A memorable collection in a memorable form
Shortly after the centenary celebrations of the publication of A Shropshire Lad, how apposite it is to bring out A.E. Housman’s oft prescribed cycle of poems as an audio book, vibrant with longing for the freedom and simplicity of the past and underlain with militaristic themes. That war is ongoing and, it seems, ever shall be as long as humankind is unrestrained in its nationalistic fervor for dominance of the world’s natural resources will help to ensure that Housman’s A Shropshire Lad retains its relevance for particularly the youth and youthful of not only the present but the future too. Lost love and friendship strike the key note throughout the poems, and it must be borne in mind that Housman had at the forefront of his mind fears for the safety of his youngest brother, who had enlisted in the British army in 1889, and who was, indeed, later killed in the South African War in 1900...
And who better than the combined team of award-winning producer David Timson and renowned character actor Samuel West to bring out the best in such writing? Timson, in addition to having made over a thousand radio broadcasts, won the Spoken Word Publishers Association for Best Original Production for his own work, The History of Theatre, in 2001. Described as managing “to sound erudite and authoritative without being pompous or highfalutin,” Timson has brought his integrity and depth of knowledge to bear on his production of A Shropshire Lad.
West describes his penchant for the public reading of poetry by saying, “I think I have a natural facility for verse. All actors have things they can do and things they can’t do. I’m not a very good dancer, physically I’m not as fluent as I should be, but vocally I’ve always had a facility for sight reading and for poetry.” A Shropshire Lad by Naxos AudioBooks bears full credence to both Timson’s dynamism and to West’s fluency and facility in such a medium. A memorable collection in a memorable form, may the memory of Housman continue to flourish far outside the college walls.
Lois Henderson, Bookpleasures.com
Housman is a high-water mark of British lyric poetry, and this fine production captures perfectly his strong, melodic beat and decisive rhyme, and his wonderful way with words. Samuel West’s cultivated Midlands accent may not be specifically Shropshire, but his voice and reading are true to Housman – who was not, after all, some rough Shropshire lad himself but an Oxford don. His Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now and To an Athlete Dying Young are beautifully rendered here. West, you feel, reads poetry as it should be read – confidently, with ease and conviction, as if all the world spoke in meter and rhyme.
D.A.W., AudioFile
An authoritative, not sycophantic, narration
The biography outlines the career of this lean, 6ft 4in man from the backwoods who became one of America’s greatest statesmen and brought an end to slavery. The eloquence of his speeches and the humanity of his letters are palpable. An authoritative, not sycophantic, narration.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Degas never loses touch with the man's innate courage, grace, and devotion to his principles
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle may be best known for his Sherlock Holmes stories, but they were not his favorites. He loved the stories that promoted the chivalric ethos, even if they sometimes made fun of their heroes, as here. Gerard is a cavalry officer who is devoted to Napoleon and is incapable of seeing the world through any other lens. Rupert Degas is reliably excellent as the ego-inflated officer who fails to see the differences between French and English values, remaining fully confident through what most of us would consider the most embarrassing situations. But Degas never loses touch with the man's innate courage, grace, and devotion to his principles.
D.M.H., AudioFile
Naxos Audiobooks continue to revive some long forgotten works by that genius writer of detective fiction, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This time it is ‘The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard’ – a swashbuckling set of stories set in the Napoleonic Wars and including some pretty far fetched plots. Rupert Degas is the ideal reader for this type of narrative – his French sounding inflexions are truly a delight to listen to especially in the more tender parts of the tales. The seven hours of stories may be slightly heavy on the ear so it is advisable to take them one at a time but with the well chosen interludes taken from similarly swashbuckling Berlioz overtures, you really cannot miss out. I particularly enjoyed the action packed part on the capture of Saragossa as well as the final part on Waterloo with Degas truly in his element describing the bloodthirsty scenes of battlefield carnage. Yet another winner from the astonishingly diverse Naxos Audiobooks stable.
Gerald Fenech, Malta News Online
Afghanistan, with its poppies, forbidding geography, earthquakes and internecine clashes
Afghanistan, with its poppies, forbidding geography, earthquakes and internecine clashes, has been invaded since the fourth century. This history ends with the present invasion by Nato forces and explains the tensions between Russia, USA and Britain that led to it.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
It took Alexander the Great six months to conquer Persia and three years to subdue Afghanistan, ‘a land of leonine and brave people’, he wrote to his mother, where ‘every foot of ground is like a wall of steel’. Two millennia on, it was Britain’s turn to take on the legendary warrior horsemen. In January 1842, three years after the start of the first Anglo-Afghan war (we’re now on the fourth), the beleaguered British garrison in Kabul, escorting 1,500 civilians, began the desperate retreat to Jalalabad. As they crossed the snows of the Hindu Kush, they were massacred by Pashtun tribesmen, leaving a single British survivor to tell the story. In 1979, 30,000 Soviet troops were dispatched to help Kabul’s new liberal government fight the Islamist mujahideen guerrillas, in whose ranks a youthful Osama bin Laden was already making a name. They retreated 10 years later with a butcher’s bill of 15,000 dead and 65,000 wounded, leaving behind a million dead Afghans. No country as ethnically, politically and religiously fragmented as Afghanistan, with its warlords, honour codes, Taliban fanatics, suicide bombers and a single illegal source of revenue – opium poppies – could expect an easy ride, but since the Soviet occupation it has not had a single year of peace. If only all guides to complex subjects were as clear, compact and impartial.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
The narrators succeed in conveying the striking, vibrant reality of these worlds
The connection with the 1995 Kobe earthquake in these six unabridged stories is curiously nebulous, but it keys with their uncomfortable sense of dislocation. Junpei, like Murakami, broke away from his parents long ago and doesn’t call them after the quake; Yoshiya’s mother insists he is a son of God, but on a train, he pursues a man he believes to be his father. Relationships are intense but ultimately unfulfilling, and obsessions, like Junko’s with building beach fires, are all-absorbing but purposeless. The narrators succeed in conveying the striking, vibrant reality of these worlds and their aimless, intriguing weirdness.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Bavidge’s British-laced reading is perfectly tuned
The only respectable calling for poor but educated young women in Victorian England was that of governess. Brontë’s 1847 novel tells the story of governess Grey’s struggles with the undisciplined Bloomfield children and the callous Murray siblings. Bavidge’s British-laced reading is perfectly tuned to Grey’s efforts to make her way in an unsympathetic world as the governess tries to instill her charges with good sense and kindness, but is confronted with insolence, prejudice, and snobbery. Young Tom Bloomfield reveals his temperament through nasally condescending tones, while his younger sister simpers and whines. One Murray daughter sounds condescending and calculating, and the other child is a hoyden with rough and crude speech patterns, even though her family is a member of the gentry. Grey speaks with a clear and gentle British accent. A scene in which a character seduces and then haughtily rejects a suitor’s advances is redolent of Brontë’s satiric view of British class snobbery.
Mary McCay, Booklist
The narration does Tennyson proud
Some of the finest Victorian poetry grew out of Tennyson’s troubled personal life – he and all his eleven siblings suffered some kind of mental health problems, and his beloved friend Hallam died at 22. He succeeded in echoing deep emotions in simple words – ‘But a for the touch of a vanish’d hand, / And the sound of a voice that is still!’ – and in creating tremendous rhythmic narratives – ‘Forward the Light Brigade! / Charge for the guns!’ he said. The narration of the 24 poems here does Tennyson proud.
Rachel Redford, The Oldie
There’s no need to dip into the lesser works in a collection of Tennyson, and Naxos has made a fine selection here, mixing the best known (The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Lady of Shalott, Ulysses, The Lotus-Eaters) with others that will be less familiar to casual readers. One might quibble with some of Michael Pennington's line readings, but he has made thoughtful interpretations, and his voice is quite capable of meeting the musical demands of the poetry. There’s nothing new here for Tennyson's fans, but the presentation is a strong introduction to a master's range of style and emotion.
D.M.H., AudioFile
Jo Wyatt is utterly convincing
The unabridged Alice in Wonderland is read by David Horovitch with other voices playing the characters. Alice actresses can be twee and precocious but Jo Wyatt is utterly convincing.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Don’t settle for less than all eight courses
Yes, it’s expensive, but would you expect to pay less for a 41-hour audio of the world’s greatest love story? Dostoevsky called it a flawless masterpiece. There’s a five-hour abridged version with music for £16.99, read with heartrending passion by Laura Paton, but it’s essentially a taster. Don’t settle for less than all eight courses.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Tolstoy’s magnificent panoramic novel Anna Karenina is a daunting listening proposition. Bear in mind that it was written as a serial, published in monthly installments over four years, and download it to take in regular doses (walking the dog or on your commute to and from work). Kate Lock rises to the challenge of this marathon of narration nobly, skilfully reflecting in voice the development of the initially air-headed Kitty and the clumsy, obtuse Levin, and their realisation, from the terrible outcome of the affair between Anna and Vronsky, that happiness cannot be built on another’s pain. It is worth downloading a character list to help you to sort out the names of the enormous cast.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
I defy anyone not to be moved by Socrates’ cool, courageous speech
What is life? How should we live it? And why are difficult books so much easier to digest on audio than in print? Ever since I heard Jim Norton reading Ulysses and John Rowe transforming Proust’s impenetrable prose into a novel I wish I’d read years ago, I now recommend everyone who has struggled unsuccessfully with Paradise Lost or A Brief History of Time to get the audio version instead. Even so, there were passages in the Griffith brothers’ admirably digestible guide to the often wacky belief systems of some of those pre-Socratic thinkers, cynics, sceptics, Epicureans et al that I had to rewind a few times. There’s Heraclitus, for instance, who advised that sexual pleasures should be confined to winter and believed that everything was composed of and reverted to fire. The eightfold division of the soul upheld by the Stoics also took a bit of unravelling, but it was worth it if only to appreciate that Stoicism originally meant a great deal more than grin and bear it. Having several readers brings the Platonic dialogues to life, and I defy anyone not to be moved by Socrates’ cool, courageous speech to the Athenian jury which has just condemned him to death for impiety. We may have über-technology, the internet, DNA and The Moral Maze, but the ethical beliefs and clear-headedness of those legendary first thinktanks – Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum, Zeno’s Stoa and the Garden of Epicurus – still have a lot to teach us.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian, 29 March 2008
[the] rarest of manuals, a handbook that makes you want to go out and discover for yourself
As a committed non-twitcher, I’m eternally grateful to Simon Barnes for inspiring me to get up at daybreak this morning to listen to the dawn chorus. His latest quirky bird book, with its gloriously uplifting recordings of birdsong, is tailor-made for audio and will help you to identify the 50 British birds he writes so engagingly and enthusiastically about. Don’t worry, this isn’t a field guide full of statistics that requires you to buy binoculars, keep a diary and make endless lists. It is that rarest of manuals, a handbook that makes you want to go out and discover for yourself if all the fascinating things he has told you about robins, blackbirds, yellowhammers and buzzards are really true. If chaffinches were rare, he writes, they’d be prized above Siberian ruby-throats and red-flanked bluetails. Here he is writing about chaffinches in spring: “The cock is outrageous, admire him – a cap of more or less Wedgwood blue, conker-brown back and a breast of the tartiest pink any designer could come up with.” If you follow the precise instructions for identification at the start of each section, you can’t fail. “Wren: where to look – tangled undergrowth, low down. When to look – all year round. What to look for – tiny tawny bird, cocky tail. What to listen for – astonishing volume.” This is followed by a generous earful of wren song. I love his descriptions of, say, mistle thrushes – “big, chunky and hops in a bold, rather in-your-face way” – and song thrushes – “the jazz musicians of suburbia”. By the way, wood pigeons don’t coo. What they’re actually saying, in a cooing sort of way, is “steal two cows taffy”. Don’t believe me? Get out there and listen.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Yes, I know I recommended this three years ago but, like the above authors, I can trace my addiction to birds (well, birdsong, really – I can’t see birds) to one particular book. This one. The brilliant thing about Barnes’s guide to 50 British birds (apart from its wit, charm and spot-on descriptions – ‘Swifts are profoundly committed to their habitat of the sky. As they fly they scream like customers on a Big Dipper, hooliganing round the rooftops, screaming at the tops of their voices, the ultimate avian flying machine. They lift the heart’) is that you get to hear a snatch of their songs. Bird-wise, audio is the best.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Nothing could be more appropriate for the great outdoors than A Bad Birdwatcher’s Companion, by the Times writer Simon Barnes. Specially constructed for audio, with examples of the songs of our best-loved twitterers prefacing a salmagundi of curious facts about each bird, it is designed, Barnes says, for those whose hearts lift at the sound of the dawn chorus and a melody from a tree, but who can’t identify the singers because they never get round to opening a field guide. Barnes makes amateur twitching easy, with witty mnemonics to help you remember bird calls.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
some of Dickens’s finest writing
Barnaby, the vulnerable man-child, prompts some of Dickens’s finest writing. Overall, however, it’s not one of his best novels, although Sean Barrett’s magical voice somehow persuades you that it is.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
After writing Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, the author next turned to historical fiction, using the notorious Gordon Riots of 1780, a clash between Catholics and Protestants, as the backdrop for this novel. It’s a dark story but one that yields rich prose and a murder mystery. Narrator Sean Barrett has the kind of elastic, wide-ranging voice that is well suited to Dickens’s writing style. Barrett can affect a sprightly youngster, a wise but weathered old man, a scheming politician, and an assortment of women, all of whom play major roles in this classic tale. It’s a joy to listen to him alternate between characters and his own deep, robust reading voice, an accomplishment he keeps up for 25 hours.
R.I.G., AudioFile
The long hours put in by this household’s squad of Santa’s elves raced by as we listened, high-Victorian style, to Sean Barrett giving the performance of his audio career as the narrator of Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Dickens is brilliant heard aloud and the book, written in short instalments, lends itself well to being your own book at bedtime or your reading during your daily commute. Set during the anti-Roman Catholic Gordon riots in London during the 1780s, it has an utterly loveable simpleton hero and three of the best villains known to literature: the smooth and cynical Sir John Chester, the devil-may-care and unhinged inn-servant Hugh, and Dennis, the whimsical hangman. Add the heart-of-oak Gabriel Vardon and his disastrously flirtatious daughter Dolly, plus a Romeo and Juliet love affair between the Anglican son and the Catholic daughter of sworn enemies, and the mid is as rich and unexpected as a good plum pud.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Forget that Kindle loaded with literary classics. Headphones are far more comfortable on the beach. Sean Barrett gives the performance of his audio career as the narrator of Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge. Dickens is brilliant heard aloud, as he intended his novels to be narrated in instalments. Set during the anti-Catholic Gordon riots in London in the 1780s, Barnaby Rudge has a loveable simpleton hero and three first-rate villains: the smooth and cynical Sir John Chester, the devil-may-care inn servant Hugh, and Ned Dennis, a whimsical hangman. Add the heart-of-oak Gabriel Varden and his flirtatious daughter Dolly, plus a Romeo and Juliet love affair between the Anglican son and the Catholic daughter of sworn enemies, and the mix is rich and unexpected.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
some of Dickens’s finest writing
Barnaby, the vulnerable man-child, prompts some of Dickens’s finest writing. Overall, however, it’s not one of his best novels, although Sean Barrett’s magical voice somehow persuades you that it is.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
He maintains the frantic pace of the action nicely
The Black Gang (1922), the second book (of ten) in the Bulldog Drummond series, finds Captain Hugh Drummond, DSO, MC, married to Phyllis Benton but still bored with calm civilian life in England. Villain Carl Peterson and his female accomplice Irma have escaped to the Continent but Drummond has enlisted some ex-army buddies to round up the remaining Bolshevik thugs trying to destabilize English society. They are soon dubbed "The Black Gang" by the media because of their long black coats and black masks. After they have captured and enlisted about fifty of the baddies, Peterson comes back disguised as an American clergyman helping poor Europeans. He is accompanied by his "daughter" Janet. He is furious about the loss of six priceless diamonds. Scotland Yard begins to notice the escapades of the Black Gang. Fortunately his old school chum Sir Bryan Johnstone, the Director of Criminal Investigations and Chief Inspector McIver think Hugh is a witless ninny. It takes Hugh a long time to see through Peterson’s disguise. In the meantime Phyllis is kidnapped and held on an estate surrounded by an electrified fence and a gang of goons. Hugh must also deal with a large vicious dog and a murderous Bolshevik named Yulowski who enjoys beating people to death with a rifle butt. There is a fair amount of anti-Semitism in the story typical of the 1920’s. The author, Herman Cyril McNeile, wrote under the pen name "Sapper" because serving officers were not allowed to publish under their own names. However, so popular was the series that it appeared on film and radio. After McNeile’s untimely death in 1937, his good friend Gerard Fairlie continued to create more adventures for Drummond. The series is narrated by Roy McMillan, a director, writer, actor and abridger. He is especially adept with accents (British, Russian, German, American) as well as believable female characters. He maintains the frantic pace of the action nicely. The series is highly recommended to fans of adventure novels.
Janet Julian, soundcommentary.com
Private eye Bulldog Drummond is just slightly over 80 years old. Despite his age and controversial nature, he lives on in fond memories of many who have come across him in a variety of ways. The private detective has probably entertained and shocked readers, radio listeners, film-goers and comic book enthusiasts in equal measure. There are ten original Bulldog Drummond novels written by Sapper, a.k.a. Herman Cyril McNeile, seven written following his death by his friend Gerard Fairlie, who had served as Sapper’s model for Drummond, and a final two by Henry Reymond. All of them feature the private eye of British upper-middle-class origins in books that have the format of an unabashed thriller. Drummond is unlike Agatha Christie’s cerebral, yet entertaining characters Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, who came into being around the same time as Sapper’s far more muscular and robust detective.
Now Naxos AudioBooks has come out with an unabridged audio book of the second Bulldog Drummond novel, The Black Gang. Published in 1922, it pits Drummond and his clubby chums against Carl Peterson, a man reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, Moriarty. Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, admitted Peterson, in turn, served as the model for the evil Blofeld with whom James Bond battled on behalf of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Admittedly, Fleming and Conan Doyle, Holmes’ creator, wrote much more nuanced books than Sapper, but the lack of refinement does not detract in the least bit from the thriller aspects of The Black Gang.
So, who is Drummond? He is described by his creator as retired British Army Captain Hugh Drummond, DSO, MC. He is wealthy and bored after serving in the trenches of France in World War I, and seeks a way to fill his time with adventure. Working as a private eye seems to be his idea of a good way to find the excitement he craves. On his first assignment in a book called simply Bulldog Drummond, which came out in 1920, he stumbles across the evil Carl Peterson, who desires world domination. Besides, Drummond’s original ad for a job in The Times leads to his first assignment from a young woman, Phyllis Benton, who ends up becoming his wife. In 1922, upon the publication of The Black Gang, he once again gets ensnared in Peterson’s evil plans.
As for McNeile, he adopted the nom de plume ’Sapper’ because British officers were not allowed to write under their own name. As he had served in the Royal Engineers, choosing to call himself ’Sapper’ seemed natural. He began his writing career in 1915 with several short stories about his experiences in the trenches. But instead of placing the focus on war’s horror, he kept an up-beat tone that made his tales immensely popular. He served with distinction and gained the Military Cross for bravery in the first and second battles of Ypres. But he chose his friend Fairlie as the model for Drummond because he had served in the Scots Guards, had been an Army boxing champion, and served on the British bobsled team that ended up in the 1924 Olympics. He, thereby, suited the image of Drummond more than the dapper though bookish McNeile.
The Black Gang is probably the best of the four books dealing with this gang. Actor Roy McMillan is highly effective as the reader of this tale in audio book format. His vocal impersonations of the various characters, good and evil – there are no shades in between these two – are excellent. For those who recall Bulldog Drummond from radio programs, this version of The Black Gang will lead them on a sentimental, albeit violence-charged journey into the past.
The Black Gang, in addition to all of the other Bulldog Drummond stories, contains passages that will make today’s audience squirm because – and rightly so – the team that put this audio book on disc did not choose to make it politically correct. Consequently, the listener gets a novel of its time: jingoistic and prone to racial slurs. While we do not like such images today, to change the references would rob the novel of its original flavor, which includes the snobby attitudes of the 1920s British upper crust and the fears of the lower. One still shudders at the idea that now some schools have chosen to give their students a sanitized Adventures of Tom Sawyer to read in which the ’N-word’ has been expurgated. Talk about changing history. No matter how bad the past has been, to remove the truth from it denies what has been achieved for the better today.
Without giving away too much of the plot of The Black Gang, Peterson is once again attempting a coup d’état to enable a pro-communist takeover of Britain. He does so strictly for his own profit, not for political belief. The Black Gang, headed by Drummond and consisting of his clubby public school friends, even aided by Phyllis, manages to foil him once again. We also meet the clueless Sir Brian Johnstone, New Scotland Yard’s director of criminal investigation and Chief Inspector McIver, who are disturbed by the activities of the secret, black-dressed, black-hooded Black Gang. A certain popular mystique surrounds this gang, seemingly consisting of ruffians who have a tendency to beat up London’s lower class of criminals, even abducting them for re-education.
In the books that featured the Black Gang, Sapper made no attempt to give dimensions to his characters. He wrote on the surface, aiming for entertainment with a dash of melodrama, peppered by violence, and nothing more. That is why his detective attracted the movie industry and stars such as Ronald Coleman, Ralph Richardson, and Walter Pidgeon portrayed him. With such starry company from the past, Roy McMillan is in good company and listeners can be sure they will have a few evenings of good entertainment. They can also be assured that The Black Gang is no more two-dimensional than most current TV offerings. And this audio book comes without commercial interruption!.
Alidë Kohlhaas, Lancette Arts Journal
A masterly narration
Published in 1850 and set against the turbulence of 17th-century Holland, this is a dramatic story of obsession, adventure, danger and romantic love. Its star is the black tulip, symbol of triumph over evil. Tulip fanatic Cornelius van Baerle is framed for treason by his jealous neighbour, but his sentence is commuted just as the executioner’s axe is raised. In prison Rosa, the jailor’s daughter, nurtures Cornelius’s dream of producing the mythical bloom. A masterly narration re-creates the full magnificence of Dumas’s theatre.
Rachel Redford, the Observer
Unbeatable
Juliet Stevenson is the perfect narrator for these six delicately observed stories. In one, Bertha in her white dress and jade beads presides over a dinner party, her happiness to be obliterated by seeing her husband kiss heavy-lidded Pearl; in another, ex-lovers meet again beside a Japanese vase of paper daffodils. Unbeatable.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Brilliant, but not for the faint-hearted
It’s 1849 and the 14-year-old nameless “kid” has drifted into the violent life of an outlaw band of bloodthirsty Indian hunters on the Texas-Mexico borders. Grotesque characters play out their roles against an unforgiving landscape. The understated southern drawl is just right, suggesting the symbolic richness of McCarthy’s language.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Having thought that no book could ever be as harrowing or as frightening as McCarthy’s apocalyptic Pulitzer prize-winning The Road (I finished it at 3am sitting up in bed with the light on), here’s an even bleaker story about man’s inhumanity to man. It’s set in the familiar Tex-Mex territory of All the Pretty Horses, his best book, and its hero, ‘the kid’, like John Grady Cole, is a 16-year-old drifter who pretty much lives in the saddle. There, alas, the resemblance ends – this is definitely not a love story. It’s an allegory about survival, lawlessness and natural justice. The kid, who’s been living, scavenging, fighting, killing, surviving on his own since he was 12, heads for the Apache wars circa 1840 in the legendary Wild West and joins a troop of mercenaries paid in gold for Indian scalps. The battle scenes are absolutely terrifying. Bullets, arrows, decapitated heads flying, the braves daubed with war paint, some naked, some wearing the looted clothing of their victims – US army jackets, whalebone corsets and ruffled shirts – the Americans by now so blood-crazed and inured to violence that they massacre Indians, Mexican peons and peaceful settlers indiscriminately. McCarthy’s prose is compelling, a potent mix of stark and lyrical: ‘The night sky lies so spread with stars that there is scarcely space for black at all and they fall all night in bitter arcs and it is so that their numbers are no less. The little prairie wolves cry all night and dawn finds him in the grassy draw where he’d gone to hide from the wind. The hobbled mule stands over him and watches the east for light. The sun that rises is the colour of steel, his mounted shadow falls for miles before him.’ Brilliant, but not for the faint-hearted.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Perfectly chilling tales
Otherworldly but this time seriously scary is Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Body Snatcher and other stories read by Roy McMillan. Perfectly chilling tales of graveyards and murder.
Kati Nicholl, Daily Express
Although The Body Snatcher, The Poor Thing and The Bottle Imp are not as well known as Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Child’s Garden of Verses, they are well worth listening to. The Body Snatcher, a gruesome tale, probably the best known of the three has been made into at least one horror movie. Two medical student assistants are responsible for taking in dead bodies in the middle of the night to be dissected by the other students. What happens when Fettes, the younger one, recognizes two of them? The Poor Thing is a Joseph Jacobs-like fairy tale in which an odd little wraith tells a poor man he will be his son one day. The Bottle Imp reminds one of an Arabian Nights tale and O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi: who will best love and outdo the sacrifice of the loved one? Roy McMillan’s mellow, low key reading is richly done. Most enjoyable.
Mary Purucker, SoundCommentary.com
non-stop action
Many older listeners will have fond childhood memories of reading Bulldog Drummond. Herman McNeile (1888–1937), a vital link between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming and rich in 1920s social colour, is ripe for revival. He used the pseudonym Sapper for his tales of the trenches because, as a serving member of the Armed Forces he was required to do so, and he kept it on for the nine Drummond novels. These are summed up by the narrator and presenter Roy McMillan as ‘James Bond written by P. G. Wodehouse’. Our hero’s adventures begin when he inserts a personal advert asking for ‘diversion, legitimate if possible, excitement essential’. He gets it in spades in the non-stop action that follows.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Outstanding
One of our favorite narrators, William Roberts is a film actor whose audio projects are rare delights. He once narrated Strangers on a Train, which I rank as one of the 10 best audiobook recordings ever. Here we have “The Call of Cthulhu” by classic horror author H.P. Lovecraft, which includes the title story, plus The Hound and The Dunwich Horror. Outstanding.
http://audiobookstoday.blogspot.com/
H.P. Lovecraft is the master of dark tales, envisaging that in a time before this the Earth was inhabited by evil gods who now wait to retake all that was theirs. Naturally, they are worshipped by a few humans who kid themselves that they can control events. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories read by William Roberts is full of monstrous beings and dark deeds – gorgeous!
