the events: How much can he do to help the Mondasians without changing the established course of history, or should he take his opportunity to put a stop to a universal threat in its infancy?

There are some chilling scenes in "Spare Parts", some of them very reminiscent of the Holocaust. In Part One, the Hartley family must hide Nyssa as a Cyber-patrol storms their home looking for strangers. Later, near the end of the story, Yvonne Hartley returns to her family, partially Cyberized, and barely recognizes them through her conditioning. In the end, as the Cybermen begin to exert their control over the planet, Mondasians are herded into death chambers, disturbingly similar to Jews, gays, Gypsies, etc. being forced into the gas chambers by the Nazis.

This very dark story has earned its reputation as the best that Big Finish has to offer. Written by Marc Platt (who also wrote "Ghost Light"), it not only shows how and why the Cybermen were first developed, but also ties together many of the established facts about the Cybermen and their history into one cohesive narrative and shows how all of those events were factors in (or developed from) their origin.

If you've seen Sesaon Two of the new series of Doctor Who on Sci-Fi Channel, and you enjoyed "Rise of the Cybermen" and "The Age of Steel", then definitely buy this disk. That story was loosely based on this audio drama.

I first read this book in 1955, and for fun, I read it again in 2005.
It is reassuring to note that nothing has changed.
Enid Blyton's Adventure Series should be the mainstay of every childhood reading program, and "Island of Adventure" is the place to begin.

Just a wonderful childrens adventure novel...with great, friendly and lovable characters. If you've never read them before get your children to try them.

I devoured these Enid Blyton books when I was a kid, and while I can't say I remember much about them -- or even whether I read this particular one -- I do remember that I loved them. I guess they're eclipsed by Harry Potter these days, but if you have or are a kid in the right age group who loves kids' adventure stories, you may want to give these a try.

I devoured these books too and loved them and the characters. I remember staying up half the night because I couldn't bear to put them down! And by the way, Harry Potter wouldn't exist without Blyton, as its format is based on her school series (also excellent.)

I highly recommend these for children 6-10, although my sister and I still reread them.

Elaine Strich becomes legendary novelist/playwright Lillian Hellman in this sometimes scathing, often tumultuous, frequently poignant account of Hellman's long term relationship with a man 25 years younger than she. There's wit, there's passion - all delivered by an A-one cast performing live in Los Angeles.

Elaine Stritch is Lillian Hellman herself, showing her stubbornness and fragility very well. I'm touched by Bruce Davison's calm narration with passion reserved inside.

What I like "Cakewalk" best is no border between stage and audience. Listening to this audio, I feel like I've been living with two writers in the very same place and time, sharing their joy, anger, pain and struggle as a writer and human. All scenes with full-color appear before us, then we are not an observer any more. This will invite you to consider what real relationship is. Peter Feibleman is the greatest natural born artist.

Elaine Stritch is incredible in this recording. Though I have only minor familiarity with Lillian Hellman, this play is simultaneously light and dark, humorous and serious, and a perfect portrait of two artists together through time. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone.

The 24th entry in Big Finish's Doctor Who's CD's is one of the strongest entries and to this point the Best of the Peter Davidson episodes.

One cause of it the excellent script delivered from Ian McLaughlin which paints such a great vision of Egypt circa 1400 BC that audio is all that is needed.

The Basic plot is Erimem daughter and only surviving child of the newly deceased Pharaoh is heir to the throne but someone wants her dead. But who is this fair haired stranger and his young woman who has saved her? And what of the mercenaries camping nearby ready to fall on Egypt?

We then add to the mix the always able Peter Davidson supported by Nicola Bryant and Caroline Morris. The interaction between Bryant and Morris is particularly good. The rest ofthe cast kkeeps it rolling.

To this point it is the best of the half dozen Davidson's I've heard. It's a great place to start if you want to begin a collection of Davidson audios.

Buy it.

In this juicy, lively memoir of the Boston poetry scene in the 1950's, Davison dishes the dirt not only on himself but also on such luminaries as Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Robert Frost. The decade of the 1950's was a time of delirious creativity for these poets perched on the threshold of fame and notoriety, and at the center of the vortex sat Robert Lowell, brilliant teacher, mentor and model of the wounded artist. Davison's group portrait shows men dominating these mythologized poetic years with the women cajoling, wheedling and flirting to be noticed, and then, once they had the men's attention, stepping forward with fierce work to be taken seriously. As readers will see, Plath and Sexton were up to any challenge and left behind for posterity both their great works and tales of their wild vamping exploits. Although Davison makes no secret that everybody in the group drank like fish and acted out with impunity, he ultimately celebrates those years as the apex of his social and creative life, a time populated by people of immense charisma and talent. The book is simply a love letter to the difficult geniuses of one of the great moments in 20th century American literary history.

After my wife and I first went to Boston, and before our second trip, I acquired and read this book. On the first trip we found ourselves, one grey afternoon, in the bar at the Ritz Carlton opposite Boston Common, having drinks. It had the atmosphere of something... but what? Now we know that Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton used to also go here for drinks after Robert Lowell's poetry classes. Wouldn't you have loved to have been a fly on the wall for those times.

This book is a fascinating recounting of those times and the many poets in Boston and Cambridge and their various relationships by one who was of that circle. Not a "tell-all", just human. People on their life journey. Interesting formative people. It can guide you on an alternative tour of the city and with a little imagination you can 'see' and feel what went on behind those walls from the time and the people who led one writer, I forget which, to say 'America did not enter the twentieth century until the 1960s.' These are among the formative ones and this is one of the places that led that to happen. You will see Boston differently after. And isn't that what makes any read worthwhile.

Very inventive story which indulges your imagination. The story has different layers, from the superficial point of view it is a fun, interesting story. If you dig deeper, you discover a deep political satire.

Worth experiencing.

I'd never heard of the late L.E. Sissman till I went to a reading of poems from this book at Harvard. Peter Davison and John Updike reminisced about him and read his wonderful story-poems with zest and humor and real tenderness. Was there ever a poet who wrote about his youth with more manic joy, or about his own dying (from Hodgkin's disease) with more unblinking frankness? I doubt it, and I doubt that there is another poet of his generation (the sixties) who wrote with such immediate accessability--he's a poet every American dog or cat can understand and enjoy. What a find! Thank you Mr. Davison for bringing him back into print.

One caveat if you are thinking of buying this edition: this is not the way you should read the story for the first time. However, if you've read it and would like a piece of history to call your own, this is a worthy addition to your library.

I first read 1984 when I was in the seventh grade. It earned me sneers and odd looks from my classmates, but I recognized it for what it is - a warning. This book helped shape my outlook on the world, and particularly on politics. It made me wary of false promises and doubletalk - "newspeak" - something that has unfortunately come true within my lifetime. War is peace, black is white, down is up.

Last year I finally bought a hardcover edition of the standard edition to add to my library. This manuscript is no substitute for a standard edition, in terms of reading at leisure. It has all of the corrections, crossed-out paragraphs (and pages), and the majority of it is in Orwell's own hand (i.e. not typed). To read the story in this form for the first time would be daunting.

Nevertheless I cherish it. I cannot recommend this book highly enough to devotees of Orwell. It occupies a treasured space in my bookcase.