David Timson

A Study in Scarlet was the very first Sherlock Holmes novel. Here, in the most remarkably precise manner, Doyle produced two of the most well-known characters in English fiction. Their individual traits and their relationships, their ambitions and...

Ancient Egypt and the war with Ethiopia is the setting for Verdi’s grandest opera. It is the story of the love between Rhadames, the Egyptian general and Aida, an Ethiopian slave, and the jealousy of Amneris, daughter of the King of Egypt. It was...

David Timson introduces London Labour and the London Poor and its author Henry Mayhew, who in 1841 founded the satirical magazine Punch before his social conscience moved him to expose in his remarkable book the terrible poverty in London – then the...

Beginning at the end of Augustus’s reign, Tacitus’s Annals examines the rules of the Roman emperors from Tiberius to Nero (though Caligula’s books are lost to us). Their dramas and scandals are brought fully under the spotlight, as Tacitus presents a...

The world’s greatest gentleman thief is back and this time he must summon all his brilliance and prowess to escape the clutches of his most worthy adversary: the master English detective, Herlock Sholmes! Assisted by his trusty companion Dr Wilson,...

The first of Maurice Leblanc’s collections about his devilish, debonair rogue, Arse?ne Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar presents eight dazzling short stories that display some of Lupin’s greatest thefts and escapes. Lupin robs from within prison, leaves its...

Carmen is among the most popular operas for all the obvious reasons: great characters, a gripping story and fabulous music. But what sets it on a pinnacle is an amazing combination of three factors: a sizzling gipsy heroine (one of the most...

Cavalleria rusticana is the short opera that has all the elements of a grand opera compressed into a single highly dramatic time span. The story of love, lust, blood-feud and betrayal played out against the pageantry of the Easter celebrations in a...

Charles Dickens was a major contributor to the Victorian romantic revival of Christmas traditions. With their heart, humour and good morals, Dickens' Christmas stories have made the author's name synonymous with the season. Here we present four...

Die Fledermaus is one of the few operatic works to which the phrase ‘never a dull moment’ can be truthfully applied. From the explosive opening of the famous overture – reminiscent of a volley of champagne corks – through the surging energy of the...

Dombey and Son is vintage Dickens and explores the classic themes of betrayal, cruelty and deceit. The novel follows the fortunes of Dombey, a businessman par excellence, who craves a son to inherit his enterprises. His family, and especially his...

Dombey and Son is vintage Dickens and explores the classic themes of betrayal, cruelty and deceit. Dombey’s dysfunctional relationships are painted against a backdrop of social unrest in industrialised London, which is populated by a host of...

Don Giovanni has long been regarded as Mozart’s supreme theatrical achievement. The subject seems unpromising – the last day in the life of the notorious womaniser Don Juan – but the skill of the librettist allied to the genius of Mozart at the very...

Sir Francis Bacon, sometimes known as the father of empiricism, was one of the major political figures of his day, his career culminating as Lord Chancellor under King James I in 1617. Bacon wrote widely, but it is the Essays (published in its third...

Verdi’s Falstaff repays careful study with real pleasure. It is opera’s happiest irony that the great Italian master should cap a career – distinguished for its blood-and-thunder tragic masterpieces – with the greatest comic opera in the Italian...

Fidelio is a work like no other. Beethoven’s only opera is about the joy of married love – by a man who never knew that pleasure. It is about heroism by a man who was often mean and petty in his human relations; it is about freedom by a man who was a...

Charles Dickens was a master of the macabre. His stories of madness, murder and revenge, often imbued with a sympathetic moral undertone, have continued to thrill and chill readers ever since they were written. Here then are 15 tales that display the...

The powerful sense of evil – darkness, creepy hairy presences, cloaks, hoods, talons and tentacles – pervades these classic ghost stories by M.R. James. A Cambridge scholar himself, James explored what happens when academics dabble in things they...

This audio-biography sets out to explain the timeless popularity of the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan: a colourful partnership of the most successful writers in the history of light music. It highlights Gilbert’s mastery of language – his wit, his...

In this, the first prose history in European civilisation, Herodotus describes the growth of the Persian Empire with force, authority and style. Perhaps most famously, the book tells the heroic tale of the Greeks' resistance to the vast invading force...

Il trovatore has been ruthlessly parodied. It is a tale of murder and mayhem, burned babies, roasted hags, would-be nuns, strolling minstrels and bad baritones. And indeed the libretto does call for a willing suspension of disbelief. The reward is in...

David Timson talks about the relationship between Samuel Johnson and James Boswell – how they met, their unlikely friendship and extensive conversations –, and the composition of Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, one of the greatest biographies in...

Under the order of King Pelias, Jason embarks on a perilous journey to steal the Golden Fleece from the Land of Colchis. Far from heroic, Jason is the typical everyman. He is given to intense bouts of nervousness and anxiety, and is saved on more than...

L’elisir d’amore, or The Elixir of Love, has remained popular for almost two centuries because of a touching tale and a galaxy of comic characters adapted from the traditional commedia dell’ arte. Above all Donizetti poured into the score all the...