Kati Nicholl, The Daily Express
William Roberts can tell a captivating yarn
In the great tradition of classic animal stories, Jack London’s Call of the Wild, read by William Roberts, is a wrenching story. From the peril Buck the sled dog faces in the Arctic to the suffering he endures under brutal masters, listening to his adventure is no tame experience. Roberts has a voice that could have belonged to one of this era’s gold panners. He sounds like a grizzled man who would never display overt emotion but who, nonetheless, can tell a captivating yarn. While Roberts doesn’t use great character range, he lets London’s writing – especially the passages about the mysterious, enchanting call of the wild – ring with its startling beauty.
R.L.G., AudioFile
Jack London’s deceptively simple direct way of writing combined with one of best dog stories ever, is why this book is such an enduring classic. And TV, film and stage actor William Roberts’s reading is perfect. His robust voice, his ability to keep listeners glued, and the fond care with which he reads is spellbinding. When gold is found in the Klondike, there is a great need for sled dogs. Buck, part St. Bernard and part Scotch shepherd is stolen and moves from his happy life as ‘king’ of the Santa Clara ranch where he lives a life of adventure, peril, though also often cruelty, to Alaska. There is a string of tales from his ‘taming’ to the ways of sled pulling, to the inept trio who are doomed, dog fighting, survival, and finally to meeting John Thornton and their mutual love and understanding for one another. The longer he lives in Alaska, the more in tune with the ancestral ways of his dog ancestors Buck becomes, dreaming of old half clad masters and ‘shades of all manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves’ until he is drawn deep into the wilderness. This listener found this to be one of the best recordings I’ve listened to in a long time; I had to be careful while driving and listening because I got caught up in being in one of my favorite places and living the life of a dog. Any parent or librarian looking for something short and exciting for a child, young adult or family listening can’t go wrong with Roberts’s performance and Call of the Wild, a guaranteed hit!
Mary Purucker, SoundCommentary.com
This was the story first published in 1903 that made the struggling writer Jack London famous. Listen to William Roberts’s majestic reading and you will understand why. Set in the 1890s Klondike gold rush, it tells how Buck, a huge wolfhound, is stolen from his pampered Californian home and becomes a sled dog in the arctic wastes of the Yukon. As brutal as his successive masters are, the pack of dogs he is harnessed alongside is even deadlier. How Buck survives the rule of club and fang is a classic, once misguidedly described as a children’s book because it is narrated by a dog. Of course it is an allegory – civilisation versus the old primordial instinct for survival at any price – but for pure excitement and adventure it has no equal.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Rupert Degas is pitch-perfect
When it comes to handling ghosts, the characters in Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost are far bolder than Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. When Marley’s ghost comes rattling his chains, you may remember, the old miser drops his gruffness in the face of his old associate’s awful warnings. Not Wilde’s Hiram B. Otis, an ‘American minister’ who purchases an English country house and moves in with his family despite dire warnings that it is haunted.
The ghost, Sir Simon Canterville – who’s been scaring the daylights out of the house’s inhabitants since his death in 1584 – wastes no time in mounting a haunt. In the dead of night, Otis hears chains clanking in the halls and beholds an awful sight:
Right in front of him he saw, in the wan moonlight, an old man of terrible aspect. His eyes were as red burning coals; long grey hair fell over his shoulders in matted coils; his garments, which were of antique cut, were soiled and ragged, and from his wrists and ankles hung heavy manacles and rusty gyves.
‘My dear sir,’ said Mr. Otis, ‘I really must insist on your oiling those chains, and have brought you for that purpose a small bottle of the Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator.’
Oiling those chains! Rupert Degas is pitch-perfect in the Naxos recording – quite a departure from some of his previous Naxos recordings, including Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Kafka’s The Trial. The grimness and desperation of those stories is far from the desperation Sir Simon faces with the Otises. No matter what he does, he can’t bloody well scare them! The couple’s twins boys hit him in the knees with pea-shooters, and, when Mrs. Otis hears the ghost’s terrible laugh, her reaction is: ‘I am afraid you are far from well ... and have brought you a bottle of Dr. Dobell’s tincture. If it is indigestion, you will find it a most excellent remedy.’
Degas captures the nasally voices of the Americans (for Wilde, Americans are the ones with the accents) and Sir Simon’s exasperated harrumphs – which turn, later, into sighs of relief as somebody finally pities him: the Otises’ daughter, Virginia. Degas gives listeners a hilarious performance that's an ideal antidote for the shivers if you've seen Paranormal Activity.
Nick Owchar, Los Angeles Times
British actor Degas’ gift for accents and flair for the dramatic make him an excellent choice to read Wilde’s beloved gothic ghost story set in Great Britain. A ghost has been haunting residents at Canterville Chase for centuries. But these poltergeist powers seem lost on the Otis family from America. Degas’ reading is lively, brisk, and laced with just the right amount of foreboding, and he subtly raises pitch during suspenseful moments. Degas gives Mr. Otis the deep, monotone, matter-of-fact tenor of a dull diplomat, while he portrays Mrs. Otis, a Manhattan socialite, in a much higher register, pretentious and pinched. The ghost, frustrated and world-weary over failure to frighten, is appropriately raspy and guttural. Each chapter is introduced by classical music and abundant sound effects – rattling chains, creaking floorboards, thunder and lightning – to greatly enhance the mood. Perfect for a dark and stormy night.
Allison Block, Booklist
Anyone who is only familiar with the old Margaret O'Brien and Charles Laughton movie version or one of the more recent versions of The Canterville Ghost will enjoy meeting the Otises and the ghostly Sir Simon as Wilde actually envisioned them. When the American Minister to the court of St. James purchases Canterville Chase and is warned of the ghost, he declines to believe in it and says he will ‘take the furniture and the ghost at evaluation.’ As Sir Simon proceeds to haunt (and he has fearsomely haunted before) he comes to believe in him, but he and his family will brook no nonsense. They give him something to oil his noisy chains. The twin sons bedevil him, and the daughter takes pity on him.
Rupert Degas is an excellent narrator with his fine cultured British voice as the present Lord Canterville, the past Sir Simon, and with a pretty good set of American accents for all members of the Otis family, male and female … This is such fun to hear the authentic and brilliant Wilde and it is very enjoyable family listening for all ages.
Mary Purucker, SoundCommentary.com
Timson proves that he is the equal of any of our great ‘voice men’
It’s just a regular day for Sherlock Holmes and his admiring sidekick Dr Watson – no sooner has a cipher of seemingly random numbers been rapidly revealed by the razor-sharp Baker Street sleuth to contain a dire warning, than a policeman turns up to whisk the two men off to a moated castle where someone has been murdered in baffling circumstances. Holmes sees the hand of his deadly enemy Professor Moriarty behind the deed, but the roots of the tale turn out to be in the violent gang culture of the Pennsylvania coalfields. This backstory extends Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Valley of Fear beyond the usual length for a Holmes adventure, although David Timson, who reads the story, has to work hard to keep us entertained until the great detective comes back on the scene.
Karen Robinson, The Sunday Times
With The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes Volume I David Timson has almost completed his unabridged reading of the entire Sherlock Holmes Canon – and what a triumph it is! As fine an achievement in its way as the complete BBC Radio 4 dramatisation. Once again Mr Timson proves that he is the equal of any of our great ‘voice men’, capable of creating a living character by the pitch of his voice and the rhythm of his speech. As an example, there are bellicose old autocrats in four of the six stories here (‘Thor Bridge’, ‘The Mazarin Stone’, ‘The Creeping Man’, and ‘The Blanched Soldier’) but each comes across as a unique individual. The stories themselves vary considerably in quality; Mr Timson has treated the worst as seriously as the best – and so unintentionally made me aware while listening of just how poor the writing is in ‘The Mazarin Stone!’. As usual, David Timson himself has provided perceptive and informative notes to the stories, and Sarah Butcher has chosen thoroughly appropriate music, this time by Saint-Saëns, Grieg and Borodin.
Roger Johnson, The Newsletter of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London
David Timson portrays [Holmes] brilliantly
Seven more truly ingenious criminal cases, only some of whose arch villains are the intellectual match of the legendary violin-playing, opium-smoking Baker Street sleuth, as he modestly observes to his long-suffering sidekick Dr Watson. Here’s one Baron Adelbert Gruner, “cool as ice, silky voiced, poisonous as a cobra with a superficial suggestion of afternoon tea, and all the cruelty of the grave behind it”. If Holmes’s insufferable conceitedness didn’t get under your skin (and David Timson portrays him brilliantly), you probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
it makes us shiver
This novel-length parable by the brilliant master of existential angst Franz Kafka was published posthumously in 1926. Our hero, K. (pronounced ’Kah’ in this recording), enters a small village ready to assume duties as municipal surveyor. He finds that the mysterious, bureaucratic, and wilful denizens of the nearby castle exercise absolute and self-serving rule over the precincts, and choose to throw obstacle after obstacle in his path. At times humorous and always nightmarish, this unfinished existential parable, while already powerful on the page, gains additional potency from British actor-director Allan Corduner’s spot-on narration. He treats the shocking and bizarre with matter-of-fact cool while breathing life into the dramatis personae. Through his efforts we feel K’s humiliation and alienation, and it makes us shiver.
AudioFile Earphones Award Winner
Y.R., AudioFile
Roy McMillan narrates with his customary intelligent energy
Original audiobook productions are increasing in number and variety. Jonathan Gregson, who was accidentally dropped into the font at his christening in St Paul’s Cathedral, Calcutta, developed a critical eye for architecture that serves him well in Cathedrals – In a Nutshell. Although Gregson begins with an appreciation of the great European cathedrals, he ranges onwards and outwards to ebulliently Baroque cathedrals in South America, ’corrugated-iron Gothic’ in colonial Africa and such triumphs of modern engineering as the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King in Liverpool from 1967, the concrete triumphalism of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Brasília and the $300 million Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Ivory Coast, the world’s largest church, built in 1990. Roy McMillan narrates with his customary intelligent energy.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Wonderfully moving
Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo is set in war-torn Sarajevo in the Nineties. When 22 civilians are killed as they queue for water a cellist determines to play the piece of music that gives him the most hope, Tomaso Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor, at the same spot every day for 22 days in their memory.
Meanwhile, three other Sarajevans live their lives in constant peril. Kenan, frightened but determined to make the dangerous, daily journey to fetch water for his family; Dragan, who has to cross the city to get to the bakery where he works; and Arrow, the nom de guerre of a young sniper assigned to protect the cellist. Wonderfully moving.
Kati Nicholl, Express.co.uk
Why did the Sarajevan cross the road? To get to the other side without fatally exposing himself to sniper fire. In Sarajevo, the city that was under siege for three hellish years in the early 1990s, every excursion outside was a risk. ‘Sniper alley’ wasn’t just the road that international journalists took between the airport and the Holiday Inn, reflects Kenan, one of the three intertwined characters enduring the almost unendurable in this novel. Kenan braves the streets to collect water for his family; Dragan has to go to the bakery where he works; and Arrow is on a mission to pick off with her rifle the gunmen aiming at her area. Amid it all, a cellist emerges daily to play Albinoni’s Adagio at the spot where the enemy wiped out a bread queue – a real event around which Galloway has created this intimate chamber-piece novel. Strains of the haunting work, played by Sarah Butcher in a specially made recording, add to the book’s power to move.
Karen Robinson, Sunday Times
Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo is an elegant fictional embroidery of a true protest: that of the cellist Vedran Smailovic, who mourned the deaths of 22 people – who were queuing outside a shop when a missile struck them – by playing Albinoni’s Adagio on the same spot on 22 successive days, despite the ubiquitous snipers. The novel shows how the cellist’s protest affects other people’s struggles with their consciences. One is a sniper who finds that her task of protecting the cellist presents her with ethical problems. Gareth Armstrong narrates with impeccable pace and timing, beautifully counter-pointed by Sarah Butcher’s playing of Albinoni’s music.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Unlike Khaled Hosseini and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, both of whom are natives of the war-torn countries in which their bestselling first novels were set, Galloway has no personal experience of the city in which this grim story of survival through the Bosnian war takes place. His main characters, however – including the cellist and Arrow, a female sniper shooting at the Serbian soldiers bombarding Sarajevo from the surrounding hills – are based on real people. The story is simple. A shell explodes in the market. The cellist witnesses the carnage from his window and, for the following 22 days, takes a stool and his cello to the marketplace and plays Albinoni’s famous adagio in memory of the 22 victims. It makes headlines around the world. The cellist represents the return of hope to a besieged city. Within a week, the Serbs have sent a sniper to kill him, but Arrow has the situation in hand. Or has she? Sarajevo’s enemies are not confined to the surrounding hills: there are hostile agents, spies and traitors in the city, the army, the government itself, exploiting the horror of war for their own ends. The style is spare, the reading remorseless, the pressure relentless. This is a book you won’t easily forget.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
In 1990s Sarajevo, war is devouring people's lives. In the midst of this vividly conveyed hell of massacre and destruction, one cellist braves the snipers to play his tribute to the dead. This is based on a true story and includes Albinoni's haunting Adagio.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
McCready’s narration skillfully illuminates the children
Set in seventeenth-century England during King Charles’s deposition, this story features four orphaned children who are adopted by a forester. He has rescued them from the “Roundhead” troops who killed their Royalist father (loyal to King Charles). As the forester’s adopted “grandchildren,” the four Beverly children must adapt to rustic life, learning to cook, hunt, and sew. Narrator Glen McCready’s details these activities with a quiet pleasure that is contagious. McCready’s dignified British voice is well suited to this old-fashioned adventure story filled with the classic themes of resourcefulness, self-reliance, and courage. As McCready’s narration skillfully illuminates the children’s growing maturity and wisdom, the story becomes all the more satisfying.
J.C.G., AudioFile
This is a great collection
There is a sure way to get into the Christmas spirit. Listen to readings about Christmas, from a recipe dating back to 1394 to stories about 20th century Christmas in wartime and all those years in-between. The Christmas Collection is read in fine readings by seven actors, known to us from the stage and film as well as from behind the microphone. There are two CDs in this collection. They offer us an insight into the past, yet confirm that the Christmas season has not really changed. By dividing the readings into Advent, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Curmudgeonly Christmases, Partying, and offerings of Food for Thought, we can hear echoes from the past reverberating in our own time. The Partying segment on CD 2 consists of a Christmas Mummers’ Play as celebrated in Leicestershire in 1863. This is not unlike mummers plays performed in Newfoundland to this day. The origin in the New World dates back to the 1600s when they were brought there by immigrants from England and later Ireland. The spirit of Christmas is positively emphasized through musical interludes that not only introduce each section, but are also brought in just before several readings within the six sections. They are charmingly complementary to the readings and are from Naxos recordings that feature carols, and music by Corelli, Britten, Bach and others. There are two items that were not read in quite the manner one expects. Track 13 on CD 1, A Visit from St. Nicholas, which we know here as The Night Before Christmas, does not sound right with an English accent. This is not the fault of David Timson, who otherwise does some wonderful readings in this collection. It’s just that we are used to a North American accent. The other item that failed to totally capture my imagination is Track 1 on this CD, A Recipe for Christmas Pastry: Anon. 1394. The recipe is great and offers a look at a distant Christmas past. Susan Engel, however, is not totally convincing in her Middle English pronunciation. During the Middle English period the ’e’ at the end of a world was not pronounced as we tend to do now, as a double-e (deep), but more like an ’e’ in let. She also pronounces ’ye’ as ’eye’, rather than ’the’, for what looked like the letter ’y’ in Middle English was actually the letter representing the ’th’ sound. We somehow have forgotten this. So, if you see a shop called ’Ye Old Shoppe’, do not say ’Yee old shoppee’, but ’The old shoppe’ (remember ’e’ as in let). But enough of my curmudgeonly ways. This is a great collection to put on as an entertainment at Christmas for oneself as well as guests, especially the young ones. It will keep them occupied while one is busy preparing the Christmas feast. This audio CD is far more entertaining and revealing of what Christmas is and was about than some television program. One cannot list all the personalities who are represented in this Christmas anthology. Here a just a few: William Shakespeare, Robert Herrick, Nicholas Breton, John Betjeman, Thomas Hardy, Christina Rossetti, Charles Dickens, Hans Christian Anderson and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Alidë Kohlhaas, Lancette Arts Journal
you get a feel for what turns lovers from other cultures on
Rummaging through my poetry collection for something vaguely Valentine-related – Burns, Sonnets from the Portuguese, even Classic FM’S 100 Favourite Love Poems – I came across this. Be warned: soppy hearts and pretty flowers it most definitely isn’t, even if some of your favourite garden-centre poets are here – Wordsworth, for instance, and Herrick, who elsewhere lamented, "Fair daffodils, we weep to see / You haste away so soon". He’s less preoccupied with horticultural matters here, viz: "I abhor the slimy kiss / Which to me most loathsome is. / Those lips please me which are placed / Close, but not too strictly laced; / Yielding I would have them, yet / Not a wimbling tongue admit. / What should poking-sticks make there, / When the ruff is set elsewhere?" The title poem is by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, infamous 17th-century bisexual libertine whose X-certificate verses leave little if anything to the imagination. The same goes for Stella Gonet’s passionate – no, let’s not mince words, pornographic – reading of Swinburne’s "In the Orchard". And prurient to boot, because the lovers writhing in the moonlight are clearly male. "Nay, slay me now; nay, for I will be slain; / Pluck thy red pleasure from the teeth of pain . . . Slay me ere day can slay desire again; / Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon." Erotic doesn’t have to be hot and sweaty. Heaven forbid that anyone should mention sweat and Emily Dickinson, belle of Amherst, in the same breath, but something surely must have loosened just a little, a hairpin, a button, as she wrote "Wild nights! Wild nights! / Were I with thee, / Wild nights should be / Our luxury! // Futile the winds / To a heart in a port, / Done with the compass, / Done with the chart. // Rowing in Eden! / Ah! the sea! / Might I but moor / Tonight in thee." With contributions from Hafez, Baudelaire, Tsao Chih, Whitman etc, you get a feel for what turns lovers from other cultures on. Long hair does it for Persians, knitting for Chinese. My favourite is "The Connoisseuse of Slugs" by Sharon Olds, which disgusted me first time round – I hate creepy crawlies – but now makes me laugh out loud. She’s right – erotic doesn’t have to mean serious, either. Sex can be hilarious, especially when you’re comparing naked men becoming aroused to the little knobs popping out at the top of a slug’s antennae: "The slow / elegant being coming out of hiding and / gleaming in the dark air, eager and so / trusting you could weep." Bravo, Ms Olds.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
readers [will] feel pleasantly uncomfortable
The narrators in this brief anthology of spooky tales by Charles Dickens and M. R. James are men of learning and reason – sceptical if not scornful of paranormal phenomena. Which makes their accounts of inexplicable, terrifying goings-on all the more haunting, especially as both writers are masters of the telling detail and the build-up of suspense. Dickens contributes two stories: a spectral harbinger of railway disaster and the ghostly presence of the victim at a murder trial. The offerings from James, the doyen of the English spinechiller, involve a haunted engraving, a very nasty piece on rats, and ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’, in which an academic has a hair-raising visitation on the East Anglian coast. With its suitably unsettling music – the viola is ideal for creating a spooky atmosphere – they succeed in James’s aim of “causing readers to feel pleasantly uncomfortable”.
Karen Robinson, The Sunday Times
Jane Austen on true love is the lick
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa for not bringing this gem to your attention sooner. A little of the blame must rest with the nice young man who helped me to sort out my audio library last summer and put this between Classic FM’s Top 100 All-Time Favourites and Cradle Songs from the Caucasus. It does have music, but only to introduce some of the most famous declarations of love ever made. They’re all here: Shakespeare’s Henry V wooing Princess Katharine in pigeon franglais; Jane Eyre still managing to sound straitlaced sitting on Mr Rochester’s lap; Molly Bloom’s voluptuous recollections in tranquility of an amorous tryst on Howth Head; the Owl on guitar (small) serenading his beautiful Pussycat. Alas, love being both a many-splendoured thing and merely a madness, not all these legendary lovers live happily ever after. Spare a sobering thought for Adam and Eve (yes, of course they’re here, starting the whole show rolling), Guinevere and Lancelot (that other loitering knight who fell foul of La Belle Dame Sans Merci), Heathcliff and Cathy, Vronsky and Anna, Frankie and Johnny. Why is it that the potency of passion is directly commensurate with the level of restraint employed to describe it? Barbara Cartland’s testosteroned Romeos and swooning, décolletée heroines had nothing on Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, buttoned up to the neck and probably wearing gloves, exchanging mutual assurances of undying devotion. ‘Elizabeth... immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone so material a change... as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances. The happiness which this reply produced was such as he had probably never felt before, and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do.’ Jane Austen on true love is the lick.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
ideal for family listening
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
These seven ghost stories were written specially for Naxos AudioBooks, and the production is first-class. Excellent writing and perfect narration are a common thread among the tales of historical ghosts, an accident-prone ghost, and spirits from ancient Egypt. Sean Barrett offers a perfectly tuned narration of The Clumsy Ghost. Gorgeous classical music adds to the atmosphere and presentation. In Unable to Connect, Anne-Marie Piazza portrays a girl whose dying mother tries to reach her on a phone with a ringtone from SWAN LAKE. The music adds to the heartbreak. Each casting is sublime, all dialogue is smooth and clear, and the narrators are memorable. The stories, which also touch on bravery and lost opportunity, are ideal for family listening.
S.G.B., AudioFile
Timson is a revelation
David Timson delivers an outstanding performance in this highly recommended audiobook of a collection of Conan Doyle’s Casebook that features lesser-known tales--like "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier" and "The Adventure of the Retired Colourman"--in a refreshing break from the recent rash of Holmes audiobooks focusing on Conan Doyle’s earlier and more famous stories. Timson--who has narrated the entire Holmes canon--is a revelation; he captures the essence of the text, delivering perfect renditions for every character and vividly creating for the listener the rich and wonderful world of crime-ridden Victorian London. (Mar.)
Publishers Weekly- audio review
you can hardly believe that the reading is being done by a cast of one
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has been given a fitting tribute in The Complete Sherlock Holmes, 150 years after his birth. I’ve enjoyed David Timson’s spirited readings of the stories ever since The Speckled Band appeared in 1999. He is one of those narrators who sinks himself so convincingly into character, so subtly differentiating timbre, dialect and accent, that you can hardly believe that the reading is being done by a cast of one – this requires extraordinary versatility given the 228 disguises in the four novels and 56 stories starring Holmes that Conan Doyle penned. Timson told me that he elected to go back to the original Strand Magazine version of the tales, warts and all. Conan Doyle never proofread his work, believing that the sweeping energy of the telling was more important than accuracy of detail: “What matter if I can hold my readers?” he said. Hold them he and Timson certainly do.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
David Timson must have had difficulty returning to his real self after this recording tour de force – every nuance in his voice is Holmes. All 56 stories and four novels are here: 60 CDs with a chunky booklet. Years of top listening.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Who knows how the art of fictional detection might have fared had a certain military surgeon attached to the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers in the second Afghan war not run into a former colleague from Barts hospital one day in Piccadilly circa 1880. Dr John H Watson had been invalided out of the army on a pension of 11s 6d a day and was now, he told his old acquaintance, searching for somewhere to live. How strange, said Dr Stamford, Watson was the second person he’d met that day looking for lodgings, or at least someone to share his comfortable rooms at 221b Baker Street. After lunch they’d take a hansom to the hospital and he’d introduce him to a Mr Sherlock Holmes, who would almost certainly be conducting some outlandish scientific experiment, such as beating corpses with a stick in the dissection room to verify how far bruises may be produced after death. You know the rest. Actually, you don’t – probably not even the half of it. This is the first time the entire Holmes canon – four novels, umpteen adventures and scores of stories with such titles as “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb” and “The Man With the Twisted Lip” – has been published in a single package. Here’s where I eat my hat and confess that, far from being lukewarm as I’ve claimed more than once about the legendary sleuth, I am now as addicted to the delights of elementary deduction as Holmes was to opium. What prompted the U-turn? It’s hard to pinpoint. The unhurried build-up of the Holmes/Watson buddy relationship, maybe, described so endearingly by the latter, those fireside evenings with the doctor deep in a surgical treatise while his flatmate deciphers the inscriptions on a 15th-century palimpsest with a magnifying glass. Then there’s Holmes’s unpredictable character: Stamford thinks he’s cold-blooded, but Watson has heard him play the violin. He has published learned papers on ciphers, cigar ash, bicycle tyre impressions, chemistry; but has never heard of Carlyle. He can be bumptious, charming, cruel, but he’s never boring. And finally there’s David Timson’s wonderful voice, bringing Conan Doyle’s vast and extraordinary cast from every level of Victorian society to life. What a marathon, what a result.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
You might say that David Timson is to Sherlock Holmes audio what Jeremy Brett was to Sherlock TV – except the actor who embodied the legendary detective so memorably (and melancholically) for Granada managed only 41 outings before his death in 1995. In ‘The Complete Sherlock Holmes’, a smart, unabridged box set celebrating Arthur Conan Doyle’s 150th birthday, Timson reads all 56 short stories and four novellas and even contributes one of his own. Timson’s ‘The Adventure of the Wonderful Toy’ is a fond pastiche; but it is more than that. Cleverly, and rather sweetly, it offers a fictional justification for the whole audio project, as Holmes encounters that futuristic new invention, the phonograph, and a man who wants to record the detective’s reedy tones for posterity. Listening to the existing stories en masse certainly highlights some lampoonable linguistic tics (one client ‘ejaculates’ four times in a single meeting) and a few careless inconsistencies (medical papers have apparently been written about how one bullet could have caused a war wound in both Dr Watson’s shoulder and his leg). But it also confirms Conan Doyle as the greatest escapist in British literature. Ten years in the recording, this is the sort of labour of love that doesn’t usually make it out of the garden shed. Should you spot Timson in the street, please offer him a Persian slipper full of tobacco from us.
Bella Todd, TimeOut
I have always avoided purchasing any of David Timson’s audiobooks for Naxos, reasoning that I would rather hear a full-cast dramatisation of any story than one man reading all of them aloud. Now that Naxos has released a beautiful box set of all Timson’s recordings, I realise just how mistaken I have been. Over a period of several years, Timson has achieved a feat comparable with the BBC’s dramatisations starring Clive Merrison and Michael Williams. As far as I am aware, he is the only reader to have tackled the entire Canon. And he has proved himself equal to the task. All of Conan Doyle’s stories are represented in this 60 disc-set, providing nearly 73 hours of listening pleasure – which is an entirely accurate description of the set’s contents. I’m happy to report that Timson’s work is among the best currently available, not simply of Holmes readings, but of audiobooks in general. His unfussy delivery puts the stories first – and while this may seem like a redundant observation, consider how our appreciation or otherwise of the Canon has been coloured by over a century’s-worth of literary criticism, much of it bloody-mindedly determined to strip away the sheer fun of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes through an unhealthy and unhelpful obsession with dates, weather reports and the legibility of Watson’s handwriting. Timson has no hidden agenda: he is content to give us the stories as they were meant to be enjoyed, and we can bask in the elegant simplicity of Conan Doyle’s effortless prose, which has dated hardly at all in the last hundred and twenty years. As a performer, Timson is remarkably free of ego. He’s not out to show off his undoubted abilities by giving every character an outlandish accent or over-ripe delivery (although his sharp, incisive Holmes puts me in mind of Robert Hardy, who played the Master in a series of albums recorded in the early 1970s). Nor, as is the case with far too many audiobooks on the market nowadays, is he simply a disinterested reader, relaying each line with the minimum interest and enthusiasm possible. David Timson may not be a household name – in fact, I was surprised to discover that he played Horace Blatt in the Poirot episode Evil Under the Sun – but his relative anonymity is a blessing rather than a hindrance, since we are not distracted by considerations of how “so-and-so” tackles the Canon. The Canon itself is, quite rightly, the star. As an additional treat, the final disc contains Timson’s own tale, The Adventure of the Wonderful Toy. Having delivered every word of every tale, he is in an excellent position to know what makes a good Sherlock Holmes story. In the accompanying 200-page booklet, the he modestly suggests that the story might be treated as a parody, but he is hardly being fair on himself: this is a perfectly legitimate pastiche, with a highly appropriate theme – that of the recording of famous voices, Holmes’s included. Any quibbles concerning the set are minor indeed, but given that this is a complete collection of Holmes tales, it might have been nice to see the Apocrypha represented – at the very least, The Field Bazaar and How Watson Learned the Trick. Also, the CDs appear in the box set in the order they were originally released, rather than in publication order. But considering the difficulty of finding the story of one’s choice in W.S. Baring-Gould’s annotated collection, this is the mildest of inconveniences, and certainly not one that should dissuade you from making this the centrepiece of your audio collection.
M.J. Elliott, The Sherlock Holmes Society of London
This reviewer’s only possible complaint would be that the book isn’t twice as long
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
In a perfect and perfectly delightful use of the audio format, this offering pairs accomplished and well-cast actors with letters written by famous composers. The letters are given chronologically, from J.S. Bach’s writing about career and money difficulties in the seventeenth century through the letters of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and others up to Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky in the twentieth. A brief and helpful historical note precedes each composer’s section and, best of all, the music he’s writing about accompanies and illuminates the words. Age-appropriate actors voice composers writing in old age while lighter, boyish voices bring us young Mozart, or Chopin as a determined and very broke youth writing home from Paris. This reviewer’s only possible complaint would be that the book isn’t twice as long.
B.G., AudioFile
This is one of the excellent and expanding Naxos ’In a Nutshell’ series
In China, apart from a period in the twentieth century, the influence of the moral philosophy of Kong Fuzi (Confucius) has lasted for 25 centuries. This is one of the excellent and expanding Naxos ’In a Nutshell’ series which comes with an erudite booklet placing Confucius in context. The slim volume which distils the branches of his philosophy, Analects, is explored showing how many tenets (’Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire’) are subsumed into world religions.
Rachel Redford, The Oldie
When I began to listen to this CD, I knew absolutely nothing about Confucius and Confucianism. Now I know that there was a historical Confucius (a latinizing of his Chinese name). He was born in mid-6th Century B.C.E. and wrote the Analects which is a collection of brief aphoristic precepts on personal, social and governmental morality. Other books have accreted to the Analects, including one by an ancient interpreter, and they form the written philosophy. The central aphorism of Confucianism is very similar to the Golden Rule in the Judeo-Christian moral systems. Do unto others as you would have them do to you. Other important aspects are self-control and thinking on a larger social scale as opposed to the usual small scale of self-involvement. He taught by comparing behavior. Confucius believed in destiny. To attain governmental appointments in the Chinese bureaucracy, candidates were quizzed on the precepts of Confucianism from the middle ages until 1905. Confucianism is having a resurgence both in China and the West. The audio book is nicely divided into historical, philosophical and social facets of Confucianism. Narrator Nigel Carrington, television and voice-over actor, speaks clearly with a soft British accent and conveys the meaning of the written words consistently. This is an excellent introduction to the precepts of Confucianism and its role in history. I look forward to reviewing others in this series.
Laura Zelasnic, SoundCommentary.com
witty and warm
After his readings of Sylvester and Venetia, two of Heyer’s popular Regency romances, [Richard Armitage] has now recorded an abridged version of The Convenient Marriage for Naxos.
First published in 1934, just before Heyer embarked on the first of her Regency novels, The Convenient Marriage is set earlier than the Regency, in 1776. But like all of her historical romances, it’s witty and warm, well-researched, and tells an engaging, if predictable, story with her characteristic light touch.
It starts, unusually, with the marriage of the hero and heroine. 17-year-old Horatia Winwood (Horry), is short, plain, heavy-browed and has a stammer, while the 35-year-old Earl of Rule is handsome, experienced and wealthy. They make an unlikely couple, and as the title suggests, their union is one of convenience.
The novel actually begins with Rule just having offered for, and been accepted by, Elizabeth Winwood, the oldest and prettiest of the three Winwood sisters. But far from being pleased with such a catch, Lizzie is miserable. She’s in love with an impoverished lieutenant, Edward Heron, but knows she must marry money to save the family from the financial ruin threatened by the gambling and extravagances of their brother Pelham.
However, her youngest sister Horry, ever the pragmatist, sees a solution. She knows that Rule wants to marry into her distinguished family, knows that he does not love Lizzie, and therefore reasons that one Winwood sister will do him as well as another. So she goes to see him and offers herself as a wife in place of Lizzie. Young, naive and enthusiastic, she is delightfully candid with him, admitting that her family is ‘shockingly poor’, and that she is ‘not a beauty’. At first astonished by her proposal, Rule is eventually won over by her. She promises she will not interfere with his life, and he promises to become Heron’s patron so that he can marry Lizzie.
The story the novel tells is, of course, how this unlikely marriage of convenience turns into one based on mutual love. As the new Countess of Rule throws herself with enthusiasm into the pleasures offered by London society and her husband’s money, those who do not wish her well circle around her - the villainous Lord Lethbridge, an old enemy of Rule’s, Lady Massey, Rule’s mistress, and Crosby Delincourt, Rule’s heir if Horry does not provide him with sons. In spite of the scrapes that she gets herself into, the tolerance and kindness displayed by Rule towards his young wife reassure us that, duels, highwaymen and a missing brooch notwithstanding, a happy ending awaits us in the final chapter.
As with his previous audiobooks, Richard Armitage peoples this one with a variety of voices and accents. A heroine with a stammer (which he renders faithfully) could easily become irritating, but instead we’re presented with a captivating character, a girl of spirit whose faults stem merely from her youth and inexperience (the scene in which she proposes to Rule is a particular delight). He also catches Rule’s amused tolerance for Horry and her doings, and the languidness that masks a keen intelligence.
The supporting characters are equally well drawn, from upper class women (the Winwood sisters’ mother, Lady Winwood, and their gossipy cousin, Theresa Maulfrey) to lower class men (Hawkins the highwayman, and various servants). Equally enjoyable are his voices for Pelham, Horry’s spendthrift but good-hearted brother, Sir Roland Pommeroy, his friend and accomplice in his inept attempts to rescue her from one of her scrapes, and perhaps best of all, the ‘odious toad’ Crosby Delincourt.
As with Sylvester and Venetia, short pieces of chamber music between the chapters set the mood – in this case, excerpts from the piano trios of Louis Spohr.
Annette Gill, © RichardArmitageOnline.com, 2007–2010
I loved reading chapter two… but I loved, loved, loved hearing it! It makes such a great dramatic scene! Horatio’s awkwardness and Lord Rule’s graciousness and charm... I think it would be hard for anyone to listen to Richard Armitage perform that little scene without falling a little in love.
Most romance books are about courtship not marriage. Most leave the ‘happily ever after’ to your imagination. Of course, the couple stays together forever and after. We don’t see any differently. So it is interesting to see a romance novel concerned with the marriage – with what happens after the ‘I do.’
Listening to the novel (abridged though it may be) gave me a greater appreciation for Georgette Heyer. Why? While I’ve always appreciated Heyer’s dialogue – it being a chance for her characters to be witty, charming, or romantic – I appreciate it even more having heard it performed. The wit seems funnier. The action scenes even more dramatic. The love scenes even more romantic. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for one narrator to convey the chemistry between two characters – but with Armitage narrating it works really well.
Becky Laney, Becky’s Book Reviews
This delightful romp was made all the more enjoyable by this new audio recording by British stage and screen actor Richard Armitage. This is his third foray into Georgette Heyer for Naxos Audiobooks. His skill at unique characterization and resonant, velvetly voice transports the listener like Cinderella to the Ball. Unfortunately, once the story ends, so does the enchantment. My solution was to start it again. For me, a new audio recording combining fanciful storyteller Georgette Heyer and the sultry and seductive voice of Richard Armitage is like la petite mort. Hopefully they are not few and far between.
Laurel Ann, Austenprose
What distinguishes Georgette Heyer from that other doyenne of romantic escapism, Barbara Cartland, is her intelligence. Her heroines aren’t silly, they’re charming. Horatia Winwood, for instance, the 17-year-old heroine of this delicious soufflé of a story set in 1776 only a few doors down from the unhappy Countess of Strathmore’s Grosvenor Square mansion, runs rings round all those tiresome Cartland airheads. Viscount Winwood, Horatia’s brother, has vast gambling debts. To save the family honour and her eldest sister Elizabeth from being, ahem, locked in a loveless marriage to the wealthy but intolerably ancient Earl of Rule, 35 (Lizzie is in love with a penniless soldier), Horatia offers herself as a substitute bride. It’s not much of a sacrifice. Personally I’d have had the languid, mocking, exquisite Lord Rule, with his scented coats and weary eyelids that ‘drooped over eyes that could become as keen as the brain behind’, if he were 105. Heyer makes you laugh and long to be in love all over again. I said she was intelligent.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Georgette Heyer’s writing is sometimes a delight and sometimes a little overwhelming since her attention to detail (both with language and customs of the Regency period) forces your brain to work a little harder to keep up. Horatia, the youngest sister of an impoverished but titled family, decides to offer herself in marriage to Lord Rule, in place of her older, more comely sister who is already in love with someone else. He’s chosen Horatia’s family for their connections rather than love or money, and agrees with Horatia’s deal even though she is just 17 and has a noticeable stammer.
Lord Rule and Horatio reach an agreement that neither will interfere in the other’s life but when Horatia befriends Rule’s enemy, Lord Lethbridge, the game begins. The Convenient Marriage actually steps over some lines that many of today’s romance readers draw in the proverbial sand. For instance, Rule has a mistress he does not give up at marriage. And hoydenish, outrageous Horatia steps over the boundaries set for young women of the ton a number of times – something I found amusing at first. That amusement faded as the story unfolded and I found myself becoming more annoyed by her shenanigans.
Lord and Lady Rule demonstrate with a passionate kiss at the end that all’s well that ends well. Don’t expect any more passion than that from Heyer, however. Although it was an abridged version, I suspect that Lady Rule remained untouched until after the story ended with that kiss.
Richard Armitage is a wonderful, deep-voiced narrator who is perfectly matched to Heyer’s prose and his heroes are truly to-die-for, baritone, and hunky sounding. He performs a variety of women’s voices, some stretching the limits of his voice, and in The Convenient Marriage, he treats us with a very entertaining 'macaroni' falsetto voice complete with lisp. Not having read the full story, I can’t say whether that is implied or actually written into the character, but let’s just say this particular dandy is voiced as someone who does not chase after women. Ever. Armitage did a credible stammer for Horatia all the way through – and wasn’t that annoying!
All in all, Richard Armitage provides a top-notch narration that makes The Convenient Marriage an above average listen for me.
Melinda, All About Romance
pirates, cannibals and how to survive on a Pacific island
And if Lord of the Flies is one of their A-level texts, they may just be interested to know that this 1857 Boys’ Own adventure story about pirates, cannibals and how to survive on a Pacific island with a broken telescope and a rusty penknife was what inspired William Golding’s novel. He even pinched Ballantyne’s names, Ralph and Jack, for his leading characters – though there the resemblance ends. Here the boys are shining stiff-upper-lip products of empire who risk all to help each other and their friend Peterkin, who may or may not be the piggy in the middle. He sounds as if he went to a better school. This is Peterkin telling his chums what he thinks of being shipwrecked on a desert island: ‘I have made up my mind that it’s capital, first-rate, the best thing that ever happened to us. We’ve got an island all to ourselves. We’ll take possession in the name of the King, then we’ll build a charming villa and plant a lovely garden round it, stuck all full of the most splendiferous tropical flowers, and we’ll farm the land . . . and be merry.’ That’s how small boys wearing round black straw hats, worsted socks and pocket handkerchiefs with 16 portraits of Lord Nelson printed on them and a union flag in the middle used to talk in the mid 19th century.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
a great introduction to Tolstoy
… And now for something completely different. When you think of Tolstoy, you most likely think of his epic novels, like Anna Karenina or War and Peace. You probably don’t think of his shorter pieces like The Cossacks, a shorter novella that is considered to be the author’s autobiography. The book centers around an unhappy Muscovite nobleman named Dmitri Olénin who joins the army in search of adventure and purpose in his life. He winds up in the Caucasus and is intrigued by the geography and the simple people who live there. Along the way, he discovers himself and falls in love for the first time, and in turn discovers the pain love can bring. We meet a cast of characters that includes the manly Cossack soldier Lukashka, the beautiful Cossack girl Maryanka, and the larger-than-life grandfather figure, Uncle Yeroshka, each of who play an important role in the life education of Olénin. Since this has always been one of my favorite books, I was curious to see how it translated into the audiobook format. The voice work is done by Jonathan Oliver, an English actor who has over a decade of experience reading audiobooks for the blind. At first, I was a little thrown by his English accent, as I know many Russians personally, and I always lent a Russian accent to The Cossacks characters in my mind. But as the story progressed, I got used to Oliver’s accent and it became very natural sounding, as he took on the life of the characters. He also did a wonderful job of changing out his vocal style as each different character spoke, making it easy to tell who was speaking as the conversations took place. I especially liked his portrayal of Uncle Yeroshka, the colorful old man of the Cossack village who takes Olénin under his wing. Oliver’s voice bellows and rings out with intensity, bringing the character to life in incredible fashion. Oliver is obviously very familiar with the story as well as Tolstoy in general, and he adds touches here and there to make the story even more special. For example, he reads the descriptive sections with the same enthusiasm as the speaking roles, painting a perfect picture of the Cossack village and the activities of its inhabitants as they go about daily life. He also sings their songs with a convincing air, staying in character the whole time. As far as classic literature goes, this one is an easy listen. It is not too long, and the story moves quickly, filled with adventure and a touch of innocent romance. Plus, it is a great introduction to Tolstoy without getting lost in the epic length of some of his other works. Highly recommended.
Mish Mash, http://mishmashmusic.blogspot.com/
Tolstoy’s novella tells how a young, aristocratic Russian, doing military service among the Cossacks in the Caucasus, learns about life, love, and himself, upsetting his previous notions. Jonathan Oliver performs, rather than reads, varying the voices adeptly from person to person and among men and women, matching speech to how it’s described, providing the proper expression and emotions. His voice is strong; he’s best at Cossack men, especially the rambunctious Daddy Eroshka. The use of strong British accents to represent Russian accents, while reasonable for a British production, may strike American listeners as odd – but it’s the best way to go, and the distraction passes. This is an able reading of a fine, subtle work.
W.M., AudioFile
the perfect antidote to gloom-and-doom on any day of the year
I own all of Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances – and Naxos’ delicious recording of Cotillion, wonderfully read by Claire Wille, has joined them on my Heyer shelf. Here lively Kitty Charing, whose extremely rich adopted uncle, wants her to marry one of his nephews, invites them all to his estate. Only the handsome rake, Jack Westruther, doesn’t put in an appearance – and, of course, it’s Jack that Kitty wants. Intent on making him jealous – and enjoying the delights of London, Kitty persuades another of the nephews, the Honourable Freddy Stanton, a dandy of some wit and kindness, to pretend to be engaged to her. Characters charming and comic, romance fervent and frowned upon – the perfect antidote to gloom-and-doom on any day of the year.
Kati Nicholl, Daily Express
I am so encouraged that Naxos Audiobooks is venturing into Heyerland with their first audio recording of one of Georgette Heyer’s most beloved novels Cotillion, considered one of the greatest Regency romances of all time. Up until this new recording, Heyer audios could only be obtained through sources in England, at astronomical prices. This abridged audio is read by Clare Willie and contains four CDs. Hopefully, if it sells well, they will in future bring us additional unabridged versions. Publisher’s description: Young Kitty Charing stands to inherit a vast fortune from her irascible great-uncle Matthew – provided she marries one of her cousins. Kitty is not wholly adverse to the plan, if the right nephew proposes. Unfortunately, Kitty has set her heart on Jack Westruther, a confirmed rake, who seems to have no inclination to marry her anytime soon. In an effort to make Jack jealous, and to see a little more of the world than her isolated life on her great-uncle’s estate has afforded her, Kitty devises a plan. She convinces yet another of her cousins, the honorable Freddy Standen, to pretend to be engaged to her. Her plan would bring her to London on a visit to Freddy’s family and (hopefully) render the elusive Mr Westruther madly jealous. Thus begins Cotillion, arguably the funniest, most charming of Georgette Heyer’s many delightful Regency romances.
Georgette Heyer deserves the recognition implicit in her inclusion in the Naxos Classic Fiction list, and Cotillion is an excellent first choice. Her funniest book, it is a plucky-innocent-reforms-rake parody, written in her prime in 1953. It features the orphaned Kitty Charing, who is piqued by the “devilish handsome” Jack Westrother’s failure to turn up when her guardian tells his great-nephews that his fortune goes with her hand. Kitty pretends to be engaged to her cousin Freddy to do a London season. Cue dress-shop scenes, but also social realities as she discovers the expediency of the marriage market. Heyer immersed herself in 18th-century literature, and listening to Clare Wille’s reading you appreciate her gift for the right phrase.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Uncle Matthew decrees that adopted Kitty will inherit if she marries one of her cousins. Kitty fancies Jack the cad and coaxes gentle Freddy into a mock engagement so she can pursue him in London. But of course, amidst a flutter of meticulously detailed bonnets and dresses, it all gets horribly complicated – is Jack just after the old man’s ‘roll of soft’ rather than Kitty? And does she really love Freddy after all? The deft narration captures the spirit of this Regency romance which is set, with historical accuracy, in 1816.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
For both period feel and satisfying plot, Georgette Heyer is hard to beat. Cotillion is her funniest book, a tongue-in-cheek parody of what starts as a predictable “plucky innocent reforms a rake” tale. The orphaned Kitty Charing is enamoured of her cousin Jack Westrother, a “devilish handsome out-and-outer of a Corinthian”, but piqued by his failure to turn up when her guardian tells his great-nephews that his fortune goes with her hand. She persuades her dandyish cousin Freddy (a “veritable tulip and a pink of the ton”) to pretend to be engaged to her so that she can do a London season. Cue sumptuous dress-shop and drapery scenes, but also sharp social realities as Kitty discovers that most girls on the marriage market have to put expediency before love. Excellent and hilarious twists of fortune ensue, and I defy you to guess the outcome. Clare Wille’s spirited reading makes you appreciate Heyer’s gift for finding the right colourful phrase for every occasion.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Bill Homewood’s voice gives [this] a stately and cinematic intensity
Just occasionally you get a narrator who is so perfectly matched to his material that you can’t help but smile. The orotund sonority of Bill Homewood’s voice gives a stately and cinematic intensity to Edgar Wallace’s The Council of Justice. Bombs and bombast, passion and punch-ups, and a mind-boggling escape from execution keep the listener agog.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Wallace’s classic crime novel – which marks the second appearance of his ’Four Just Men’ and was first published in 1908 – is given a distinguished reading by narrator Bill Homewood. The Council (as the Four Just Men are also known) is a group of wealthy, like-minded gentlemen who band together to deal out their own harsh and deadly judgements to criminals outside the reach of the law. This time around, the Council turns its attention to a dangerous group of anarchists called the Red Hundred, and its most captivating member, the mysterious Woman of Gratz. Homewood’s rich, eloquent narration fits perfectly with Wallace’s tale of post-Victorian intrigue. His dignified delivery of the book’s descriptive passages perfectly captures the era’s drawing rooms and gentleman’s clubs where stories are shared over brandy and cigars. At the same time, Homewood manages to embody a wide range of characters, giving each its own distinctive voice. Although the story can be melodramatic and over the top, Homewood does such an entertaining job that the listener can just sit back, relax, and enjoy the fun.
Publishers Weekly
Take it on your gap year
If you are already dismayed by the length and price of this famous story of revenge set in France against a backdrop of turbulent Bonapartist politics, you could cop out and buy the two-CD abridgement for £10.99. It would be about as satisfying as booking a table at Le Gavroche and ordering scrambled eggs, but 52 hours, I agree, is a long haul. Dumas père is chiefly remembered for this, for The Three Musketeers, and for fathering Alexander Dumas fils, author of La Dame aux Camélias. It’s a terrific story. Edmond Dantès, a charismatic young seaman, just promoted to captain, is framed by jealous rivals, falsely accused of being a pro-Bonaparte spy and arrested minutes before his marriage to the beautiful Mercedes. He is sentenced to life imprisonment at the notorious Château d’If, where, 14 years later, a fellow inmate, a priest on his deathbed, reveals the whereabouts of a massive treasure on the tiny island of Monte Cristo. Dantès escapes, finds the treasure, buys a peerage and sets about his revenge. Take it on your gap year.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
a moving story of rural innocence
Set in the 1840s, this is a moving story of rural innocence, the pain of lost love and the testing of fierce religious faith. Phillis is her Minister father’s intellectual equal; she studies Latin as she peels the potatoes and her father labours with the men on the family farm. When her cousin’s friend recuperates at the farm and helps Phillis with her Italian, the inevitable happens.
Rachel Redford, The Oldie
Clare Wille’s performance may be the wittiest I’ve ever heard
Welcome to the quiet backwater of Cranford. The women are in charge, because the men mostly have business elsewhere. So the desperate gentlewomen keep busy sublimating more basic urges into a passion for Victorian social niceties. Clare Wille is delightfully warm and compassionate as the young narrator Mary Smith, fondly recounting the “elegant economies” of her Cranford circle of spinsters and widows. Yet neither Mary’s narrow field of focus nor the delicacy of her humour preclude sharp observations about the frailties of human nature or warnings of the disruption that events in the wider world are about to visit on her unsuspecting friends. The plotlines – a mésalliance between a titled lady and one of the town’s few virile men, a financial scandal, a beturbanned magician, a prodigal’s return – were probably pretty sensational when the novel was first published, but are most important as the frame on which Gaskell constructs a beguiling picture of a dying society. The BBC 1 costume-drama version shouldn’t put Wille’s telling of the original in the shade.
Karen Robinson, The Sunday Times
Done that, been there, seen the TV serial, got the T-shirt (Miss Matty is the lick), but have you read the book? The problem with screen adaptations of period pieces is that they inevitably fall into the same trap. Put a theatrical dame into a bonnet and willy-nilly, no matter how many Baftas she’s bagged, she becomes a pantomime dame. Cranford wasn’t inhabited exclusively by daft old biddies wearing bonnets, shawls and frozen expressions of scandalised incredulity; Mrs Gaskell wrote about real people – some, admittedly, with eccentric ways, but nonetheless genuine. What makes her best-known book, a quintessentially English take on the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, so beguiling is the gently ironic tone of the young narrator, Mary Smith. This is the fourth Cranford I’ve heard – Prunella Scales did the last – and for once, in Clare Wille, they’ve got the right-aged reader. Mary (unlike Prunella) doesn’t judge. She observes. Her cool, clear gaze misses nothing in this mid-Victorian provincial backwater. You can hear her smiling at its preoccupations with thrift, etiquette, class, crochet, ribbons, gossip and the growing coolness between Miss Jenkins, doyenne of the tea table, and Captain Brown, who finds Boz more entertaining than Samuel Johnson. ‘It was the only difference of opinion they had ever had, but that difference was enough. Miss Jenkins could not refrain from talking at Captain Brown, and though he did not reply, he drummed with his fingers, which action she felt and resented as very disparaging to Dr Johnson.’ Oh, if only life were still as simple.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Clare Wille’s performance of this gently satirical look at a genteel English village in the first half of the nineteenth century may be the wittiest I’ve ever heard. Like a kinder version of E. F. Benson’s Mapp v. Lucia novels, Gaskell’s ladies of Cranford have their jealousies and their vanities. They also have moments of quiet tragedy (a lost brother, a suitor rejected to please the family but never forgotten) and of high drama. Wille made me laugh aloud at the pompous trumpeting of the late Reverend Jenkins. When Miss Poe comes in out of breath, you could swear Wille was running up stairs while delivering her lines. Her performance is always fully engaged, at one with the story, which is itself a small gem.
B. B., AudioFile Magazine
To prime myself for Return to Cranford, the new Masterpiece Classic sequel to last year’s award-winning mini-series Cranford on PBS, I wanted to read Mrs Gaskell’s original novel that it was adapted from. Since I am always short of reading time, I chose instead to listen to an audio recording, my favorite pastime during my commute to work. After a bit of research on Cranford audio book recordings, I settled on the Naxos AudioBooks edition. From my experience with their recording of Jane Austen’s novels I knew the quality would be superior. I was not disappointed.
A witty and poignant portrait of small town life in an early Victorian-era English village, Cranford was first published in 1851 as a serial in the magazine Household Words edited by Charles Dickens. Inspired by author Elizabeth Gaskell’s (1810–1865) early life in Knutsford in Cheshire where she was raised by an aunt after her mother’s death and father’s subsequent re-marriage, the novel revolves around the narrator Miss Mary Smith and the Amazons of the community: the authoritative Miss Deborah Jenkyns and her kindhearted but timid younger sister Matty, the always well informed Miss Pole and the self-important aristocratic Mrs Jamieson. This gentle satire of village life does not supply much of a plot – but amazingly it does not matter. Gaskell has the incredible talent of making everyday occurrences and life events totally engrossing. Miss Matty’s conservative friends, the middle-aged spinsters and widows of Cranford, do not want their quaint life and traditions altered one bit. They like Cranford just as it has always been, therefore when the industrial revolution that swept through England in the 1840’s encroaches upon their Shangri-La, they lament and bustle about attempting to do everything in there power to stop the evil railroad’s arrival. Gaskell is a deft tactician at dry humor, not unlike her predecessor Jane Austen, and the comedy in Cranford balanced with a bit of tragedy is its most endearing quality.
This unabridged audio book recording is aptly read by Clare Wille whose sensitive and lyrical interpretation of Gaskell’s narrative enhanced my enjoyment of the story by two fold. Her rendering of the different characters with change of timbre and intonation was charmingly effective. My favorite character was of course the kindhearted Miss Matty. Even though she is of a certain age she has a child-like naïveté refreshingly seeing her friends and her world in simple terms. In opposition to our present day lives of cell-phones, blackberries and information overload, a trip to Cranford was a welcome respite. I recommend it highly.
2010 marks the 200th anniversary of author Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell nee Stevenson’s birth on 29 September 1810 in Chelsea, which was then on the outskirts of London. In celebration of her bi-centenary, Naxos Audiobooks will be releasing three additional recordings of her novels: North and South in February again read by Clare Wille, Wives and Daughters in March read by Patience Tomlinson and Cousin Phillis in May read by Joe Marsh. Happily, I will be enjoying many hours of great Gaskell listening this year.
Laurel Ann, Austenprose.com
Once Degas starts reading, it’s nearly impossible to stop listening
This is a story of searching, loss, sex and murder in a disjointed society, worked out through Murakami’s crazy collection of people. Narrator Rupert Degas gets it absolutely right. The unnamed ‘ordinary guy’ who becomes entangled in a succession of way-out experiences is rooted in a Japan drenched in American culture, not just Dunkin’ Donuts and rock music, but the corruption of corporate money. Degas’s subtle American narration sustains this duality. He also creates diverse voices brilliantly, such as the disenchantment of teenage Yuki in her monosyllabic ‘huh’, the other-world automaton pronouncements of the Sheep Man and the seductive tones of the call girls. Bewitching.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
The unnamed hero of Haruki Murakami’s sixth novel is a somber, lonely writer whose dreams call him back to a run-down Sapporo hotel where he once lived. But when he tracks down the hotel, he finds a newly refurbished luxury high-rise. He falls for the receptionist, becomes guardian to a clairvoyant teen, and is transported to a haunted hallway, all while trying to solve a mystery of dead or missing prostitutes. British actor Rupert Degas is masterful in his reading of Dance Dance Dance. Degas performs the entire novel in a flawless American accent, with Japanese names, phrases, and place names read with a believable Japanese accent. Once Degas starts reading, it’s nearly impossible to stop listening to this oddly brilliant psychological thriller.
S. E. S., AudioFile Magazine
This is an hour well spent
Peter Whitfield’s In a Nutshell: Darwin is exactly what it claims to be. In a little over an hour, Whitfield presents a biography of Charles Darwin and an overview of his life’s work. The “nutshell” part of the title may suggest that the production rushes through the facts, but that’s not the case. Whitfield has a pleasant voice, and the prose is smooth and interesting. The audio is a leisurely experience that can be likened to taking a walk while discussing Darwin and his theory of evolution. This is an hour well spent; listeners will learn much, after which they can decide whether or not to delve into the subject in more detail. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
S.D.D., AudioFile
A useful instant bicentenary guide, which gives you exactly what it says on the tin: family history, biography, succinct synopsis of what natural selection really means and what effect it had on the Victorian establishment. At the 1860 Oxford debate, Bishop Wilberforce asked Thomas Huxley, “Darwin”s bulldog”, if he was descended from apes on his father’s or his mother’s side. Vicious stuff, and it’s still raging.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
I never knew that for 20 years Darwin suffered from a mysterious and debilitating condition that caused heart palpitations, nausea and stomach cramps. Was it chagas disease, picked up from South American beetles during his five-year Beagle voyage? Or purely psychosomatic, due to stress and dread of the negative reception his book would receive? Even his wife Emma was giving him stick about it. So he kept his head down and confined his theories to finches, turtles and moles, leaving humans out of the picture until his next bestseller, The Descent of Man, in 1871.
Author, poet, and historian Whitfield (Landmarks in Western Science) celebrates the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth with this marvelous “nutshell” summary of the English naturalist’s life and his important contributions to science, reminding listeners of Darwin’s continued impact. The author himself narrates, his distinctly British reading conveying Darwin’s own British culture and his well-paced delivery helping to sustain interest. This title, one of many future “nutshell” works from this publisher to cover various other fields of study in a similarly cogent, succinct manner, serves as a useful introduction to Darwin’s life and work and nicely bookends the more comprehensive approach to audio learning offered by The Teaching Company and Recorded Books’ “Modern Scholar” series. Highly recommended.
Dale Farris, Groves
In a nutshell, this ‘nutshell’ audio production is great. Everyone can benefit from a Cliff Notes style review of what they studied in school. Whitfield provides a clear, straight-forward account of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. He concentrates on Darwin as a personality. Raised in an academic, upper-class, family, Darwin had many advantages as a young man and he didn’t squander them. Sober and reflective, he was also sensitive to the effect his ideas would have on the conventionally faithful, including his wife. Uninterested in being a firebrand, after his famous Galapagos Island trip, he happily returned to a quiet life at his country home where he refined his thoughts and theories. Still, they did rock the world and continue to be a source of controversy. They are also largely immutable. Whitfield narrates with warmth and precision.
Nancy Chaplin, SoundCommentary.com
[a] mix of cynical satire, realism and pathos
The 1953 radio production of Arthur Miller’s masterpiece, Death of a Salesman, with Thomas Mitchell and Arthur Kennedy, gets the Broadway treatment by Elia Kazan (who premiered the play). It was a sensation to audiences in 1949 and continues to move with its mix of cynical satire, realism and pathos.
Robert Giddings, Tribune Magazine
Oliver Ford Davies makes the dying Ilyich touchingly human
Tolstoy wrote his short novel The Death of Ivan Ilyich after a dark night of the soul that led him to question his entire life, and eventually to find comfort in Christianity and peasant simplicities. The book is a coded version of his suffering and makes tough, but ultimately deeply rewarding listening. Oliver Ford Davies, the philosopher and actor fresh from a memorably gruff rendering of Diogenes Laertius for the Naxos audiobook Ancient Greek Philosophy, makes the dying Ilyich touchingly human.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Painfully and slowly, Judge Ivan Ilyich is dying and, as he does so, he comes to recognise the truth about his impeccable life. For all his propriety and success, it has been meaningless and empty. Ilyich loathes his wife and realises his ‘concerned’ colleagues are merely waiting to step into his shoes. And he recognises the selfless devotion with which he is cared for by the peasant boy Gerasim as the only real truth in the whole of his own shallow life. Only at the end, when Ilyich breaks through the ‘black sack’ of death, is he absolved. Ford Davies’s leisurely narration and the passages of Russian music complement Tolstoy’s serious theme and his presentation of Ilyich’s anguished emotions is masterly.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Enough of these homegrown comedies of manners. There aren’t many jokes in this relentless novella about a cold, calculating, materialistic minor member of the St Petersburg judiciary, whose only ambition is to keep up with the Ivanovs. Until, that is, he falls ill with a mysterious terminal disease that opens his eyes to the shallowness of his friends, his family and, most of all, himself. Tolstoy’s prose is majestic, his pace measured, his characters unflinchingly true to life, his message bleak. If you’ve never read any Tolstoy, best not start with this one – you might top yourself before you get round to Anna Karenina.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian, 16 February 2008
In the lovely, low tones of a fine storyteller, Oliver Fox Davies guides us through the stages of Tolstoy’s mini masterpiece. Davies’s skill with inflection, even within words, heightens the social satire of the early section and shifts with Ilyich’s slide into ever increasing pain and irritability. With the terror and anguish of approaching death, his voice grows convincingly hoarse. Until his illness, Ivan Ilyich had never reflected on his life. But he slowly comes to see his life as ‘a terrible, huge deception which had hidden life and death.’ As he lays dying, his lifelong friends think of the promotions that may come their way, and his wife ‘began to wish he would die, but she didn’t want him to die because then his salary would cease.’ He has always avoided human connection, but through the tender ministrations of a peasant he comes to recognize the ‘mesh of falsity’ in which he’s lived. Written more than a century ago, Tolstoy’s work still retains the power of a contemporary novel.
Publisher’s Weekly, January 2008
Tolstoy’s novella offers a penetrating examination of the Christian faith and the nature of life and death. Listeners will also be sure to delight in Tolstoy’s sharp and sometimes satirical eye for the very modern-sounding details of the life of a nineteenth-century Russian bureaucrat. With masterful ease, a warm tone, and conversational pacing, British actor Oliver Davies captures Ivan Ilyich’s preoccupation with interior decorating and debt and his avoidance of family weddings and home remedies. Then the shadow of death wipes away all trivialities and pretence. This work’s prose and performance are so vivid, so human, and so listenable that there’s no doubt why Tolstoy stands as one of the giants of world literature.
B. P., AudioFile Magazine
definitely a meal worth sitting down to
No need to ask what I did this summer: Edward Gibbon is not an author to be taken lightly or hastily, which is probably why Naxos got Philip Madoc to read it. His voice has that orotund, authoritative quality (I dare say Moses had it too) that makes you stop whatever you are doing to listen.
It took Gibbon twenty years to complete his famous history; the three volumes were published between 1776 and 1788. This abridgement splits the epic neatly in half, the western empire ruled from Rome and Milan in Part I and the eastern empire, from Constantinople, in Part II. Gibbon’s style, as you would expect of a product of the Enlightenment, is cool, lucid, classical and rhythmic. I urge you to savour the sweeping magnanimity of his opening sentence – ‘In the second century of the Christian era the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth and the most civilised portion of mankind’ – because from here on it’s pretty much downhill all the way to May 29 1453, when the Ottomans finally sacked Constantinople.
Ask most people what they know of the Roman empire and chances are they’ll tell you about gladiators, roads, baths, Russell Crowe and a handful of colourful emperors all pre-290 AD whom they have seen fleshed out by the RSC or BBC drama department. Gibbon deals with the post-Augustan empire, those twelve turbulent centuries when its future was constantly under threat from invading Huns, Goths, Persians, Parthians, Mongols and Turks. As fierce as the enemy without was the enemy within. ‘It is almost superfluous to enumerate the unworthy successors of Augustus. Their unparalleled vices and the splendid theatre on which they were acted have saved them from oblivion. The dark, unrelenting Tiberius, the furious Caligula, the feeble Claudius, the profligate and cruel Nero, the beastly Vitellius and the timid, inhuman Domitian are condemned to everlasting infamy.’
Other factors besides barbarians and loose living conspired against the purple: the rise of Christianity and Islam; the increasing power of the Praetorian Guard, who dispensed with emperors as carelessly as swatting flies; the insidious seepage of foreigners into the legions, diluting their fighting spirit. There are awesome descriptions of cities being sacked, palaces plundered, matrons and virgins ‘subjected to injuries more terrible than death’. Virgins had a rough ride in ancient Rome. There are also delicate vignettes of women like Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, who had a dark complexion and eyes that sparkled with an uncommon fire. ‘When speaking of a lady these trifles become important,’ says Gibbon, whose jokes are strictly limited to maybe one every 300 years. Still, you have to admire a man who can guide you with such elegant dexterity through a millennium fraught with seismic power shifts, where the sheer weight of numbers leaves you reeling: 300,000 Christians hiking through Europe to Jerusalem on the first crusade, 700,000 Mongol horsemen galloping across Asia behind Genghis Khan. Even abridged, Gibbon is no picnic, but he is definitely a meal worth sitting down to. The intermittent extracts from Schumann’s sonorous ‘Julius Caesar’ overture aren’t exactly citron frappé but they help to refresh your palate between courses.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
gently guides you through some pretty daunting theories
Cogito ergo sum notwithstanding, what else do you know about the 17th-century Frenchman regarded as the father of modern philosophy? The good thing about Naxos's series of introductions to philosophers, which includes Plato, Aristotle and Nietzsche, is the way it gently guides you through what could be some pretty daunting theories of belief or, in Descartes' case, doubt. Every excerpt from the original text is preceded by a brief explanation. Here, for example, is the intro to his Principles of Philosophy published in Latin in 1644: ‘Principles is divided into four parts covering metaphysics, physics, cosmology and geology, each with a number of titled paragraphs. In the preface Descartes describes his view of human knowledge using a tree as a metaphor. The branches are the applied sciences such as medicine, psychology, mechanics and even ethics. The trunk of physics supports these, and all are nourished by metaphysics or philosophy at the root.’ René Descartes (1596-1650) was Renaissance man epitomised – a brilliant polymath interested in so many different disciplines (the cartesian coordinates system is still used in maths) that, to give himself time and space to think, he abandoned Paris and spent nine years travelling, occasionally as a mercenary, throughout Europe. His lifelong habit of rising late began as a child, when he was sent away to a Jesuit school and managed to convince his teachers that his poor health required him to stay in bed for most of the morning. 50 years on he accepted a position at the Swedish court to teach philosophy to Queen Christina whose only free time, it turned out, was at 5am. Unused to chilly dawns, Descartes caught pneumonia and died, aged 53.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
a pleasurable retreat into Dickinson’s imaginary world
Teresa Gallagher gives Emily Dickinson a New England voice that succeeds in conveying the poet’s distinctive duality: her gentle, mystical other-worldliness underscored by a resolute strength. In these 99 poems, recurring words – sea, Heaven, sun – chime mantra-like, along with the lyrical assonance and rhyme. Dickinson is acutely sensitive to the beauty of light and nature – ‘the colour on the cruising cloud’ – while her metaphors and personification intrigue. Does the ‘door ajar’ shut her out or invite her in? Is the ‘realm of you’ Heaven or some paradise of earthly love? Even though recurrent themes are death and self-denial, the mood is airy and buoyant, like the angel’s wings Dickinson imagines she wears.
Rachel Redford, The Observer, 17 February 2008
Emily Dickinson is remembered as a nineteenth-century New England recluse, but she is reaching a wider audience than she could ever have expected via this Great Poets audio series. A wide range of the poet’s work is here and, as read by the charismatic Teresa Gallagher, the problem of how to turn dashes into pauses is managed with aplomb. To quote the great lady, ‘Beauty be not caused – it is’; and this is beautiful.
Waterstone’s Quarterly, Spring 2008
Teresa Gallagher has an agile voice and the delicate articulation necessary for interpreting the finely crafted poems of Emily Dickinson. Gallagher performs the poems with a simplicity and clarity that allow their beauty to flourish. However, Dickinson did not title her poems, so Gallagher does not have that convention as a way to mark the beginning of each work. Too often, there is not a long enough pause between poems, and without attention to the liner notes the poems can blur into each other. Nonetheless, the 99 poems selected from Dickinson’s canon of over one thousand are a choice presentation highlighted by Gallagher’s skillful performance. This production is a pleasurable retreat into Dickinson’s imaginary world.
R. F., AudioFile Magazine
A must for every serious music lover
The annus mirabilis of baroque music is 1685, the year in which its three greatest composers and performers – J.S. Bach, George Frederick Handel and Domenico Scarlatti – were all born. This comprehensive guide is packed with historical facts and riveting anecdotes (but for the silver button on his coat which deflected his opponent’s sword, Handel might have been killed in a duel aged 19). Reader Sebastian Comberti is a professional cellist and clearly knows what he’s talking about. Best of all, the text is punctuated with glorious bursts of famous and less well-known sonatas, cantatas, partitas, fugues, concertos and oratorios. Why have I never heard the wonderful aria “Leave Me to Weep” from Handel’s opera Rinaldo before? A must for every serious music lover, baroque or otherwise.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
With 40 tracks illustrating the glory of baroque music, and a narration as lively as Vivaldi’s Spring, this is a delight. As well as providing details of the composers’ lives, this 2-CD set brings home what it must have been like to hear the music when it was first performed.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
The perusal of an improving book being one of Jeeves’s customary leisure pursuits, the dignified manservant would probably have enjoyed Clive Unger-Hamilton’s Discover Music of the Baroque Era which combines 40 glorious music tracks with a lively and informative explanation of why the period (roughly 1600 to 1750, the year J.S. Bach died) can stake an unbeatable claim to be music’s golden age. The first operas were written and performed, and the concerto, sonata and cantata were developed with vitality and brilliance. It is a cultural geography lesson, too, as the Italian peninsula’s musical dominance (with Monteverdi at the pinnacle) is overtaken by superstars from the German states, with the prolific genius of Bach dominating. Enjoy the words, which mix musicology with insights into the musicians’ private lives, then sit back and revel in the music.
Karen Robinson, The Sunday Times
This wonderful audiobook will delight music lovers and will serve as an excellent introduction to the Baroque era for those with no background at all. The bulk of the recording is made up of performances of either entire musical works or entire movements from concertos and symphonies. The amount of text is just right to explain and introduce each piece of music. Unger-Hamilton has the musical background to produce this work and in Comberti, born in London of Italian/German parents and himself a professional musician, the listener will find a the perfect narrator. His pronunciations of the several languages required (French, Italian, German) are impeccable and his knowledge and love for music are apparent. Comberti is a cellist and performs in recitals and with chamber music groups. He founded the Cello Classics recording label which has won international acclaim for its innovative programming. A booklet provides a listing of all the pieces played as well as performers.
Sue Rosenzweig, SoundCommentary.com
This account is glorious
This account of the great Romantics – Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt et al – is glorious. It traces how their music evolved from the Classical era, and how their varied backgrounds and often tragic lives produced an explosion of invention and emotion. Illustrated with more than 20 music tracks.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Naxos began in the music business and has an excellent catalogue of recordings to draw on, making this series on the lives and works of composers a natural for them. There’s no need to settle for description when you can hear Joseph Haydn’s actual music. With Audie-winning (for his work on Chopin) author and narrator Jeremy Siepmann and a fine supporting cast, this audiobook introduces us to the life and works—and the relation between the two—of one of the greatest of all composers. The inventor of the modern symphony and the string quartet, Haydn is one of the pillars of concert music, and this original audiobook leads us to a deeper understanding of man and music.
D.M.H., AudioFile Magazine
The narrator’s creation of the cast of characters is brilliant
Written in 1925 but not published in Russia for another 62 years, Bulgakov’s tale is a biting satire of the claim that communism will create a Better Man. Surgeon Preobrazhensky implants the pituitary gland and testicles of a drunken Bolshevik into a good-hearted stray dog he calls Sharik. The result, the savage "Sharikov", is a monstrous travesty of every communist ideal who becomes a rapist and a cat-strangler. The narrator’s creation of the cast of characters, including the dog, is brilliant and brings out the blackness of Bulgakov’s comedy.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
A Dog’s Heart, Bulgakov’s 1925 satire on Stalinist Russia’s vision of transforming mankind, is ideal for reading aloud. Roy McMillan throws heart and soul into the opening howls of the tatty mongrel from whose point of view the story is at first told, and then in narrating the rest of the wacky tale of a surgeon’s efforts to make the dog human.
The problem is that he is as louche and outrageous a man as he was a dog. But that doesn’t disqualify him from denouncing the Professor to the secret police. The story ends with as much aplomb as it starts: grins throughout guaranteed.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Dickens’s descriptions ... are matched by the brilliant narration
‘Why didn’t money save me my Mama?’ asks frail little Paul of his father, made cruel by money and power. Eventually, through the saintly love of his neglected daughter, Dombey realises his faults. Dickens’s descriptions of the dark face of Progress are matched by the brilliant narration.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Dickens’s minor characters are often the stars of his novels, and British actor David Timson gives each his or her idiosyncratic due in this wonderful, richly peopled production. Among them is a model Captain Cuttle, salty, bluff, ever constant to young ‘Wal’r’; a kindly, befuddled Mr. Toots; and Toots’s belligerent associate, the Game Chicken. The work is expensive, but Timson’s storytelling charisma assures that it will be returned to again and again.
Katherine A. Powers, The Washington Post
Charlie Simpson reads it as if he believed every word
Rosemary Sutcliffe’s gripping The Eagle of the Ninth, is about a young centurion’s search for a missing legion over Hadrian’s Wall. Read by Charlie Simpson against a background of thrilling music, and sparkling with detail about the Romans in Britain, it is perfect for boys of eight and over.
Amanda Craig, Independent on Sunday
In his chapter ‘Pax Romana’, Lacey touches on the lasting legacy of the Romans in Britain which, along with Hadrian’s wall and underfloor heating, included cabbages, apples, roses and the domestic cat. Sometime around AD117, the Ninth Legion, stationed in Eboracum, now York, marched north to put down a Caledonian rising and was never heard of again. Eighteen hundred years later archaeologists at Silchester dug up a wingless Roman eagle, the military emblem carried by the standard-bearer of every Roman legion. While it remained aloft the legion’s honour lived. Sutcliff’s novel is classed as a junior classic, but it’s no less adult than and every bit as entertaining as Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series. It follows the fate of the son of the Ninth Legion’s commander as he attempts to solve the mystery of the missing soldiers. Life beyond Hadrian’s wall and the protection of the red-crested legionaries is a dangerous place. Sutcliff evokes a dark, threatening landscape full of lonely lochs and mist-shrouded mountains, where the mystic arts are more powerful than shield walls. Charlie Simpson reads it as if he believed every word.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Charlie Simpson gives an excellent reading of Rosemary Sutcliffe’s The Eagle of the Ninth. Forcibly retired from the Roman army because of a wound, young centurion Marcus Flavius Aquila goes in search of the Ninth Legion, led by his father, which disappeared many years before. Exciting and informative – and recently released as the movie The Eagle.
Kati Nicholl, Daily Expresss
Suitably macabre
This collection of 8 short stories, 23 poems, and a short biography of Poe is narrated by three readers: John Chancer, William Roberts, and Kerry Shale. Shale begins with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” He employs a high-pitched French accent to represent Dupin and affects a surprised, somewhat immature tone for the narrator. Some of Poe’s endless descriptions bog down the pacing. Listeners may want to head right to “The Pit and the Pendulum,” read by Roberts, who is a master of the verbal adrenaline rush. His tones lower as the pendulum descends and speed up to match the petrified shrieks. Shale recites the poetry selections; cue up to “Lenore” and zip over to “The Raven” to experience a perfect audible pairing of love lost and unmitigated grief. Chancer provides a simple yet engaging reading of Poe’s biography. Suitably macabre mood music marks transitions between the selections. The celebration of Poe’s 200th birthday brings renewed interest in the author’s works.
Kaite Mediatore Stover, Booklist
[a] perfect audio companion
I have already praised Juliet Stevenson’s understanding of subtle human comedy, but feel impelled to add that in her latest performance, Emma, the peerlessly snobbish, judgmental, self-regarding, manipulative heroine and her circle make perfect audio companions for a long drive, a marathon ironing session or, indeed, a nice cup of tea.
Karen Robinson, The Sunday Times
Joanna Page brings freshness and urgency to the tale
Magical tale of invisibility and a bejewelled princess still enchants.
Rachel Redford, The Guardian, 23 March 2008
Edith Nesbit crafts an adventure in which three children on summer vacation encounter an enchanted castle and a magic ring. While the story may be a hundred years old, Joanna Page brings freshness and urgency to the tale. Her children live up to their descriptors – officious Jerry, nonchalant Jimmy, and practical Kathleen – and they’re brought to life with just the right amount of a British accent. Page moves the narration briskly, letting the layers and intricacies of the story shine – from the children’s first realization of the ring’s power to the coming to life of the Ugly Wugglies. Try this over school vacation.
A. R., AudioFile Magazine
Neville Jason narrates with an upper-crust accent, then deftly shifts to the characters’ distinctive singsong Cornish speech
A vivid classic set in a remote rural corner of early Victorian England features conflicting values, class dichotomy, opposing principles, and romantic drama. Never ceasing to be relevant, Hardy’s classic endures as Bathsheba Everdene waivers between wielding her feminine wiles to secure love and marriage and maintaining her stoic independence and self-reliance. Neville Jason narrates with an upper-crust accent, then deftly shifts to the characters’ distinctive singsong Cornish speech and earthy expressions. He adapts well to the tones of women and the elderly. The audiobook’s musical interludes, while striking the moods reflected in scenes, are slightly too strident – but are not a distraction from the novel’s fatalistic turmoil and picturesque descriptions.
A.W., AudioFile
A vivid classic set in a remote rural corner of early Victorian England features conflicting values, class dichotomy, opposing principles, and romantic drama. Never ceasing to be relevant, Hardy’s classic endures as Bathsheba Everdene waivers between wielding her feminine wiles to secure love and marriage and maintaining her stoic independence and self-reliance. Neville Jason narrates with an upper-crust accent, then deftly shifts to the characters’ distinctive singsong Cornish speech and earthy expressions. He adapts well to the tones of women and the elderly. The audiobook’s musical interludes, while striking the moods reflected in scenes, are slightly too strident – but are not a distraction from the novel’s fatalistic turmoil and picturesque descriptions.
A.W., AudioFile
What a great theatrical experience
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
If it’s been a while since you tackled Goethe’s Faust – like, forever – don’t wait a moment longer. John R. Williams’s sparkling English translation is delightful, full of wit and delicious rhymes, and would be reason enough to fling yourself at it, but this full-cast production more than doubles the pleasure. The actors play it as if we were all Faust and hell were going to be a lot worse than other people. The performances are marvellous, and the sound effects clever and often gorgeous (the choir!). After this rendering of ’Walpurgisnacht,’ you’ll never see Hallowe’en the same again. One might call this Harry Potter for grown-ups, except that the good guys – well, I wouldn’t want to give away the ending. What a great theatrical experience.
B.G., AudioFile
Whimsical, satirical, passionate, playful, savage
If you like long walks, slow cooking and staring out of the window at nothing in particular, this anthology is for you. The key to enjoying these essays by some of the finest exponents of the English language – Swift, Goldsmith, Johnson, Carlyle, Hazlitt, Lamb et al – on a variety of subjects – chasing loose women, building railways, eating children, lying in bed – is time: they cannot be rushed. Take them at the same leisurely, measured pace as Joseph Addison’s opening sentence: “When I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable.” Whimsical, satirical, passionate, playful, savage – the style may vary, but the quality of the writing belongs to a golden age of literature that disappeared with the quill pen. I bet Neville Jason, whose Latin is as perfect as his English (the essays bristle with classical quotations), still writes with one.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
“He who lives everywhere lives nowhere,” wrote Montaigne 400 years ago. Another jewel in this fine collection is Richard Steele’s account of the “inexpressible pleasure” of an early-morning trip down the Thames, picking up gardeners of apricots and melons on their way to market. Neville Jason's voice is irresistible.
Rachel Redford, The Guardian
The point of this book is to highlight the essay form as a relatively short, concise piece that tightly argues an idea. Many of the works included are funny, and some are downright shocking, but they’re all fascinating. Neville Jason has selected his favorites and delivers them in what could be called the quintessential British reading voice. It’s deep, precise, mellifluous, authoritative, and distinctive. His phrasing and diction are superb, and he pronounces every word with nary a swallowed consonant. Jason also knows how to present these classics so they ring true to the modern ear, which is not easy considering that most people have not extensively read these authors. Perhaps after hearing Jason’s performance, they will.
R.I.G., AudioFile
[this] will delight children on both sides of the pond
Thirty-nine poems by English authors range in length from 15 seconds to about 16 minutes. Many will be familiar titles: Jabberwocky, The Jumblies, The Owl and the Pussycat, Old Mother Hubbard, The Tyger, The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, If, and The Pied Piper of Hamelin. The authors of the 39 poems include Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, John Keats, William Thackeray, Hilaire Belloc, A. A. Milne, Walter de la Mare, William Blake, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Browning, and the prolific Anonymous. The readers/presenters are British actors of note and include Anton Lesser, Roy McMillan, Rachel Bavidge, Katinka Wolf, Richard Wilson, David Timson, Anne Harvey, Simon Russell Beale, and Timothy West. Their presentations are excellent, bringing to life the bizarre, the mysterious, the humorous. The walrus and carpenter weep even as they devour the compliant oysters. Humpty Dumpty sings of little fishes. The Bogus-Boo comes out at night with his six ears and eight paws. The Jumblies go to sea in a sieve. Both the rats and the children of Hamelin are piped away. And a Cockney accent ’elps the baby go dahn the plug ’ole. This is a wonderful introduction to familiar British verse which will delight children on both sides of the pond.
Janet Julian, soundcommentary.com
Favourite Poems for Children introduces them to such delights as My Shadow, The Listeners, The Pied Piper of Hamelin and many more, and readers include Simon Russell Beale, Timothy West and Anton Lesser. Another bedtime must!
Kati Nicholl, Daily Express
The 39 poems here are classics of imagination and whimsy, alive with the great and mysterious power that language exercises over childhood. With a couple of exceptions, the poets are British, and their verses are suffused with the golden aura of childhood’s halcyon days. All but one of the nine readers here are professional actors. The poems range in mood from the the stirring potency of William Blake’s The Tyger, magnificently read by Timothy West, to the inspired high jinks of Lewis Carroll’s and Edward Lear’s nonsense poems, and the linguistic confusion of Laura Richard’s Eletelephony. There are adventuresome pieces, such as The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, read with intoxicating Scots brio by Anton Lesser, and many tales of busy doings. Interspersed throughout are passages of classical music. This is a recording for your permanent collection.
Katherine A. Powers, The Washington Post
recorded with wit and clarity by Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan
Joyceans worldwide will celebrate Bloomsday on Tuesday with readings from Ulysses in honour of Leopold Bloom’s day-long odyssey through the streets of Dublin to the arms of his wife, Molly. This year, there will be a rival attraction: the launch of a Naxos recording of Finnegans Wake, the novel Joyce worked on for 17 years after Ulysses. It’s estimated that a complete recording of this eccentric masterpiece would run to about 20 CDs, but Naxos has made an attractive abridgement in four, recorded with wit and clarity by Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan. I’ve never met anyone who has actually managed to read every page of this extraordinary book, from its famous opening: “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay ...” and there can be little doubt that Joyce intended his work to be listened to as much as read. This brilliant recording is the perfect short cut for slackers, poseurs and insomniacs.
Robert McCrum, The Observer
Essays were the chatty columns of their times, personal, opinionated, intended to amuse as well as to instruct. Neville Jason’s selection of Favourite Essays: An Anthology is full of contrasts, with subjects as disparate as Thackeray on ogres, Hazlitt on the joys of tramping cross-country alone and Ruskin campaigning against a Lakeland railway. It begins with Michel de Montaigne (the inventor of the form) and Francis Bacon (for me the finest of all essayists), and ends with Charles Dickens on May Day and G.K. Chesterton on lying in bed. Some are well known – Swift’s satirical A Modest Proposal, Charles Lamb’s haunting Dream Children – others, such as Richard Steele’s jaunt through London in the early eighteenth century, wonderful discoveries.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Time magazine includes Finnegans Wake among its 100 Greatest Books of the 20th century. Stanislaus, Joyce’s brother, called it "the witless wandering of literature before its final extinction", but that might just be sibling rivalry. Whatever your take (assuming, of course, that you’ve read it – most people haven’t) on the novel that took Joyce 17 years to write, some of it in Bognor, no one would deny that it is an incredibly difficult, if not totally impossible, book to read. Here’s a taste: "in their bed of trial, on the bolster of hardship, by the glimmer of memory, under coverlets of cowardice, Albatrus Nyanzer with Victa Nyanza, his mace of might mortified, her beautifell hung up on a nail, he, Mr of our fathers, she, our moddereen ru arue rue, they, ay, by the hodypoker and blazier, they are, as sure as dinny drops into the dyke . . . A cry off. Where are we at all? And whenabouts in the name of space? I don’t understand."
And chances are you don’t either, but don’t fret. Just listen as you would to Rachmaninov or reggae or rap, whatever turns you on, for if ever a book cried out to be listened to, this is it and Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan have such wonderful voices. A while ago they did Joyce’s Ulysses unabridged, which is also considered hard-going, but is Polyanna compared to this. There’s not a lot of point in telling you what it’s all about even if I could. It hinges vaguely on the Earwicker family, Humphrey Chimpden, his wife Anna Livia Plurabelle and their three children Shem, Shaun and Isobel, but it’s also a history of Ireland, Irish mythology, Greek mythology, French folk tales, opera, philosophy – anything you like, it’s there. It’s exuberant, outrageous, funny, extraordinary, full of blarney and charm and heart-rending music – just like Ireland. I loved it.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
read by the versatile and compelling Rupert Degas
Today’s audiobooks are ideal for Easter fun-runners and long-distance harriers alike. Tom McNab lived and breathed athletics as competitor, coach and sports writer for 40 years before writing his marathon of a novel, Flanagan’s Run, which was an instant bestseller on its publication in 1982. Set in 1931, in the depths of the Depression, it characterises the leading runners in a race from Los Angeles to New York. The prizes are vast but weather, Chicago chicanery and envious 1932 Olympics organisers seem set on destroying the adventure. Sprinters can opt for the abridged version, but I recommend the long-haul version. Both are read by the versatile and compelling Rupert Degas.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
In March 1931 Charles Flanagan, a flamboyant American entrepreneur, staged the greatest long-distance race in history: 3,000 miles from LA to New York, with $150,000 for the winner. Two thousand competitors from 61 countries took part, including the Hitler Youth team, regularly monitored from Berlin by Dr Goebbels; Juan Martinez, a 19-year-old Mexican running to save his village from starvation; and Hugh McPhail, a Glaswegian miner. Of the 221 female entrants Kate Sheridan, a glamorous chorus girl from Chicago, proved to be the toughest. By the time the runners had crossed the Mojave Desert, battled through flash floods and struggled across the Rockies, half the competitors had dropped out. By the time they reached Chicago Flanagan’s financial backers were also pulling out. Enter the mob, the FBI and J Edgar Hoover.
No, of course it’s not true – it’s a novel, a wonderful novel based on fact. In 1929, at the height of the depression, CC Pyle (aka Cash and Carry Pyle) did indeed organise two transcontinental races, New York to LA and back. Along with professional athletes, the event attracted hundreds of the homeless, unemployed "buddy can you spare a dime?" brigade, less interested in winning than having the three meals a day and roof over their heads guaranteed to every competitor. When it was published in 1982, Flanagan’s Run topped the bestseller charts and was optioned by Hollywood. McNab wanted Jane Fonda to play Kate, probably because he’d just seen her in They Shoot Horses Don’t They?, another endurance marathon. McNab, sports writer, Olympic coach and consultant for Chariots of Fire, is still hopeful that, though Fonda is no longer in the running, the screen version might be. For once, audio isn’t an option, it’s the option. Flanagan’s Run inexplicably is no longer in print.
Sue Arnold, Guardian
In 1931, wheeler-dealer, gambler, and promoter Charles Flanagan offers an enormous jackpot to the winner of the first ever Trans-America race. Over 2,000 people sign on, including professional and amateur athletes; ordinary, out-of-shape folks hit hard by the Depression; a contingent of Hitler Youth; a burlesque dancer; and many others. Tom McNab’s 1982 novel chronicles far more than a cross-country footrace, and narrator Rupert Degas keeps the 3,000-mile journey exciting, exhilarating, and exhausting. Degas gives substance to McNab’s detailed character snapshots with impeccable accents and energetic personality shifts. His narration of the constantly changing American landscape – the Rockies, the Mojave, the Great Plains – provides a keen sense of place. Degas’s sensitive performance of this epic adventure makes the listener the clear winner. Liner notes that include bios and an essay by McNab accompany the CD edition.
S.J.H., AudioFile
Sports fans will relish Flanagan’s Run (available abridged and unabridged). Set in 1931 in the depths of the Depression, it characterizes the leading runners in a foot race from Los Angeles to New York for which the glittering prizes are vast. But weather, Chicago chicanery and the perfidious 1932 Olympics organizers combine to imperil the great adventure. Sprinters can go for the abridged version, but I recommend the long haul for full development of characters and painful suspense. Both are read by the versatile and always compelling Rupert Degas.
The Times/Sunday Times Best Audiobooks of the year
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Degas’s treasure trove of accents
At the height of the Depression, in 1931, entrepreneur Charles Flanagan organises the Trans-America race, in which 2,000 runners from across the globe compete for a $150,000 top prize. But the sports establishment tries to scupper what they see as a threat to the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. No less impressive than the fictional runners’ gruelling three-month journey (50 miles a day through desert and mountains) is the pathos of the individuals’ experiences which McNab creates – and Degas’s treasure trove of accents bring to life.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Today’s audiobooks are ideal for Easter fun-runners and long-distance harriers alike. Tom McNab lived and breathed athletics as competitor, coach and sports writer for 40 years before writing his marathon of a novel, Flanagan’s Run, which was an instant bestseller on its publication in 1982. Set in 1931, in the depths of the Depression, it characterises the leading runners in a race from Los Angeles to New York. The prizes are vast but weather, Chicago chicanery and envious 1932 Olympics organisers seem set on destroying the adventure. Sprinters can opt for the abridged version, but I recommend the long-haul version. Both are read by the versatile and compelling Rupert Degas.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
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[Bill Homewood is an] accomplished reader
This fast-moving little story and its accomplished reader takes the theme of vigilante justice out of this current polished, slick, technology-dependent world and brings it back to a simpler, more black-and-white one.
Joanna Theiss, soundcommentary.com
By now, it’s a familiar trope: the laws of mankind are not sufficient to right the biggest wrongs, or to prevent the gravest evils, and so a few righteous people are required to set the world right again, to get revenge for the helpless, and to do it all in style. We have seen this theme crop up in comic books (characters such as Batman go where the police cannot), in movies (the Irish brothers of The Boondock Saints kill the sinful with panache), and on television (the title character of the Showtime series Dexter, murders the guilty who managed to escape society’s punishments), but maybe because Edgar Wallace’s The Four Just Men was written more than a hundred years ago, it is so original – so elementary – that it feels new again.
Wallace’s vigilantes are four shadowy, vaguely criminal men who seek to correct the world’s ills, in this case by threatening to kill the British Foreign Secretary unless he blocks passage of an unjust law, one that would send foreign political criminals back to the corrupt lands from which they fled. The unfolding of the four’s scheme, the Minister of State’s reaction to their threats, and the work of the tireless police force to prevent the Minister’s death, all lead up to a suspenseful, almost comic-bookesque climax (and it will not come as a surprise that Wallace was a co-writer of the short story King Kong).
Given that Wallace wrote The Four Just Men in 1905, police procedure and investigation in this tale is far less advanced than the modern day – CSI, this isn’t – and the methods utilized by the vigilantes and the police in their respective quests may have seemed novel and inventive then, but are amusingly antiquated; for instance, this listener found herself mentally screaming, ’Dust for fingerprints!’ more than once. But this element just adds to the fun: rather than rely on decades of experience of police techniques, not to mention the discovery of DNA, Wallace’s police rely only on instinct.
Reader Bill Homewood seems to revel equally in reading in the Spanish accent of one of the nefarious vigilantes, the bumbling tones of one of the dastardly members of parliament, and the proud, proper voice of the beleaguered Foreign Secretary. Bill Homewood, a longtime television actor, seems to be having as much fun reading as we are listening. This fast-moving little story and its accomplished reader takes the theme of vigilante justice out of this current polished, slick, technology-dependent world and brings it back to a simpler, more black-and-white one.
Joanna Theiss, SoundCommentary
When it debuted as a newspaper serial in 1905, The Four Just Men was an immediate sensation in England due in large part to author Edgar Wallace’s clever promotion campaign. Unfortunately, he created an ill-considered concept as Wallace offered prize money to readers able to guess the solution to the mystery – but he didn’t limit the number of winners. So many figured out the answer that Wallace went into debt and left his publisher holding the bag. Still, the novel launched his career, led to a series of sequels, and ultimately the book was updated into a film in 1939 and a lavish TV series remake in 1959.
Now 106 years old, The Four Just Men still commands critical respect, admittedly more for witty style and plot innovation than literary substance. It’s the story of three vigilantes with one reluctant collaborator publicly threatening to kill a British Minister if he doesn’t remove his support for an immigration bill they oppose. Scotland Yard is justly worried – the ’Four Just Men’ are suspected of 16 previous successful assassinations around the globe. While the characters and motives are thinly sketched, the suspense is what the story is all about – how can these men be caught if no clues exist and how can they carry out the most publicized murder of the century with Downing Street wall-to-wall with protective police protection?
Another mystery for modern readers might be – why purchase an audiobook adaptation of this thriller when free electronic versions of The Four Just Men and its sequels are readily available on the net? The answer is reader Bill Homewood. An actor with considerable stage, screen, and voice-over experience, Homewood uses a number of dialects and accents for the wide cast of characters with both British and European flavor. The different personalities of the ’Four Just Men’ are perhaps more distinctive in this audio version than on the printed page as Wallace provided little in the way of character description or back-story. Homewood not only gives the main protagonists individual presences, but the detectives, government officials, and other supporting characters come alive with dimensions more fleshed out than in the original dialogue.
At four hours and 31 minutes, the unabridged The Four Just Men is a quick read that should intrigue modern readers partly because of its resonance with current issues – the justifications of the vigilantes seem quite close to the claims of modern terrorists, blackmailing the British government if their aims are not met. Still, they are drawn as heroic figures able to outfox the best efforts of British law enforcement. The book is clever, intended as light-reading but with new overtones and contexts never intended in the first years of the twentieth century. This audiobook is likely to gain both Edgar Wallace and Bill Homewood new fans, with hopefully more to come from the latter. Now, that would be just…
Dr Wesley Britton, BookPleasures
Four men sit around a café table in Cadiz discussing business – the business of murder. Thus begins Wallace’s classic 1905 thriller about a quartet of ruthless, glamorous, rich international vigilantes who call themselves the Four Just Men. How it came to be published is as exciting as the plot, but let’s start with the story. Sir Philip Ramon, the British foreign secretary, ’a firm, square-jawed, big-mouthed man with that shade of blue in his eyes that one looks for in peculiarly heartless criminals and particularly famous generals’ (you can tell right away that Wallace cut his literary teeth in Fleet Street), receives a death threat. The letter politely explains that, unless he persuades the government to prevent the proposed Aliens Extradition Political Offences Bill from becoming law, he will be assassinated. It is signed simply ’Four Just Men’. Why Manfred, Gonsalez, Poiccart and Thery want the bill quashed isn’t that important – something to do with the Spanish succession. What keeps you listening to Homewood’s impressive range of European accents is the dazzling resourcefulness and audacity of the plotters. They leave bombs in the members’ bar of the Commons. Freshly licked envelopes arrive on editors’ desks with instructions to… but enough; chill your own spines.
It was first serialised in the Daily Mail with the promise of a cash prize to whoever came up with the correct solution to the mystery. Wallace agreed to underwrite the prize money himself. He was a hugely popular writer; in 1920 it was reckoned that a quarter of the books read in Britain were his, but alas, that didn’t make him a businessman. He omitted to notice that the small print of the competition rules did not limit the number of winners. The book was a bestseller, but he died penniless while working on the script for his best known film, King Kong. I’d call that rough justice.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
This ... hits all the book’s emotional highpoints
This audio version of Shelley’s classic hits all the book’s emotional highpoints thanks to a terrific tag team of readers – a choice that is amply justified by the book’s structure: explorer Robert Walton’s correspondence with his sister; Victor Frankenstein’s narration of his life and misguided efforts to play God; and the infamous monster’s first-person account of how he made his way in the world. All three narrators are adept at modulating their tone to suit a scene’s mood – Roger May reads Walton’s sections, Daniel Philpott narrates Frankenstein’s, and Jonathan Oliver handles the monster’s sections – but the heavy lifting falls to Philpott, who conveys his character’s passion, ambition, and ultimate horror at what his creation has done, which includes an accidental killing that strikes the scientist very close to home. For any listener familiar only with filmed treatments of this seminal tale of terror, this is a good way to experience the original.
Publishers Weekly
A gripping and chillingly gothic narration
Mary Shelley’s original tale is not the horror story it has become. Both the inquisitive scientist, Frankenstein, and his terrifying creation are treated with great compassion. A gripping and chillingly gothic three-voice narration. Comes with CD-ROM study guide.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
the world’s first sci-fi thriller
Friends on holiday abroad, holed up by bad weather, pass the time by telling spooky stories by the fireside. It’s a common scenario, but when three of them are Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Shelley’s dauntingly clever fiancée, daughter of a famous feminist writer and an equally famous philosophical anarchist, they’ll probably come up with something a bit classier than the “dark and stormy night” variety. Byron’s started the vampire genre. Mary’s, published in 1818, became the world’s first sci-fi thriller. Remind your teenage children of this significant fact, or the often OTT language used in this gothic horror story of a murderous man-made monster running amok in the Arctic and sundry picturesque Swiss villages might make them lose heart.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
[a] detailed exposition
The bound captives drowned in holed boats in the Seine were just some of the thousands massacred during the years of the French Revolution. This detailed exposition shows how its ideals formed the basis of today’s liberal democracies and how its excesses were a forerunner of 20th-century repressions.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
I approached The French Revolution – In a Nutshell unwillingly: it was the last of a pile of promising but soon disappointing titles that I had put in my car for sampling; it smacked of the schoolroom. How wrong I was. At the off Roy McMillan accurately
predicted that all I knew about the French Revolution was derived from Baroness Orczy, A Tale of Two Cities and such famous images as Marat stabbed in his bath. His reading of Neil Wenborn’s canter through the financial and social causes, its violent progress and its significance for democracy is enthralling.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
A gripping narrative of quite another kind is to be found in Neil Wenborn’s The French Revolution – In a Nutshell. These cataclysmic events, beginning with the
revelations of France’s lavish national extravagance and iniquitous taxation system, the collapse of the monarchy and continuing through the eruption of political turmoil into riots, tribunals, terror, military dictatorship and war, are really the foundation of modern Europe. (What price UKIP?) The questions raised seem blindingly contemporary to us in the modern world – the relationship between citizen and state, liberty and law, idealism and the realms of the possible, political ends and means. Not very festive, you may think, but this would be a present to treasure whose value will not decline even after years of use.
Robert Giddings, Tribune Magazine
Between 1789 and 1799, 10 years of violent turmoil in France grew out of Europe’s Enlightenment. After the pillars of power – the Catholic Church, the aristocracy, and the monarchy – fell, continued intramural conflicts stained the decade. In 1799, Napoleon assumed power in a coup and declared the revolution to be over. The author condenses this complex, controversial, and critical period into ‘a nutshell,’ or 75 minutes of audio. British narrator Roy McMillan aptly fits the performance bill with his impeccable French. He chooses a pace that is appropriate to delivering great quantities of abbreviated information while still allowing listeners time to absorb it. His performance succeeds in its succinct reporting of a consequential historical period, and one hopes it will whet the curiosity of those less familiar with these events, inspiring them to further exploration of these murderous times.
J.A.H., AudioFile
The former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, the story goes, was once asked to comment on the significance of the French revolution. ‘It is too early to say,’ he replied. Happily for us Neil Wenborn is prepared not just to produce a vivid potted history of the political and social events that led to the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 and the purges that followed in Robespierre's murderous reign of terror but also, unlike Zhou, to assess its longterm influences worldwide. Succinct, entertaining, thought-provoking – everything the perfect history lesson should be.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
A must for any collection
Naxos AudioBooks and David Timson offer a collection of the best of Shakespeare’s love sonnets in celebration of the 400th anniversary of their first appearance in print. They’re perfect for audio. Director Timson lets the poems speak for themselves through the voices and interpretations of a group of diverse and talented actors. Listeners are treated to some of the Bard’s lesser-known sonnets as well as some of his most famous, including David Tenant’s reading of Sonnet 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”; Juliet Stevenson’s version of Sonnet 116: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds...‘” and David Timson‘s rendering of Sonnet 29: “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes...” Each gem illustrates Shakespeare’s take on the multifaceted nature of love, from obsession and possession to longing and delight. A must for any collection. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
S.J.H., AudioFile
Fiona Shaw’s mesmerising reading is a tour de force
When writers linger on close encounters of a genital kind it can make for tough listening. Anne Enright is undoubtedly a writer whose work, like that of James Joyce, is intensified by hearing it aloud. Fiona Shaw’s mesmerising reading of her 2007 Man Booker prize novel The Gathering is a tour de force.
But the story is a tough one to take: we are lodged in the anguished head of a frequently drunk, sexual obsessive whose too-tidy world is imperfectly papered over her muddled memories of childhood. The tipping point that forces her to confront her ill-starred Irish family and to revisit and reinterpret her past is the suicide of the charming waster of a brother who shared its horrors with her. Not, then, a cheerful earful, with overtones of the woodshed in Cold Comfort Farm, but one that lovers of deft word-handling and searingly truthful exposure of human frailty may enjoy sipped in small doses (to leave time for reflection), perhaps when alone.
Christina Hardyment, The Times, 15 March 2008
So accustomed have I become to having to wait months, sometimes even years, for the latest Booker prizewinner to come out, that I couldn’t believe my luck to find this up there on the shelves in my local library, alongside the Christies and Coopers, Trollopes and Taylor Bradfords. A good 75% of my library’s talking book selection are popular novels by women writers. At the last count there were only two books, The Ghost Road and The Blind Assassin, by the six women who have won the Booker in the past twenty years. Such are the vagaries of audio publishing that two of last year’s entries, On Chesil Beach and Mr Pip, came out on CD before they had even reached the shortlist.
Enough griping. The Gathering is here and we print-intolerant book lovers should be grateful to Naxos – first, for being so previous and second, for having the nous to get the incomparable Fiona Shaw to read it. Frankly I’m not sure I’d have lasted the course without her subtle, humorous, sensitive reading. If you like deeply depressing family sagas awash with skeletons in cupboards, drunks, misfits, children screwed up by religion and sexual abuse, you’ll enjoy The Gathering. The narrator – Veronica, 39, former shopping journalist, married to a successful banker – is number seven of twelve Irish children: Midge, Bea, Ernest, Stevie, Ita, Mossie, Liam, Veronica, Kitty, Alice and the twins, Ivor and Jem. Far from being a happy family who could field their own football team plus reserve, with the exception of Jem they’re a mess. Liam’s suicide prompts the family to gather and Veronica to delve deep into its unhappy history. Beautifully written, brilliantly read, but I still think Mr Pip should have won the Booker.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian, 19 April 2008
Overall, this recording is superb
M.R. James’s ghost stories were written, in the first place, to be heard, preferably in a cosy, dimly-lit room, with a reassuring glass of whisky or brandy close at hand. The ideal situation, of listening to Mr Provost himself, is, of course, impossible today, but we are remarkably fortunate, thanks to Robert Lloyd Parry, in having the chance to experience some of the stories in circumstances not wholly dissimilar to those of Dr James’s first audiences. The next best thing, I suppose, is a recording, to be enjoyed in the comfort of our own homes, and it’s a little startling to realise how recently recorded readings became available. To be sure, there was the occasional radio broadcast (and wouldn’t we just love to hear Valentine Dyall telling the tale of A Neighbour’s Landmark?) but they were rare enough. Then, about thirty years ago, almost as if to atone for his part in Jonathan Miller’s perverse film Whistle and I’ll Come to You, Michael Hordern began his superb series of readings for Argo, nineteen stories in all – or, rather, eighteen plus Stories I Have Tried to Write. More recently, David Collings made a similarly excellent recording for Craftsman Audio Books: The Complete Ghost Stories of MR James, which includes all the tales from the four volumes, plus The Experiment, The Malice of Inanimate Objects, A Vignette and The Fenstanton Witch, but, oddly, excludes Stories I Have Tried to Write. Sir Michael’s and Mr Collings’ are, together, the touchstone, the standard by which one can judge other such readings. I had been wondering if, in time, the admirable team at Naxos AudioBooks would tackle Dr James’s disturbing tales… and now, with great pleasure, I welcome this recording of his first collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Both David Timson and Stephen Critchlow are superb vocal actors, with very pleasing voices, the voices of men you could sit and chat with over a pint of beer or a glass of port. Not the sort of voice that you’d immediately associate with the reading of ghost stories: they don’t have the silken menace of Vincent Price or the doom-laden resonance of Christopher Lee. But when you think about it, most of the best ghost stories call for a less – what shall we say? – a less theatrical approach from the narrator. David Timson in particular is an actor I’ve long admired. His recording of the Sherlock Holmes saga is a feat to rank with Radio 4’s complete dramatisation, and he accomplished it with dedication, erudition, panache and wit – the same qualities that both men bring to MRJ’s ghost stories. Mr Timson’s brief essay which accompanies these recordings is informative, intelligent and perceptive. I hadn’t considered the possibility that the ’crime’ of Canon Alberic ’is the destruction of a priceless old book, to provide material for his scrapbook – a sin MR James, as an antiquarian, could not forgive’, but it’s a rather appealing notion. As always with Naxos, the narratives are subtly enhanced by well-chosen music, all unfamiliar to me, by Chausson, Vieuxtemps and Eugène Ysaye. Overall, this recording is superb. There are just two small points that I ought to mention. Stephen Critchlow’s two readings, The Mezzotint and Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, are taken from a 2 CD set released in 2007, Classic Ghost Stories (highly recommended, by the way), in which Mr Critchlow also reads Rats and two tales by Charles Dickens. That’s not a matter for complaint, but I can’t help thinking it would have been nice to have the same voice reading all eight of the Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. The only fault here is a small one, but odd. In Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook, David Timson consistently pronounces the name ’Comminges’ as ’Commeen’ – as if it had been printed in his script without the letter G, making it ’Commines’. A curious little error, but so very little that it can’t spoil the immense pleasure I get from listening to Ghost Stories of an Antiquary.
Roger Johnson, The Ghosts and Scholars/M R James Newsletter
a suitable introduction for a young audience
In The Glory of Ancient Greece young listeners will learn about the twelve most important gods and how they were created as well as their all too human qualities. Zeus for example was not an admirable fellow, being highly promiscuous. We learn about the Trojan War in the Iliad and the adventures of Odysseus. Greece before 500 BCE was a collection of small city states ruled by kings and later by aristocrats. In 776 BCE the first games were held at Olympia. Thales predicted an eclipse in 585 BCE and Pythagoras gave the world a mathematical formula. Sparta and Athens were often at odds and Greeks consulted the Oracle at Delphi. The Persians invaded and famous battles were fought at Marathon and Thermopylae. Greek warfare is described in some detail as is the birth of democracy. The Greek empire flourished under Pericles and Greek theater is celebrated, especially the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Both the Peloponnesian War and the plague attack Athens. Archimedes made a great scientific discovery and Socrates asked people to think, leading to his death. The book ends with the rise of Alexander the Great. Brief classical music excerpts separate chapters.
The book is narrated by former Royal Marine Commando Benjamin Soames who trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. He has appeared on TV and the stage and has narrated fifteen audiobooks for Naxos, many of them junior classics set in ancient Greece and Rome. Hugh Griffith has four books available in the Junior Classics catalogue at Naxos Audiobooks. Besides The Glory of Ancient Greece Hugh Griffith has written Ancient Greek Philosophy: An Introduction, Aristotle: An Introduction, and Great Rulers of Ancient Rome and all are available from Naxos Audiobooks. The Glory of Ancient Greece is detailed but not graphic, a suitable introduction for a young audience.
Janet Julian, soundcommentary.com
Starting with familiar tales of Prometheus and Odysseus and ending with Alexander the Great, Hugh Griffith gives listeners a quick tour of Ancient Greece. British narrator Benjamin Soames takes the history seriously while making the examples and comparisons in Griffith’s writing fun. Those examples – such as describing a Spartan camp as ’a kind of Scout troop’ – show that this history is aimed at a young audience, but it’s done well enough for a family road trip as well. As an introduction to Greek history, it’s a good one, covering a lot of ground quickly and even taking a moment to consider the historical basis of the myths. What’s more, there’s a reference map in the accompanying booklet.
J.A.S., AudioFile
Superbly read
Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook focuses on the deeply divided feminine psyche: political stance, sexuality, relations with women friends and maternal persona. Superbly read by Juliet Stevenson, it needs to be revisited as women struggle today.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
First published in 1962, Doris Lessing’s brilliant work defined a generation of women disillusioned by a world that relegated them to second-class citizenship. Lessing’s book became a “feminist bible” for women of the ‘60s, taking on the ideas of female sexuality, professional responsibility, friendship, political disenchantment, and personal betrayal. Juliet Stevenson gives a no-nonsense yet deeply sensitive portrayal of writer Anna Wulf, who is trying to keep herself from falling apart by keeping four notebooks—black for her writing experiences, red for her politics, yellow for her relationships and emotions, and blue for daily accounts. As Anna explores her life, Stevenson’s sharp, intelligent narration clarifies each thoughtful comment, each personal failure, and each triumph. Stevenson’s impeccable performance makes Lessing’s literary classic a timeless treasure.
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
S.J.H., AudioFile
First published in 1962, Doris Lessing’s brilliant work defined a generation of women disillusioned by a world that relegated them to second-class citizenship. Lessing’s book became a “feminist bible” for women of the ‘60s, taking on the ideas of female sexuality, professional responsibility, friendship, political disenchantment, and personal betrayal. Juliet Stevenson gives a no-nonsense yet deeply sensitive portrayal of writer Anna Wulf, who is trying to keep herself from falling apart by keeping four notebooks—black for her writing experiences, red for her politics, yellow for her relationships and emotions, and blue for daily accounts. As Anna explores her life, Stevenson’s sharp, intelligent narration clarifies each thoughtful comment, each personal failure, and each triumph. Stevenson’s impeccable performance makes Lessing’s literary classic a timeless treasure.
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
S.J.H., AudioFile
Give it a few minutes, and you will be agog
Whether you know Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier or not, don’t miss this reading by Kerry Shale, who varies his performance brilliantly as the story shifts from platitudes to a rollercoaster ride of intimate revelation. Written on the eve of the First World War and satirising the complacency and immorality of the age, the book is an experimental narrative, moving to and fro in time with explanations inserted as if recounted to a friend. ‘This is the saddest story I have ever heard’ is the opening line, but within seconds we are wondering how on earth it can be as we hear of the impeccable social credentials of the two couples at its core. Give it a few minutes, and you will be agog, uncertain whether to laugh at its first-person narrator’s gullibility or cry at the tragic outcome. Poetically resonant and painterly in its word pictures, the book was regarded by Ford as his best. Don’t be misled by the studiously ironic title: the only conflict in the story is that between the sexes.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
‘This is the saddest story I have ever heard’ has to be the best opening sentence of any novel ever written, doubly so when you discover that it is also totally misleading. Confusion, said VS Pritchett, was the mainspring of Ford’s art as a novelist, and nothing, surely, confuses more than having your story told by an unreliable storyteller. John Dowell, The Good Soldier’s narrator, makes Tristram Shandy sound like a beacon of clarity. Ford’s greatest novel, set in 1904, follows the nine-year acquaintance of two couples, the American Dowells and the oh-so-English Ashburnhams, who meet every summer at a fashionable German spa frequented by transatlantic millionaires and Edwardian Eurotrash. Mrs Dowell and Captain Ashburnham have heart conditions – the medical sort – but it soon becomes apparent that, beneath their conventional formality, all four of them have heart problems: the kind associated with passion, jealousy, infidelity, treachery and, in this instance, the violent deaths of two of the protagonists. Far from being a detached observer as that first sentence implies, Dowell is at the very centre of the drama. Here’s where a good reader (and Kerry Shale is one of the best) gives audio the edge over print. His characterisation of Dowell is breathtakingly subtle: the cultured, only just discernible American accent (Dowell comes from Pennsylvania, where "there are more old English families than you would find in any six English counties taken together"), his disarming confidentiality (which in truth is nothing of the sort), and above all his laugh. Never was a laugh less careless, more calculated to deceive. Listen, and I guarantee you’ll be as dazzled by Shale’s performance as I was.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, a novel of desire, cruelty, madness and the rigid snobbery of the Edwardian era, concerns the American Dowells – John and his delicate wife Florence, and the Ashburnhams, ex-soldier squire Teddy and his suffering spouse Leonora. John calls it ‘the saddest story I have ever heard’, but the tale turns out to be a shocking inventory of the appalling things people can do to each other in the name of love. What really went on during their annual sojourns at a German spa only becomes clear as the story unfolds. Kerry Shale’s performance is intimate and compelling, and the listener is gripped by Dowell’s bitter little laughs as he reflects on the perfidy of others, or when he is on the brink of holding back sobs at his own fate.
A performance of such sustained quality as Shale’s would be garlanded with awards in any other medium, but it is the fate of audiobook readers to be unheralded.
Karen Robinson, Sunday Times
Horovitch’s reading is brilliant
Every harassed negotiator, every beleaguered political wife and anyone given to ever-increasing moments of melancholy at the way things are should keep a copy of Hašek’s classic ‘don’t let the bastards get you down’ novel to hand. It’s anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-religion and – praise indeed – even funnier than Catch-22. Joseph Heller based his hero Yossarian on Švejk. Hašek, born in Bohemia in 1883, based the irrepressible Švejk’s career in the first world war on his own rackety life. Horovitch’s multi-voiced, multi-accented reading of the hotchpotch of characters is brilliant: dotty major-generals, hard-drinking priests, lecherous officers and, of course, the good soldier himself, beginning every exchange with ‘Beg to report, sir . . .’ – that he joined the enemy by mistake, missed his train, lost his way, issued the officers with the wrong cipher book (part 1 of Ludwig Ganghofer’s The Sins of the Fathers instead of part 2), and so on. Give it five minutes, you’ll be hooked.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
brought into sharp focus by narrator Rupert Degas’s exceptional reading
Clear distinctions between good and evil are so rare in real life, that it is sometimes comforting to know whether to cheer or hiss at a character before you have heard more than a few lines about them. Gormenghast, the second in a series of three gothic novels by writer Mervyn Peake, draws such a clear line between the righteous and the damned that the listener knows which is which when they hear their names: from the malevolent, power-hungry and cunningly manipulative Steerpike, to Dr Alfred Prunesquallor, the smart-aleck doctor of Castle Gormenghast. Even the name of the castle calls to mind how it is later described: dark, dank, foreboding, with many hidden passageways for hiding wrong doing. The family who lives here, and the hero of this tale, are aptly named Groan: there is Titus, who is seven when Gormenghast picks up, and is the reluctant heir to the throne; Fuschia, his spoiled sister, who like her name comes off as a bit too garish; and their deceased father Lord Sepulchrave. Gormenghast follows Titus as he comes of age and must decide whether to indulge in his desire to shirk obligation and make a life outside of the castle, or to be the much-needed hero and save this ancient, secretive and frankly weird world from a terrible end.
The listener’s appreciation for the clear demarcation between good and evil is also brought into sharp focus by narrator Rupert Degas’s exceptional reading. Degas displays a wide range of accents, vocalizations, and tones, from somber, when he is describing the foreboding castle, to wild and agitated, such as in the final scenes, which are filled with an appropriate showdown between the forces of good and evil, now evident to all the colorfully-named characters. Many male narrators often have difficulty depicting women, since too high a pitch can sound like mockery, while too low can erase any difference between male and female voices. Degas has no such trouble: his vocalization is so expressive and varied that he is able to actually lower his pitch for a female character, such as the Countess Gertrude, Titus’ mother, who is an imposing but largely reclusive woman until disaster requires her assertive leadership; or raise it when depicting the squeaking laughter of Dr Prunesquallor. Gormenghast is abridged and the second in the series, but its simple themes and straightforward plot meant that these factors did not draw away from this colorful work of fantasy.
Joanna Theiss, SoundCommentary
Gothic and sprawling, the ancient castle Gormenghast is the centrepiece of a kingdom cloistered in intrigue and dark rituals. Titus Groan, the kingdom’s 77th earl, and his mother and sister, are the castle’s prisoners. Titus is seven years old. So opens this second volume of Peake’s titanic and sublimely ornate Gormenghast trilogy. Narrator Rupert Degas not only reads the heightened prose with focus and energy, he also makes the entire book more easily accessible by creating distinct and memorable character voices. As Peake practically paints with language, Degas faithfully weaves the poetic colours, shadows, and textures. Peake was a contemporary of Tolkien and a strong influence on the young George Lucas. This abridged reading is an excellent introduction to Peake’s enduring creation of high fantasy.
B.P., AudioFile
Degas’ effortless reading doesn’t overperform
Degas’ effortless reading of Mervyn Peake’s trilogy (and a final installment by Peake’s widow) doesn’t overperform this moving story of a fantastic kingdom where a boy named Titus lives.
Los Angeles Times
Recommended for all fiction collections
Sophy arrives at the Rivenhall household with a monkey. She is not the shy, retiring girl that her cousins had been led to expect. She’s exuberant, clever and resourceful and quickly sets the household on its ear. If it isn’t publicly racing horses, it’s setting up assignations for her cousin and her unsuitable beau or rescuing another cousin from a loan shark. And she does it all with a cheerful determination that makes this story a winner sixty years after its publication. Although it begins with an interminably dull conversation between Sophy’s father and aunt, once Sophy enters the picture, Clare Wille is in her element. Her Sophy brings sunshine to the stage merely by her presence in the scene. Her joyful disposition and quick mind means she sees a solution to every problem, even, and perhaps especially, when that solution will drive her cousin Charles past the end of his reason. Wille shows off vocal range with Spanish Marquessas, every age of person and station in life, including a very memorable gentleman with a cold, and all the timeSophy with a smile in her voice. The hilarious courtship of her cousin Charles, which requires eliminating his current prune-faced fiancée, is what makes Heyer the grand master of Regency Romance. Recommended for all fiction collections.
soundcommentary.com
Claire Wille has exactly the right touch in her reading of The Grand Sophy, which is Regency romance at its very best. When Sir Horace Stanton-Lacy, bound for South America, asks his sister to take in his daughter ’little Sophy’, Lady Ombersley agrees – only to discover that her niece stands 5’ 9” tall, is both great fun and incredibly chic, and is destined to become the belle of every ball she attends. Her cousins soon adore her – except for the eldest, Charles, burdened by the debts his reckless father had left him with. He is betrothed to the dull and humourless Eugenia, and of course he disapproves of Sophy… Full of witty dialogue, delightful family feeling and heart-racing romance – just the thing for a rainy September evening!
Kati Nicholl, Daily Express
I’m not what you could call conversant on all things Georgette Heyer, but I do find myself appreciating her more with each audiobook experience. Yet, I think being relatively new to Heyer’s work may have something to do with my enjoyment of the abridged audio versions of her books. I simply don’t recognise missing content.
Although I had listened to a few unabridged audios in my first days of exploring Heyer, my interest didn’t take hold until I was lured in by Richard Armitage’s narration of Sylvester. I listened for two reasons – I needed to fill the abridged category of my 2010 Listening Challenge and I wanted to hear Armitage. I gave that version an A when I reviewed it at AAR and didn’t think twice about requesting The Grand Sophy for review.
Richard Armitage doesn’t narrate The Grand Sophy, but I was delighted to find that I enjoyed narrator Clare Wille even more! Her narration was simply outstanding. Whereas Armitage’s performance of the female voices left something to be desired, Ms Wille has a full range of pleasing voices for both male and female characters.
Sophy comes to live with her aunt and uncle while her father travels to Brazil. They find her to be kind, resourceful, and certainly more self-assured than the average young lady. Her behaviour can be quite shocking at times – she shoots and rides with great proficiency. Sophy’s cousin, Charles, is the eldest in the household and holds a tight rein on the family’s financial affairs. He’s engaged to an unpleasant, self righteous woman but she’s a sensible choice and therefore, fits his sensible lifestyle. Sophy’s outlook on life, as well as her well-meant manipulations, drives Charles a little crazy.
The Grand Sophy is a witty and charming story with a large cast of characters. The size of the cast did cause confusion at times and made me wonder if an unabridged version could have lessened that confusion. Regardless, I found it quite entertaining and think this is a good starting place for those who are curious about Heyer but have yet to give her a try. Dare I say that, to date, I have relished Heyer’s abridged versions more than her unabridged?
The music preceding and following each chapter was delightful and reminded me of the score from A & E’s production of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It truly set the mood for this type of romance. A request to the audiobook industry – please, I want more Clare Wille. How about recording Devil’s Cub with Ms Wille as narrator?
Lea Hensley, All About Romance blog
This is a fine performance by Clare Wille, reading a sensitive abridgement of The Grand Sophy. The generously built, pistol-packing Sophy is many people’s favourite Georgette Heyer character; certainly her ingenious ways of getting out of apparently disastrous situations are unequalled. This is the fifth of the uniformly fine Naxos abridgements of Heyer; there is also an interview with Wille on the Naxos website that gives intriguing insights into the art of narration.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
I’m not what you could call conversant on all things Georgette Heyer, but I do find myself appreciating her more with each audiobook experience. Yet, I think being relatively new to Heyer’s work may have something to do with my enjoyment of the abridged audio versions of her books. I simply don’t recognize missing content.
Although I had listened to a few unabridged audios in my first days of exploring Heyer, my interest didn’t take hold until I was lured in by Richard Armitage’s narration of Sylvester. I listened for two reasons – I needed to fill the abridged category of my 2010 Listening Challenge, and I wanted to hear Armitage. I gave that version an ’A’ when I reviewed it at AAR and didn’t think twice about requesting The Grand Sophy for review.
Richard Armitage doesn’t narrate The Grand Sophy, but I was delighted to find that I enjoyed narrator Clare Wille even more! Her narration was simply outstanding. Whereas Armitage’s performance of the female voices left something to be desired, Ms Wille has a full range of pleasing voices for both male and female characters.
Sophy comes to live with her aunt and uncle while her father travels to Brazil. They find her to be kind, resourceful, and certainly more self-assured than the average young lady. Her behavior can be quite shocking at times – she shoots and rides with great proficiency.
Sophy’s cousin, Charles, is the eldest in the household and holds a tight rein on the family’s financial affairs. He’s engaged to an unpleasant, self righteous woman but she’s a sensible choice and therefore, fits his sensible lifestyle. Sophy’s outlook on life, as well as her well-meant manipulations, drives Charles a little crazy.
The Grand Sophy is a witty and charming story with a large cast of characters. The size of the cast did cause confusion at times and made me wonder if an unabridged version could have lessened that confusion. Regardless, I found it quite entertaining and think this is a good starting place for those who are curious about Heyer but have yet to give her a try. Dare I say that, to date, I have relished Heyer’s abridged versions more than her unabridged?
The music preceding and following each chapter was delightful and reminded me of the score from A & E’s production of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It truly set the mood for this type of romance. A request to the audiobook industry – please, I want more Clare Wille. How about recording Devil’s Cub with Ms Wille as narrator?
Lea Hensley, All About Romance blog
the perfect vehicle for [Anton Lesser’s] array of voices, accents and characters
Maybe you should listen to this first to understand the impact it had on Mister Pip’s pupils. Too bad they didn’t hear Anton Lesser’s version, though chances are if they had, it would have affected them even more powerfully. Lesser reads so many audiobooks – I’ve just finished his beautiful if soporific rendering of Rumi’s Spiritual Verses – that you forget what a huge range his acting skills cover.
This is the perfect vehicle for his array of voices, accents and characters, starting with the terrifying Magwitch on the run (if that’s an appropriate description of a man wearing a leg iron) from the prison hulks moored off the Essex marshes, to cold, arrogant Estella, hardwired to break men’s hearts, and the steely lawyer Mr Jaggers, beside whom Lord Goldsmith looks like Bambi. The adventures of the upwardly mobile apprentice blacksmith turned gentleman have always trailed far behind Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities on my Dickens hit list – Pip is such an awful snob – but I’m bound to admit that Lesser makes him not only sympathetic but even likeable.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Recommended for absolutely everyone
Canadian actor William Hope reads Naxos AudioBooks’ first unabridged production of Fitzgerald’s classic novel of the Roaring Twenties. It is a book that deserves a perfect reading, and though numerous other narrators have tried—among them Robertson Dean, Anthony Heald, Alexander Scourby, and Tim Robbins—Hope may have come closest to achieving this perfection. He stumbles a bit at the beginning, drawing upon the revelation that narrator Nick Carraway is a Yale man by making the narration somewhat arch, but once he settles down, Hope ably conveys Carraway’s optimistic innocence. He also does quite well with the party guests and the gambler Meyer Wolfsheim, faltering only by making Tom Buchanan sound a bit like a gravel-voiced truck driver. Recommended for absolutely everyone, as even those familiar with the novel may notice something new thanks to Hope’s nuanced (and only mildly faulty) performance. [Gatz, a live ensemble reading of this classic novel, is currently playing to great reviews.—Ed.]
Michael Adams, School Library Journal
very special
Naxos offers many excellent recordings of the Bard, but the breathtaking array of legendary performers – from Sarah Bernhardt to Laurel and Hardy to John Gielgud – makes this title, which includes performances from the beginning of the recording era, very special.
Library Journal
some of the most memorable speeches on record
I thoroughly recommend this all-too-short compilation of some of the most memorable speeches on record. There are all the obvious ones – Socrates after his sentence of death, Elizabeth I at Tilbury, the Gettysburg Address. Martin Luther, Danton, Emmeline Pankhurst, Burke and Fox are also here, but for me the highlight is Charles I from the scaffold. He famously wore two shirts so that if he trembled people wouldn’t think it was from fear. But listening to his long, rambling, repetitive, clearly nervous words you wonder how many of those onlookers were fooled.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
the most enjoyable treat of all
And the most enjoyable treat of all: Simon Russell Beale – a National Treasure in the making – reads Great Speeches and Soliloquies on ever-resourceful Naxos Audio Books.
John Horder, Camden New Journal
Julian Curry takes a light approach to what might be a stuffy subject
Julian Curry takes a light approach to what might be a stuffy subject. A Guide to Wine has enough information contained on the four CDs to keep the most assiduous wine snob entertained, yet it is geared for the novice who wishes to understand how to judge and buy wine, along with all the requisite terminology need. From understanding a wine label to learning what to ask for in restaurants when ordering fish or beef, it’s all here. It’s also an overview of the regions where the best wines are made, and how they are produced. Wine is one of the few pleasures anyone of sophistication can acquire, and in our culture of over-consumption and obesity, sipping and savouring is a welcome indulgence preferable to gulping and slurping.
Jonathan Lowe, Tower Review, Audiobooks Today
Narrator Jasper Britton is spirited and enthusiastic
Narrator Jasper Britton is spirited and enthusiastic in the latest rendition of the eighteenth-century travelogue to nonexistent lands of Lemuel Gulliver. The story is essentially plotless, but Britton keeps the satirical inventiveness rolling along. We all remember Lilliput, with the tiny people, and maybe even Brobdingnag, with the very large people; but how about the angular folks of Laputa, with their bizarre, useless experiments, or the enlightened Houyhnhnm horses that never lie and practice birth control? Gulliver shares stories of England with his various hosts, and Britton is adept at translating Gulliver’s outrage and disbelief at obstructionist lawyers, crooked politicians, needless wars, lack of education for girls, and everything else. The whinnying, horsey voice of the Houyhnhnms that Britton adopts is particularly noteworthy.
A.B., AudioFile
utterly compelling, crystal clear, [and] totally absorbing
There are many recordings of Shakespeare’s most famous play, but now you can enjoy the most legendary of all – the live 1948 broadcast of John Gielgud’s Hamlet. It remains utterly compelling, crystal clear, totally absorbing, with a classic quality that reflects the utter rightness of the interpretation.
There is a delightful unscripted moment in Act V when Esme Percy (playing Osric) can be faintly heard calling admiringly “Oh! Oh! He’s enchanting,” during a brief Gielgud pause.
The third CD can also be put into a computer, where it functions as a CD-ROM with MP3 files, allowing us to listen to a twenty-five minute talk about the play that Gielgud gave on the BBC Third Programme six years later. It provides fascinating insights into the way he approached the role (which he played more than five-hundred times): “I kind of found the part as I went along in a very strange and sincere way which I’d never done in acting. I found for the first time a way to communicate my feeling to the audience because it was so very strong.”
Christina Hardyment, The Times
The brilliant Anton Lesser brings out all this harsh novel’s humanity.
Dickens’s fable about the dark side of utilitarianism is set in smoke-blackened Coketown. Schoolteacher Gradgrind demanded ’Facts, Facts, Facts’ from his pupils, thus practising the harsh principles by which he raised – and ruined – his own children, and which he would ultimately reject. The death of the noble-hearted worker, Stephen Blackpool, symbolises the cruel force of the factory system. Goodness and tenderness are found in the circus people, outside the realm of industry and politics. The brilliant Anton Lesser brings out all this harsh novel’s humanity.
Rachel Redford, the Observer
...in his reading of Hard Times, Anton Lesser finds the perfect voice for every inhabitant of Coketown, from the major players – ’the inflexible, dry and dictatorial’ schoolmaster Gradgrind; circus man Mr Sleary, who lisps away ’like the efforts of a broken old pair of bellows’ – right down to the last subdued schoolgirl. It’s a masterclass and makes for lively listening.
Bella Todd, Time Out
Anton Lesser finds the emotive force behind Dickens’s bleak social commentary, Hard Times, and gives it a unique reading. Dickens’s stock characters are fleshed out by Lesser’s quavering voice and given outward emotions, making these Victorian-era personas more accessible to contemporary listeners. Atypical for a Dickens story, Hard Times lacks any comic relief and reads like a case study of the industrial and utilitarian culture and how the inhabitants of a town built around those ideals are beaten down by it. By reading with a voice more suited to a period romance, Lesser places the emphasis on the feelings of the characters, effectively softening the edges of Hard Times.
F.T., AudioFile
exactly captures the mood
Immersing yourself in a Murakami novel is like entering into an Escher picture, an unsettling world of the mind where urban Japan, contemporary America and a nebulous ‘wonderland’ coexist; where oddly rootless characters seem real but anonymous, Two narratives intertwine: in one, a student newly arrived In a strange town is set to read the dreams locked In library skulls; in the other, a scientist is employed to keep invisible, information-stealing creatures at bay, The American narration with its Japanese words exactly captures the mood.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Murakami’s demanding 1991 novel, newly available on audio, features two parallel narratives reflecting on such issues as death, paranoia, information, freedom, and choice. In the first, read by Adam Sims (After the Quake), an unnamed protagonist becomes involved with an unusually helpful reference librarian, an eccentric scientist, two dangerous thugs, and even more deadly creatures living beneath Tokyo. In the second narrative, read by actor Ian Porter, a separate protagonist finds himself in a walled town and reading the dreams of others with the aid of another librarian. The narratives are told in alternating chapters and gradually intersect. Sims masterfully conveys his hero’s bewilderment at the odd circumstances of his life, while Porter is more sombre in his performance, employing a different kind of tentativeness to convey his character’s uneasy adjustment to a strange new world. This unique blend of noir, sf, and fable owes a considerable debt to Jorge Luis Borges. Fans of Murakami and offbeat literary fiction will find much to like here, as will, naturally, librarians.
Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr. Lib., Library Journal
Murakami’s two stories – which alternate, chapter by chapter – are told by two narrators, who split duties here. Ian Porter is the baritone, thoughtful and deliberative; Adam Sims is lighter spirited, flightier, and more amused by the bizarre comedy of Murakami’s puzzle box. Both readers are well chosen, expertly picking their way across the minefield of this intoxicating, perplexing story. And their balancing act mimics the book’s alternation of tones, styles, and stories. The recording is studded by occasional studio sound effects that are hardly necessary, but do manage to cleverly amplify the woozy, trippy disorientation of the tale.
Publishers Weekly
Delightfully illustrated with generous musical pieces
Taken from humble parents to be a choirboy, six-year-old Haydn endured hunger and harshness, but finally became the “father” of the symphony and the string quartet. Exiled for years in the isolation of the Esterházys’ Hungarian palace, he finally saw London – and the sea – at 60. Delightfully illustrated with generous musical pieces.
Rachel Redford, Observer
David Horovitch reads with the gravitas the work requires
Born in the Ukraine and writing in his adopted language, English, Conrad has fashioned a story of immense power. Heart of Darkness, on the simplest level, is the recounting of a journey up the Congo River by Charles Marlow, captain of a Belgian trading company ferryboat. He tells his story to four colleagues as they rest aboard a ship on the Thames Estuary.
Marlow is tasked with locating a man named Kurtz, a man of innumerable talents and a local legend. The journey up the Congo is a physical journey. It is the journey of a mind. It is the journey of a society. It is ultimately the journey of a soul.
At a time when the United States is grappling with its place as the last remaining super power, Heart of Darkness is a beacon warning of the darker consequences of human endeavor.
Distinguished British stage (on the West End in London as well as with the Royal Shakespeare Company), television (Poirot), and film (his latest is 102 Dalmations) actor David Horovitch reads Heart of Darkness with the gravitas the work requires. He captures Marlowe’s emotional connection to Kurtz’s experience.
Like Marlowe, once you’ve listened to Heart of Darkness, you’ll need time to grapple with Kurtz’s epiphany.
Joseph DiMercurio, Soundcommentary.com
Roy McMillan’s reading glows
Published nearly 40 years ago, Jan Morris’s Pax Britannica trilogy has never been equalled. This first volume of her biography of the British empire runs from Victoria’s accession in 1837 to her Diamond Jubilee in 1897 taking in, besides much else, the Great Game, the Irish famine, the Indian Mutiny, the Jamaica Rebellion and the Scramble for Africa. Elegantly written, it is both delightful and consistently erudite, while Roy McMillan’s reading glows with the same infectious passion for the subject as Jan Morris’s own.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Jan Morris’s Heaven’s Command: An Imperial Progress is the first of her imperial trilogy, Pax Britannica. It isn’t the newest history of the British Empire but it is easily the most readable, with a knack of including details that make us reflect on the present. Roy McMillan thoroughly enjoys narrating a story full of happy warriors and generous spirits that people the far-flung places once so flamboyantly pink with memorable characters, but shrewdly avoids rose-tinted spectacles.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
It’s the subtitle that will doubtless deter pc history departments from recommending the first of Morris’s splendid Pax Britannica trilogy to students. Imperial is not a popular word these days, though I can still remember the ornate duck-egg blue Imperial Bank of India cheque book my Burmese mother kept in her drawer. She wouldn’t have liked Heaven’s Command because she loved the Raj. Morris doesn’t, but neither does she condemn British colonialism out of hand. This is a cool, dry, carefully considered, often irreverent long view of the 60 years between Queen Victoria’s accession in 1837 and her Diamond Jubilee, the golden age, give or take the odd setback, of empire.
Lord Carnarvon, Disraeli’s colonial secretary, nicknamed Twitters, ’had at first found it difficult to understand what imperialism meant. Later he sorted it out in his mind and cogently explained it to others. There were two kinds of imperialism, he said. There was the false kind, Caesarism, despotism, and there was the British kind – a worldwide trust, keeping the peace, elevating the savage, relieving the hungry and uniting the loyalty of all the British people overseas. Imperialism certainly entailed expansionism, but it was not bullying expansionism. It was merely the extension of British institutions and wholesome influences, if necessary by force.’ Well said, Twitters – got it in one. I especially like the ’merely’. Only an eminent Victorian could call the wholesale transportation to far-flung colonial settlements in Canada, Africa, India and Australasia of old Harrovians, Anglicanism, the British army and afternoon tea as ’mere’.
Now, about those setbacks. Morris’s easy, elegant prose changes gear when disasters loom: disasters such as the British retreat from Kabul after the first Afghan war, described by historian Sir John Kaye as ’the most terrible in the history of British arms and a completion of a tragedy whose awful completeness was unexampled in the history of the world’. Of the 16,500 terrified, starving, freezing souls who straggled out of the Afghan capital on 6 January 1842, only one made it to the safety of Jalalabad 90 miles away. The rest were massacred by tribesmen. There were equally gory engagements during the Indian uprising and the Zulu wars. But there were high points too: the Great Exhibition, Stanley finding Dr Livingstone, thousands of miles of transcontinental railways trumpeting the supremacy of British steel and steam. And best of all are the characters, heroes, villains, eccentrics, epitomised by Lord ’Peccavi’ Napier, victor of Sindh, who made his own spectacles. The British empire definitely had its moments.
Sue Arnold, Guardian
Jan Morris acknowledges that this opening volume of her Pax Britannica trilogy, a history of Britain’s empire building from the reign of Queen Victoria to the death of Winston Churchill, is at first too positive in its attitude toward the colonisers. As listeners hear the first section, full of heroic battles read in an excited voice by Roy McMillan, they might agree. However, Morris doesn’t avoid British atrocities like the ’Devil’s Wind’ reprisals for an uprising in India or the murderous violence toward native Tasmanians. McMillan’s reading of this volume captures the energy of battle and the optimism that Britons in the Victorian Age felt toward their expansion and technological feats. McMillan’s reading is well done; however, for additional perspective, listeners may also want to read a history of the Empire in the twentieth century, perhaps Morris’s final volume, Farewell the Trumpets (available Spring 2012).
J.A.S., AudioFile
Roy McMillan narrates this sprawling history of the British Empire during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1897). Morris fills this study with small details and sweeping discussions of all the lands of the empire on which the sun never set. With warm, fluid tones, McMillan’s voice takes the listener to small and large cities around the world. The material is organized around a series of vignettes that bring the period to life, and colorful descriptions capture one’s attention. McMillan uses subtle modulations of voice when delivering direct quotations and interrupts his narration to include all the footnotes, which are digressions and authorial comments rather than explanations. Heaven’s Command is the first of the three audiobook volumes in Morris’s Pax Britannica.
M.B.K., AudioFile
Jacobi injects drama into this erudite journey
Jacobi injects drama into this erudite yet fast-paced journey from Beowulf to the modern myth of Eliot, illustrating through scores of generous quotations Emily Dickinson’s definition of poetry as the ‘cold which no fire can warm’.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
A history of 600 years of poetry is a daunting row to hoe, so let’s start not with Beowulf (which is Danish anyway) but with the 1557 anthology Songs and Sonnets and see how, circa 400 years later, we arrive at Disillusionment of Ten O’clock, my favourite Wallace Stevens poem, published in 1923. That, by the way, is not Whitfield’s cut-off point, it’s mine. He soldiers bravely and chronologically through his leviathan list of poetic categories – medieval, Elizabethan, metaphysical, Cavalier, graveyard, Augustan, romantic, Hartford wits, Victorian, confessional, Georgian, war, modern, new apocalypse, postmodern, ending with performance poetry – but I incline to Macaulay’s view that ‘as civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily declines’. Thomas Wyatt’s poem in Songs and Sonnets, says Whitfield, shattered the medieval moral narrative tradition. Its title, The Lover Showeth How He Is Forsaken of Such as He Sometime Enjoyed, does not sound promising. Read on. ‘They flee from me that sometime did me seek / With naked foot stalking in my chamber. / I have seen them gentle, tame and meek, / That now are wild, and do not once remember / That sometime they have put themselves in danger / To take bread at my hand; and now they range, / Busily seeking with a continual change. / Thank’d be fortune it hath been otherwise, / Twenty times better; but once especial, / In thin array, after a pleasant guise, / When her loose gown did from her shoulders fall, / And she me caught in her arms long and small, / Therewith all sweetly did me kiss, / And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”’ Sensuous, mysterious, intellectual and above all personal, this melodious crystallisation of emotion was like nothing previously classed as poetry and set the stage for the Elizabethan golden age. Thence to the whole glorious canon of poetic greats – Donne, Milton, Blake, Keats, Hopkins, Frost, Dickinson, Yeats and, yes, in my book, Stevens. If poetry truly is the alchemy of words and the music of ideas, he has to be in the premier league. ‘The houses are haunted / By white night-gowns. / None are green, / Or purple with green rings, / Or green with yellow rings, /Or yellow with blue rings. / None of them are strange, / With socks of lace, / And beaded ceintures. / People are not going / To dream of baboons and periwinkles. / Only, here and there, an old sailor, / Drunk and asleep in his boots, / Catches tigers / In red weather.’ Don’t ask me what it means, just listen to it. Whitfield’s history is less a textbook than a rough guide, but if his enthusiasm doesn’t inspire you to buy a volume of Swinburne – aristo, atheist, aesthete, alcoholic, sadomasochist – I’ll be surprised.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Derek Jacobi brings this production together with a clear and lively narration of its introduction. The collection is a general presentation, rather than a scholarly tome, on the evolution of the idea of English poetry (and its American cousins and influences) – and where readers fit into the tradition. In each era, the text addresses the question of what a poem was expected to be and do. These are illustrated by thoughtfully interpreted readings from works by more than a hundred poets by a group of skilled Naxos narrators. This critical history traces poets from Chaucer to Allen Ginsberg.
D.M.H., AudioFile
Derek Jacobi brings this production together with a clear and lively narration of its introduction. The collection is a general presentation, rather than a scholarly tome, on the evolution of the idea of English poetry (and its American cousins and influences) – and where readers fit into the tradition. In each era, the text addresses the question of what a poem was expected to be and do. These are illustrated by thoughtfully interpreted readings from works by more than a hundred poets by a group of skilled Naxos narrators. This critical history traces poets from Chaucer to Allen Ginsberg.
D.M.H., AudioFile
Who said boffins were boring
If, broadly speaking, science can be summed up as the intellectual quest for knowledge, it’s hard to put a precise date on humanity’s first scientific achievement – though we may deduce from the remains left in paleolithic burial chambers that people were speculating about the mysteries of life and death tens of thousands of years ago. For practical purposes, apart from brief references to Stonehenge and the 20,000-year-old cave paintings of southern Europe, Whitfield’s four-part history starts with the invention of writing (Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics) a mere 5,000 years ago. ‘It is no accident that the pyramids, the greatest physical symbols of ancient civilisation, belong to the age of the discovery of mathematics and writing.’
This is Whitfield’s fourth and easily his most ambitious audio history. He took a leisurely eight hours to stroll through English poetry and sprinted through the French revolution and Darwin for Naxos’s single-CD ‘In a Nutshell’ series, but the story of western science at 1,000 years per hour is a tall order. It doesn’t quite work out like that, of course. It’s bottom-heavy, parts three and four covering respectively the 19th-century machine age and a spectacular list of 20th-century scientific and technological milestones – quantum physics, the big bang, DNA, genetic engineering and the internet account for half the book. Impressed as I am by E=mc2, as a non-scientist I can relate more to the physics taught by Empedocles of Sicily circa 450BC. All matter, he reckoned, was composed of the four elements, earth, air, fire and water, which, mingled in varying proportions, produced all the substances of the universe and were in turn governed by the two greatest forces, love and strife.
Listening to this made me ruefully aware of my ignorance. I had no idea that the Venerable Bede fixed the dating of Easter or that having to calculate the exact direction of Mecca and when to pray ensured that Islam had the best mathematicians and astronomers, or that the first steam engines of the industrial revolution required the output of an entire iron foundry to make and a coal mine to run. Who said boffins were boring?
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Author, poet, and historian Whitfield, whose Darwin – In a Nutshell is also available from Naxos AudioBooks, presents a succinct yet comprehensive overview of major achievements in science across the globe, from ancient times to the present day. Throughout, he contextualizes developments in areas including mathematics, medicine, physics, biology, and chemistry, exploring the extent of their present and future impact on society. The author himself reads, and though his British cadence and pacing can occasionally sound awkward, listeners will greatly enjoy being taken on this intellectual journey. Recommended as a primer for students and enthusiasts of science and science history.
J. Sara Paulk, Library Journal
Peter Whitfield looks at the evolution of scientific knowledge, starting with an introduction to Sir Isaac Newton’s ‘natural philosophy’ and continuing with ancient astronomy and cave paintings, genomes and psychoanalysis. He covers a lot of ground briefly and quickly. …his lively interest in ‘the intellectual quest to study our world’ can be heard in his voice. His measured British tones, coupled with the formality of his writing, lend authority to the historical account. While this is an overview of the basics, Whitfield’s material is thorough and well researched, making it a good introduction to scientific thought as it has changed through the ages.
J.A.S., AudioFile
Barry Davies’s narration is in the best spirit of sports commentary
Fitting the 26 Olympic Games that have been held since 1896 into an audiobook, A History of the Olympics is an awesome challenge. We’re talking 28 different sports, many divided into numerous events.
The veteran sporting journalist John Goodbody goes for the highlights, be they triumphs or disasters, ecstasies or agonies, but he also has a nice ear for colourful detail. “These are the Olympics: you die for them,” gasps a discus thrower as he removes the collar protecting his injured neck before throwing for a gold.
One of the rowers in the winning American eight of 1924 (the year of those glittering prizes) was Ben Spock, later to become a legendary writer of baby and childcare books. Johnny “Tarzan” Weissmuller turns up in the Twenties.
Because there are so many Games to cover, Goodbody has to be selective. His emphasis is mainly on solo triumphs: track events, swimming and gymnastics, but he ranges well beyond the ordinary, including paraplegic events (and finds plenty of space for his own, judo). He also finds time to consider the issues that have done most to damage the spirit of the Games: racism, gender bias, politicking and drugs.
There are training tricks (mowing the lawn in a rubber suit carrying weights; freezing a litre of blood to be reinjected before the supreme effort) and nicknames (Little Miss Perfect, the 7ft armspanned Albatross, Rocket Man, Three Blondes in a Boat), unusual backgrounds and relating what happened to the golden boys and girls afterwards.
Does it work? Barry Davies’s narration is in the best spirit of sports commentary, but the brain (well, my brain) can only handle so many amazing facts at a time. So this is a publication to sip rather than guzzle, on a morning jog or drive to work. At the end, however, is a 45-minute interview with Sebastian Coe to provide just the sort of in-depth view that the History itself couldn’t.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
If your passion is for the Olympics rather than the venue, this comprehensive guide to the history of the games is the perfect gap-filler between heats. It’s a serious book, bristling with statistics but, thank goodness, with enough anecdotes to keep sporting lightweights like me enthralled. My hero is the American gymnast with a wooden leg who won, wait for it, three golds, two silvers and a bronze at the St Louis Olympics in 1904.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Soccer fans and World Cup buffs, rejoice
While the history of soccer’s World Cup is summarized chronologically, the players’ stories are not as detailed. Instead, the book focuses on the criticism of referees throughout its examination of the games. Narrator Bob Wilson, a former player, knows the sport and keeps to a steady pace; his clear British accent never wanders into overt excitement or derision. Musical interludes serve as breaks, and an interview with former player Sir Bobby Charlton is included at the end. Soccer fans and World Cup buffs, rejoice. Novices, though, might want to watch a few matches before delving into this history.
M.B., AudioFile
The narration is polished and vigorous
This is a rich Barnesian marinade of musings, analyses and witty, idiosyncratic re-workings of myths and stories. The narrative voice in ‘Stowaway’ is a savvy rodent, who reveals Noah as a drunk preying on his cargo. The account of the terrorist hijacking of a cruise ship told by the guest lecturer in ‘Visitors’ is a tangle of chilling mishandlings and misunderstandings. ‘Shipwreck’ is an account of the sufferings on the raft from the wrecked Medusa, followed by a jaunty analysis of Gericault’s painting. And that’s just three of the ten [and a half] chapters. The narration is polished and vigorous, but unintrusive so that the exuberance of the narratives and ideas take centre stage.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Fact, fiction, myth, opinion – Barnes’s series of disjointed narratives about Noah’s Ark, terrorist hijackers, shipwreck, woodworm, love and more is all of these. It leaves you torn between thinking that its sum is greater than its parts and that, then again, some of the parts are pretty damned good too, especially the half-chapter titled ‘Parenthesis’. Somehow this pithy new Alex Jennings recording perfectly succeeds in combining the various ‘history is bunk’ and ‘love conquers all’ strands.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
And when you’re fed up with conventional linear narratives, Barnes’s clever, funny, intriguing and, yes, all right, tricksy 1989 collection of stories both true and fictitious, about ships, shipwrecks and associated maritime incidents, will give you something to ponder. I’ve been mulling fitfully over what it tells us about survival, history, art, love and woodworm ever since I first heard it umpteen years ago on cassette, which is probably why this latest version, read by my all-time favourite audio voice, came up to Scotland with me. I’m still happily pondering.
Sue Arnold, the Guardian
Whitfield inspires
Five hours to cover 19,000 years of art doesn’t allow for much slack but compression, an art in itself, is Whitfield’s forte. His contributions to Naxos’s single-CD In a Nutshell series include the Renaissance and Darwin, and his history of 600 years of English poetry from Chaucer to Sylvia Plath is as much a miracle of economy as of erudition. Whitfield inspires. His enthusiasm makes you want to reappraise statues you’ve already seen but, until he reminded you, had forgotten how wonderful they are. Statues such as Donatello’s life-size bronze David in Florence, hand on hip, one knee flexed, wearing nothing but a flowered hat and a cheeky pair of boots. It was the first free-standing figure any artist had produced for a thousand years, says Whitfield, and wham – suddenly you understand the significance, the brilliance of the renaissance. It has been a long haul from the stone age cave paintings of Lascaux circa 16,000 BC via Ninevah’s lion-hunting murals, Mesopotamian winged bulls, Persian mozaics, Egyptian sphinxes, Greek caryatids, Etruscan urns, Viking helmets, the Book of Kells and Gothic cathedrals to Raphael and Da Vinci – but compared to the narrow 500-year gulf between Michelangelo’s Pietàs, acme of Renaissance humanism, and the soiled sheets of Tracey Emin’s unmade bed shortlisted for the 1999 Turner prize, it’s a blink. What happened? Listen to Whitfield analyse the succeeding artistic schools – baroque, neo-classical, impressionist, cubist, surrealist, avant garde, op, pop and performance – and you’ll find out. Whether you’ll be any the wiser is something else. How, for instance, does the German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-86) striding around a Dusseldorf gallery in iron boots and a mask made of honey, discussing his paintings with the dead hare cradled in his arms, fit into the bigger picture? It doesn’t. Neither do pictures any more. Modern art, surrounded by a foghorn chorus of blah emanating from the media and the artists themselves, has become something that we talk about, think about, argue about and, if we can afford it, pay astronomical sums of money for, rather than actually look at. That’s not Whitfield talking, by the way, it’s reactionary me. He remains impressively neutral.
Sue Arnold, the Guardian
The History of Western Art is a broad view of art history by Renaissance man Peter Whitfield, who covers the subject from ancient times to the modern dilemma of defining what art is. An intriguing connection between past ideals & beliefs, and our current estrangement from the natural world is discussed, as modern deconstruction has led us into a box canyon of perpetual revolution without agreed upon parameters. It’s all covered in four CDs, from Greek & Roman & Christian art to Baroque, Romantic, Impressionism and Avant-Garde (and including commentary on architecture, architects, and artists), and is read by Sebastian Comberti, with classical music accompaniment.
Audiobooks Today
Peter Whitfield skilfully compresses a great sweep of culture – from the ancient world to the present – into five hours. The changes in the 20th century have been the most seismic: the age-old stability of belief has been largely swept away along with ‘high art’. Now, anything goes, with ‘ugliness as valid as beauty, and formlessness as valid as form’. Most of all, this invigorating gallop through the centuries makes you set off for the galleries.
Rachel Redford, the Oldie
up there with Longfellow and Lowell
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–94), by profession a doctor and once up there with Longfellow and Lowell, has a strong line in patriotism and rousing rhythms: “Nerveless the iron hand/ Raised for its native land.” He’s homely and romantic too, praising nature and “Yankee girls” and seeing majesty in a caged lion.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Fashions change in poetry just as they do in music or clothes. Once, Oliver Wendell Holmes was all the rage, and counted Poe and Lincoln among his admirers. Now, except perhaps for Old Ironsides and The Chambered Nautilus, he is remembered mostly as the father of the Supreme Court justice. Often witty, rarely personal, Holmes’s poetry has passed into the realm of the specialist and historian. Yet in Peter Marinker’s sensitive readings, the many charms of these poems emerge. Marinker lets the meter and rhyme stand on their own, speaking in sentences rather than forcing the lines and respecting the sentiment without falling into sentimentality.
D.M.H., AudioFile Magazine
Jeremy Northam delights the ear
The presence of Gerard Manley Hopkins on the A-level English syllabus for more than forty years means that anyone with a love of language has at least some lines of his poems by heart, so many of you will be able to murmur along as you listen to Gerard Manley Hopkins, the latest in the Great Poets series. Jeremy Northam delights the ear with thirty-eight of Hopkins’s finest poems, beginning with the little jewel of Heaven-Haven and including the incandescent Wreck of the Deutschland and the vaulting leaps of The Windhover.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
To read Hopkins’s poetry aloud, you have to be sensitive to all his chiming alliteration, assonance and idiosyncratic rhythm, and yet allow the poet’s own voice to be heard. Jeremy Northam does just that, giving the listener the essence of Hopkins: the ‘dearest freshness deep down things’.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Holmes is, as usual, two steps ahead of everyone
Conan Doyle’s novella of the fog-enshrouded moors is one of his most well known. Holmes and Dr. Watson are enlisted to solve a mystery involving a curse, a “hound from hell,” and a family inheritance. Holmes is, as usual, two steps ahead of everyone else, much to Watson’s delight.
Bella Todd, TimeOut
Naxos’s Hound of the Baskervilles is read by David Timson – every character pitch perfect! But the brilliant thing is that there’s a bonus CD-ROM (disc 1) and on it is the complete text, both abridged and unabridged. So a young adult – or an adult – who’s a poor reader, can listen and read at the same time, using a computer or a TV. Entertainment and tuition all in one! And there’s also a study guide for those who want background, author detail and so on. A fabulous piece of kit!
Kati Nicholl, Daily Express
Despite screen effects of mist-enshrouded moors and a slavering monster-hound, there's nothing like the original Conan Doyle. It's read here at a ripping pace by the excellent David Timson. The mystery mounts: the Baskerville legend; Mr Stapleton's violent repulse of Sir Charles Baskerville's romantic approach to his sister ... Is the fiendish hound real, or some hellish emanation? Will cunning and guns be enough to save Sir Charles from its jaws? Included is a stimulating CD-Rom with the complete text and a study guide.
Rachel Redford, The Oldie
du Maurier is one of the best storytellers in the business
Television remakes of Rebecca aside, Daphne du Maurier is one of those novelists, like Doris Lessing, whom few people under forty seem either to reckon on or know much about. This is a great injustice. She is quite simply one of the best storytellers in the business – proper old-fashioned stories, with characters you gradually get to know and feel for, and plots whose originality and ingenuity have never been equalled.
The House on the Strand – which, I confess, I had never heard of until this Naxos version, punctuated by wonderfully atmospheric music, came out last year – is a dazzling example of her skill. The narrator, Richard, has been persuaded by his friend Magnus, a biophysicist, to be a guinea pig for a new drug he is working on, which, Magnus claims, can take the subject back in time – real historic time, not hallucination. Richard travels to Magnus’s house in Cornwall, the setting for most du Maurier novels, and takes the plunge. It works. Within minutes he finds himself transported back 600 years to the fourteenth century, the invisible observer of a series of tragic political and domestic intrigues with which he becomes increasingly fascinated. The side effects of the drug and the social effects on his real life and family are catastrophic. Too bad they don’t write stories as intriguing as this any more.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
I have no hesitation in recommending this translation
Ian Johnston provides his readers with a clear and comprehensible translation of the Iliad that presents itself as a dynamic equivalent of the Greek original. Johnston captures the flow of the text with an eye to both accuracy and his modern readership. Ultimately, the Iliad was, in its original language, trapped within the past, filled with specialized language and archaisms for the ancient audiences who witnessed its live performance. However, Johnston has recognized that retaining Homer’s language can be disadvantageous for instruction in the undergraduate setting. Without resorting to unwarranted slang or hyperbolic peculiarities, however, he has managed to make Homer’s story come alive. Instead he has attempted to capture the native meaning of the text itself and has shown himself judicious and consistent in his treatment of epithets, recurring lines, and other singularities of Homeric epic. Further, since about half of the Iliad is composed of direct speech (meant to slow down the cadence of action and emphasize significant moments in the plot), Johnston’s practice of setting off these sections by quotation marks and indentation is particularly helpful for the individual reader and for the classroom alike. I have used the on-line version in several classes and it certainly seemed to keep the students’ interest and instil familiarity with this central Western classic. On many grounds, then, I have no hesitation in recommending this translation, and suggest that it holds particular value as a text for high school and undergraduate level university acquisitions.
Andrew Porter, University of Missouri, Columbia
Ian Johnston’s new translation of the Iliad has been freely available on the Internet for the past four years and in that time has become a popular site for general readers, teachers, and students alike. And it’s easy to understand why. Johnston’s translation is extremely faithful to Homer’s Greek text, and yet at the same time is characterized by a very readable English style, so much so that the clarity and fluency of this translation immediately set it apart from many other alternatives.
One interesting point about the diction is that Johnston has deliberately avoided all outdated language of Medieval chivalry or ancient warfare (so there are no greaves, cuirasses, steeds, or targes in this text, no carls or bowyers, or lances). And yet, by his faithful translation of Homeric epithets and repetitions, he keeps reminding us that this poem has its origins in an ancient style. The result is an interesting and evocative synthesis of a past vision and modern sensibilities.
Johnston has chosen to use a hexameter line for the narrative and a pentameter for the speeches, although he freely departs from strict adherence to a fixed pattern (at times the rhythm gets a trifle ragged). This is, one assumes, an attempt to gain both the gravitas of the longer line and the speed of the shorter one. And in this he has a good deal of success, particularly in the speeches which are almost always vigorous and dramatic. They sound like something passionate people might actually say. And he handles the Homeric similes very well, letting them unroll at length, gathering momentum as they go, so that the power described in the imagery is underscored by the movement and sound in the poetry. This style also brings out very forcefully the extraordinarily graphic and evocatively ironic battlefield deaths.
It easy to understand why this translation has attracted the attention of drama companies and has led to stage productions in Philadelphia and Oxford and to a recording of the entire poem by Naxos AudioBooks. It’s high time this translation was available in the form of a published book.
Dr Anne Leavitt, Dean, Malaspina University-College
[it] will have 7–11-year-olds hugging themselves with glee
Martin [Jarvis] also reads The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm by Norman Hunter. Unbelievably, these tales were first published in 1933 – and sound as if they’d been written today. Branestawm is the epitome of the mad professor, inventing a machine that gets you where you want to go before you’ve even left, a spring cleaning machine that doesn’t quite work as intended, and all sorts of other things that will have 7–11-year-olds hugging themselves with glee. Beautifully appropriate music, a Naxos signature, adds to the pleasure.
Kati Nicholl, Daily Express
the book and its characters linger in the mind
David Timson is one of those audio-book readers who, rather than giving a “signature” performance like some of the big stars of the genre, simply inhabits and projects his subjects with a delicate empathy, so it’s the book and its characters that linger in the mind. Which makes him an excellent choice for G.K. Chesterton’s tales of the unassuming Catholic priest who claims that his work at the confessional (where he has to do “next to nothing but hear men’s real sins”) puts him in an excellent position to solve the bizarre crimes that come his way in pre-first-world-war England. Chesterton’s prose can be as ostentatiously extravagant as an Edwardian grandee’s moustache, and is marred by a breezy anti-semitism. This, though, does not seem to be shared by the unassuming cleric, whose humble conviction that his God will eventually triumph over the souls of even the most evil of criminals is the quiet but insistent heartbeat of these unusual exercises in detective fiction.
Karen Robinson, The Sunday Times
Great detectives in printed fiction (forget about those created for television) are sometimes hard to tell apart. Sherlock Holmes is unmistakable, but he might be mistaken for Poe’s Dupin of The Murders in the Rue Morgue by one unfamiliar with both. Nero Wolfe is unique, seldom leaving his office and depending on reports from his assistant. Another one-of-a-kind sleuth is the Catholic priest, Father Brown.
He appeared for the first time in 1911 from the pen (or typewriter) of G.K. Chesterton. Unlike other detectives being invented at that time, he does not look so much at clues as at the way people act. Being a priest, he has heard enough confessions to give him an insight into the thinking patterns of criminals. Of course, Chesterton is careful to supply enough information for his character to put the pieces together, sometimes beyond the bounds of reason.
For example, in one tale Brown prevents a crime by analyzing the pattern made by a series of footsteps outside a door! In another, he realizes that because a man is found with an arrow in his back, it did not have to come from a bow. And so on. Religious matters are used only to further the plot, not to convert a character or the reader.
So at present, I am having a wonderful time listening to two Naxos boxed AudioBooks titled The Innocence of Father Brown, Volumes 1 and 2 respectively.
The first includes unabridged readings of The Blue Cross, The Secret Garden, The Queer Feet, The Flying Stars, The Invisible Man, and The Honour of Israel Gow. The second holds The Wrong Shape, The Sins of Prince Saradine, The Hammer of God, The Eye of Apollo, The Sign of the Broken Sword, and The Three Tools of Death. Each is as much fun as the title, with added spice provided by the master thief (soon to reform and become a detective) Flambeau and the intrepid (but soon to go too far) French detective Valentine. But in such recordings, much depends on the reader; and here, veteran Naxos narrator David Timson does his usual splendid job in keeping the pace moving and the listener riveted.
Frank Behrens, Art Times, Brattleboro Reformer, Bellows Falls Town Crier, Keene Sentinel
David Timson does his usual splendid job
Great detectives in printed fiction (forget about those created for television) are sometimes hard to tell apart. Sherlock Holmes is unmistakable, but he might be mistaken for Poe’s Dupin of The Murders in the Rue Morgue by one unfamiliar with both. Nero Wolfe is unique, seldom leaving his office and depending on reports from his assistant. Another one-of-a-kind sleuth is the Catholic priest, Father Brown.
He appeared for the first time in 1911 from the pen (or typewriter) of G.K. Chesterton. Unlike other detectives being invented at that time, he does not look so much at clues as at the way people act. Being a priest, he has heard enough confessions to give him an insight into the thinking patterns of criminals. Of course, Chesterton is careful to supply enough information for his character to put the pieces together, sometimes beyond the bounds of reason.
For example, in one tale Brown prevents a crime by analyzing the pattern made by a series of footsteps outside a door! In another, he realizes that because a man is found with an arrow in his back, it did not have to come from a bow. And so on. Religious matters are used only to further the plot, not to convert a character or the reader.
So at present, I am having a wonderful time listening to two Naxos boxed AudioBooks titled The Innocence of Father Brown, Volumes 1 and 2 respectively.
The first includes unabridged readings of The Blue Cross, The Secret Garden, The Queer Feet, The Flying Stars, The Invisible Man, and The Honour of Israel Gow. The second holds The Wrong Shape, The Sins of Prince Saradine, The Hammer of God, The Eye of Apollo, The Sign of the Broken Sword, and The Three Tools of Death. Each is as much fun as the title, with added spice provided by the master thief (soon to reform and become a detective) Flambeau and the intrepid (but soon to go too far) French detective Valentine. But in such recordings, much depends on the reader; and here, veteran Naxos narrator David Timson does his usual splendid job in keeping the pace moving and the listener riveted.
Frank Behrens, Art Times, Brattleboro Reformer, Bellows Falls Town Crier, Keene Sentinel
Volume Two of this fine audio series contains six more of Chesterton’s Father Brown tales from "The Innocence of Father Brown" collection. In the short booklet that accompanies the audio disks, J.D. Evans mentions that Chesterton’s tales often concern madness and its link to evil. These six stories illustrate this theme. In each of these tales, Father Brown solves some mystery by combining his knowledge of the capacity of humans to do evil deeds with his powers of observation and his reasoning abilities. Chesterton weaves his tales in such a way that Father Brown can cleverly deduce the real state of affairs in the face of circumstantial "evidence." In these six tales, Father Brown proves that a suspected suicide is actually a murder; that a suspected murder is actually a suicide; that a suspected accidental death is actually a murder; that a legend about a military hero is a cover-up of treason; an imposter was killed in a duel; and that the most obvious suspect did not commit a gruesome murder. As in the first volume of this series, David Timson’s semi-voiced reading is excellent. Timson has made more than 1,000 broadcasts for BBC Radio Drama and has read the entire Sherlock Holmes Canon for Naxos Audio. He makes good use of a broad range of accents and voices here to capture the wide variety of aristocratic and working class characters.
Hugh M. Flick, soundcommentary.com
Daniel Philpott’s accents bring Wells’ cast to life
Can you handle the unfamiliar? Is the fear of the unknown too much to handle? Science fiction great H. G. Wells asks these questions through his characters in the classic, The Invisible Man. Griffin, a fanatical scientist, has successfully manipulated his body’s chemical structure and is now invisible to the human eye. Unable to revert to his original state, he is instantly ostracized by others’ fear and is forced to lie, cheat, and steal to maintain even the poorest of lifestyles. Hurt and alone, Griffin chooses to embrace his ability to incite terror, but soon succumbs to madness and must face the mob that he has created. Daniel Philpott’s accents bring Wells’ cast to life and produce a rhythm that truly does this famous story justice.
Kerry Keegan, SoundCommentary
It is difficult to imagine a character better suited to audio than an invisible man. Wells’s “grotesque romance,” particularly as read by Daniel Philpott, makes for riveting listening under any circumstances (though it is perhaps best savored in the dark) and can be enjoyed by audiences of all ages. As several other excellent audio editions of this 1897 tale have already been released—e.g. from Tantor Audio, with Scott Brick reading, and Blackstone Audio, with James Adams reading—the question for libraries not yet owning this classic on audio is which recording to acquire. Philpott’s powerful performance makes this Naxos edition the prime choice.
Library Journal Starred Review
R. Kent Rasmussen, Library Journal
A harrowing read from cover to cover, The Invisible Man is perfect for the audio format. The action-packed plot, eccentric characters, and entertaining dialogue could overwhelm a narrator, but British actor Daniel Philpott is the man for the job. His voice is energetic throughout the book and echoes the author’s ironic tone. His vocal characterisations are wonderfully diverse, running the gamut from elderly busybodies to country constables. Much of the dialogue is exceedingly humorous because of Philpott’s range of accents. The Invisible Man, insanely egotistical, is brought to life by Philpott’s portrayal of his infuriated outbursts and scattered thoughts. Even though Wells’s protagonist is difficult to imagine, Philpott’s narrative skill makes it clear why this novel is such a memorable classic.
D.M.W., AudioFile
It’s a classic
If you like Victorian novels with chapters that begin ‘Fate is a cunning hussy and builds up her plan with unconsidered trifles’, Mrs Gaskell’s last book, about the various consequences of hasty marriages, is for you. It’s unfinished, which makes you wonder how much longer and more expensive it might have been, but that’s unfair. It’s a classic.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
the audiobook box set of the decade
Eight hours longer even than Naxos’ complete Sherlock Holmes, this has got to be the audiobook box set of the decade! All six complete major novels are read here in mellifluous and engagingly vital voices which – however many times you listen – instantly draw you into Jane Austen’s world.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Together for the first time, the complete and unabridged audio recordings of Jane Austen’s novels handsomely presented in a boxed set. Counting 69 CDs and running over 83 hours, this is the Holy Grail of Austen audio book recording as only Naxos could present with superb readings by Juliet Stevenson, Emilia Fox, and Anna Bentinck. Included are Austen’s six major novels, the novella Lady Susan and her unfinished novels Sanditon and The Watsons. This is definitely the essential collector’s item. ‘Nuff said!
Laurel Ann, austenprose.wordpress.com
Top of the boxed sets is Jane Austen: The Complete Novels, read by Juliet Stevenson, Emilia Fox and Anna Bentinck, flaunting alongside the favourites of television drama the less-familiar Northanger Abbey and Lady Susan.
Carole Mansur, Telegraph
While I haven’t listened to all of them, I listened to the Jane Austen biography, and am finishing up Northanger Abbey as of this post. With a 45-minute commute, these audiobook CDs have become treasured friends. I am always amazed at the talent Naxos AudioBooks gets to narrate their classic releases, and Juliet Stevenson is no exception. She is an accomplished actress of stage and screen, and delivers captivating performances on these discs.
Janet Hagen, eCommerce Manager, Naxos of America
amazingly good value
What makes this special apart from Emma Fielding’s deft narration is the bonus CD-ROM which contains the unabridged text and a study guide by Francis Gilbert. Although the guide targets “young adults”, any intelligent reader will find it stimulating. One of a series and amazingly good value.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Time-crunched students and creative educators will welcome this abridged version of the classic novel. Fielding transports listeners into the 1800s; her tone and British accent subtly communicate the gradations of social strata, with characters distinguished by vocal modulation. Archaic sentence structure becomes the flow of natural speech, and Fielding’s pace combines with the skillful abridgement to propel listeners through the tale. Musical segues mark transitions through the use of period classical selections. The audio package includes a CD-ROM featuring the abridged and unabridged texts and a study guide. Other titles in Naxos’ Young Adult Classics series are Frankenstein, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and Pride and Prejudice.
Mary Burkey, Booklist
an unrivalled unabridged edition
Most people are familiar with the story of Jane Eyre, the mousey governess who falls in love with the master of Thornfield Hall while his mad wife rants and raves in the attic. But to appreciate the complex issues that Charlotte Brontë addresses, it's necessary to listen with care – Jane Eyre challenged the conventions of womanhood and marriage as well as subtly highlighting the racist sentiments of the day.
With all this in mind, Amanda Root gives a polished reading full of understanding of the text. She lingers long on the imagery that conveys the idea of women as prisoners to convention and cleverly develops Jane’s character through the stages of her life that see her transformed from an angry little girl to a woman of independent means and ideas. Classy budget CD label Naxos AudioBooks have produced an unrivalled unabridged edition, beautifully packaged and easy to use.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
seventeenth-century English poetry at its best
The best readers of poetry don’t recite it; they enact it, taking on the character of the narrator. The poetry of Metaphysical poet John Donne – once ranked with the works of Shakespeare and Milton – has at least two facets, so it’s fitting that this production has two narrators. Geoffrey Whitehead brings out the passion of Donne’s religious poetry, particularly the selections from the Holy Sonnets, and Will Keen specializes in the poems about love and sensuality. The two voices are very different, echoing the dualism that is one of Donne’s hallmarks. Both men remind us of the intense feeling that underlies the formalism of seventeenth-century English poetry at its best.
D.M.H., AudioFile
Sean Barrett will wring your heart
Kafka Tamura, a precocious fifteen-year-old from Tokyo with oedipal tendencies, runs away from home, meets a transsexual librarian on Shikoku, Japan’s smallest island, reads a lot of books, sleeps with two women (his sister? His mother?), finds his true self in a magical forest. Meanwhile, sixtysomething, brain-damaged Nakata murders a man who kills cats to make flutes from their souls, legs it to the same Shikoku library and finds his true self in a motel room. I think. Murakami isn’t good with loose ends but he is brilliant with talking cats, mixed-up adolescents, quirky relationships and stories requiring off-the-wall imagination. I wouldn’t have lasted the course without Sean Barrett, whose Nakata will wring your heart. You either love or loathe Japan’s favourite novelist. I’m still undecided.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
unashamedly brain-taxing at times, but never for too long
Everything I know about Buddhism – and it’s a fair amount – comes from my Burmese mother, but even she would have been impressed with Jinananda’s intelligent encapsulation of one of the world’s great religions into a mere 78 minutes. No, that’s not his real name. He was born Duncan Steen in Bedford in 1952, joined the Western Buddhist Order when he was 34 and has written scholarly books about karma (i.e. action/energy) and what he prefers to call rebirth rather than reincarnation. The key to enlightenment is selflessness, but what exactly is self? “The self,” says Jinananda, “is like a wave. Each wave has its own characteristic shape but it also changes at every moment, as does the water of which it is composed. It is the same with rebirth – there is no unchanging or separate entity that passes from one life to the next. What does pass to the next life is the wave of karmic propensities or choices made in the previous life.” It is unashamedly brain-taxing at times, but never for too long. Why did my mother never tell me that in the centre of all Buddhist prayer wheels there’s a tiny model of a farmyard in which a cock, a pig and a snake, representing craving, illusion and hatred, are chasing each other in circles? Eat, love and pray by all means, but take time to learn as well.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Compact guides to political, financial and ethical issues are the current fashion in audio publishing, and Naxos’s In a Nutshell series weighs in at the more intellectually taxing end of the market. Close attention to this study of the theory and practice (well, theory mainly, obviously) of rebirth will open your mind to the fundamental mysteries of human existence. Though covering many religions and traditions, its overall viewpoint is Buddhist and the central concept of karma – that “ethical or unethical choices of action have consequences now and in future lives” – might lead to a helpful re-examination of one’s behaviour. No easy answers here, but confirmation that “existence is necessarily impermanent and unsatisfactory”.
Karen Robinson, The Sunday Times
Karma and Rebirth in a Nutshell is an accessible starting point. Its lucid and persuasive author and narrator Jinananda began with the Venerable Bede’s likening of a human lifespan to a sparrow flying out of darkness and into a bright feasting hall, then disappearing into the deep forest. Karma led me to The Voice of the Buddha on which Kulananda guides the listener through the Buddhist equivalents of the Christian gospels. To set things in context, I listened to David Timson presenting The Middle Way: The Story of Buddhism, and tomorrow I’m setting off to Cornwall listening to Kulananda’s guide to mental discipline, The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path Traffic jams? No problem – they are just temporary hiccups in the eternal flux.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
This is a scholarly yet accessible introduction to the spiritual theory often called “reincarnation.” The author, born Duncan Steen in 1952 in Great Britain, became a Buddhist in 1986. He is the author of several books on Buddhism. The introduction makes clear that the topic is not a simple one, with a history of debatable nuances among believers of various, Eastern traditions. Jinananda makes clear he is speaking from the Buddhist tradition, and that the various Buddhist traditions are somewhat splintered on the subject. He begins with research from a University of Virginia professor which details accounts of children and adults across the globe who have seemingly remembered past lives. This includes the phenomena of children exhibiting mastery of foreign languages not logically available to them and knowledge of verifiable facts of history they could not know. He then delves into the subjects of Karma, Tibetan Buddhist cosmology, and other aspects of the subject. His grasp is broad and his enthusiasm for the subject apparent. He reads in a calm, unaffected manner. This is an excellent resource for those interested in the subject.
Nancy Chaplin, SoundCommentary.com
While the concepts of rebirth and some version of karma are found in many cultures, this short, informative recording focuses primarily on the Buddhist tradition. Jinananda explains how karma works and, more importantly, why misfortunes in this life do not necessarily imply wicked acts in a past life. Particularly fascinating are the remarkable recorded accounts of memories being transferred from dying men to small children half a country away. Jinananda is an excellent reader of his own work. He is clearly invested in the text, and his calm, intelligent tone makes the sometimes-mind-bending theories perfectly clear. This is a well-executed introduction to the Buddhist tradition of karma. At the very least, it will get listeners thinking.
A.H.A., AudioFile
India in all its teeming life, mystery and beauty
Kim, the ‘little friend of all the world’ and chela or disciple to the questing lama, is caught up in the espionage of ‘the Great Game’. The real protagonist in his magical adventure, however, is India in all its teeming life, mystery and beauty, highlighted by a captivating narration.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Espionage has become so sophisticated and hi-tech that it’s difficult to believe that this, the greatest of all spy stories, was published more than a century ago when agents relied on wits rather than gadgets. Set against the background of the Great Game being played between Britain and Russia on the north-west frontier after the second Afghan war, it tells the story of an 11-year-old orphan boy who looks and sounds like a native but beneath his filthy rags is white. Kim, né Kimball O’Hara, wears his Irish soldier father’s ID round his neck and survives by running errands for a wily Pashtun horse trader with an ancient Islamic proverb to suit every occasion. ‘Children should not see a carpet on the loom until the pattern is made plain,’ he advises, his great red beard wagging solemnly. What Kim doesn’t know is that his mentor is also a “chain man” or spy for the British. Mahbub Ali’s constant travels through the subcontinent, selling horses to army officers and maharajahs, affords the perfect cover. How Kim, travelling with a holy lama in search of the sacred river, meets Colonel Creighton, who recognises his unique qualifications and talents and sends him to a mysterious spymaster to learn the secrets of espionage, is riveting. Adventures aside, Kipling’s descriptions of India, its exotic people and places, are awesome, as are Sharma’s seemingly inexhaustible collection of accents British and Indian – in Kim’s case, a subtle mixture of both. No mean feat.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Kimball O’Hara, orphaned son of an Irish soldier, survives by his wits in the back streets of India’s teeming cities. Caught and identified as a white boy, he is sent against his will to boarding school, then trained as a spy in the ‘Great Game’ – the power struggle between Britain and Russia for control of India and central Asia. Kim, ‘little friend of all the world,’ works with an Afghan horse trader serving as a British agent, outwits Russian spies in the high Himalayas, and becomes the disciple of a Tibetan holy man in search of a sacred river.
With his rich old-school elocution and Shakespearean training, British actor Madhav Sharma is the perfect reader for this book. Sharma grew up in Calcutta, studied drama in London, and has appeared in stage, television, and radio productions in the U.K. The Calcutta Telegraph calls him ‘the Indian actor in England with...the most impeccably spoken English.’ Sharma’s career has taken him back to India, as well as to Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. He has read Kipling’s Jungle Books and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi for Naxos, too.
Each CD in this production has its own separate jacket, the tracks identified either with chapter numbers or phrases identifying the start of the track. That helps greatly in finding a passage or in pairing the listening with reading. A little booklet tells you about the book and the author.
Betsy Woodman, SoundCommentary.com
Spy story, Boy’s Own adventure, guide to the Raj at the turn of the last century – Kim, steeped in ‘the roaring whirl of India’, is all of these. We first meet young Kim, orphan son of an Irish soldier, scampering abut the bazaars of Lahore, every inch an Indian street kid. Before long he is co-opted to pass coded messages in ‘the great game’ – the ceaseless British intrigues to keep crucial mountain areas out of Russian hands – and the enigmatic Colonel Creighton decides to have him trained to be a spy. Further adventures loom, in the company of his beloved friend, the elderly holy man Teshoo Lama. The action bowls along, but what’s impressive about Madhav Sharma’s reading is his range, from imperious Rajastani widow, to Pashtun horse dealer, to sanctimonious Irish padre. Kim, a white boy with an Indian soul and an insatiable curiosity, is on an exhilarating and dangerous journey – and you root for him every step of the way.
Karen Robinson, Sunday Times
packed with ravishing scenic descriptions
Rudyard Kipling’s masterly Kim comes as quite a relief in this abridged version read by Madhav Sharma. It always comes up gold, packed with ravishing scenic descriptions, characters and a sense of culture and period as the orphan Irish lad, brought up in Lahore street life, who embarks on a fascinating journey, joining the Indian Civil Service and developing into a master spy.
Robert Giddings, Tribune Magazine
my choice for audiobook of the year
Those longing for African heat should check out Naxos’s recording of King Solomon’s Mines. Naxos have been quietly making some of the best recordings of Victorian and Edwardian children’s classics around, and this joins their excellent E Nesbit audiobooks as a must-have. Although my children began by squeaking, “That’s racist!”, and we were all appalled by the description of the elephant hunt, the thrill of Rider Haggard’s yarn is undiminished. Bill Homewood’s ability to summon up the entire cast, from Sir Henry Curtis, Dr Goode and beautiful Foulata to the evil King Twala and the witch Gagool, is magnificent. He gets the clicks, the accents, the rhythm of the prose and the feel of Africa spot on. The music, a mixture of Max Steiner’s original score to King Kong and Gottschalk’s Night in the Tropics is powerfully evocative. I tried vainly for years to get my kids to read this book, and they listened agog as the four adventurers struggle across the burning desert, over Sheba’s Breasts and into a lost kingdom where their former servant and the rightful king must fight a battle. If you have children of 10+, this is my choice for audiobook of the year. I only hope Naxos go ahead with She and Allan Quartermain next, because despite Rider Haggard’s lack of political correctness, these are tales from a time when both Englishmen and Africans understood what heroism meant.
Amanda Craig, The Independent
Jonathan Oliver’s interpretation is superb
This grim classic is told by Pozdnyshev to a fellow passenger, both of whom are traveling on a train in Russia. Pozdnyshev has murdered his wife and is telling the story of how the evolution of his beliefs led him to this horrible event. His lengthy argument, in his own defense, boils down to his belief that sex is a corrupting influence and therefore should be eschewed by all, thus leading to the end of mankind. He is disturbed and disturbing, mad with jealousy, cynical and angry. Stage actor and experienced narrator Jonathan Oliver’s interpretation is superb. Though this is mostly a monologue, he does voice the various characters that appear in the story. The author’s note at the end confirms that Tolstoy’s own beliefs closely parallel his main character. There are musical interludes with a violinist and pianist playing Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata (No. 9) which is totally appropriate. Why the decision was made to include music from Sonata No. 5 is puzzling.
Susan Rosenzweig, SoundCommentary.com
An outstanding production
Maxine Peake[‘s]...fully vocalized performance, unpretentious, intimate and non-judgmental, is all Lawrence himself could have hoped for from an interpretation of his novel. An outstanding production of a groundbreaking classic.
Francine Levitov, soundcommentary.com
Naxos, which specialises in exceptional recordings of the English canon, has just issued it as an audiobook, beautifully read by Maxine Peake of Dinnerladies and Shameless. The audio version of perhaps the most controversial novel of the 20th century is a revelation… To Connie, her lover ’seemed so unlike a gamekeeper, so unlike a working man anyhow, although he had something in common with the local people’. Lawrence emphasises this point by the use of dialect, a theme that emerges more explicitly from Maxine Peake’s exemplary reading.
Robert McCrum, The Observer
In describing Connie Chatterley’s sensual awakenings in her couplings with Mellors, Lawrence exposes the dry intellectualism and harsh divisions in society represented by paralysed Clifford Chatterley and his milieu. Maxine Peake’s tender and sympathetic reading subtly emphasises Lawrence’s sincerity. He overdoes Connie’s pulsating wombs and bowels at the expense of creating a complete and real person, and he ends the story before Connie and Mellors attempt a surely doomed life together – but the novel’s power cannot be denied.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Though no longer the shocker that this sexually explicit novel was when first published in 1928, Chatterley remains uncomfortably forthright about the sexual tensions and emotional ambivalence that define male/female relationships. This is both the source of its power and its very point. For Lawrence has more on his mind than describing the amorous encounters of an unlikely pair of lovers, (a titled young woman and the gamekeeper of her crippled husband’s estate). He takes on mobility among the social classes and the sterility caused by industrialization and materialism. He advocates a return to basics: mutual respect, naturalness of expression, and hands-on human tenderness. In our own alienated age where, thanks to technology, actual contact often seems less sought after than virtual, these themes still resonate strongly, and portions of this novel are almost jarring in their contemporaneity. The novel is preachy. And modern feminists have criticized it for a sensibility they find all too male, particularly in its glorification of motherhood. However, if Lawrence gets some of this matter wrong, he gets a great more right. Naxos AudioBooks hammers that home with its inspired choice of Maxine Peake to perform this work. Her fully vocalized performance, unpretentious, intimate and non-judgmental, is all Lawrence himself could have hoped for from an interpretation of his novel. An outstanding production of a groundbreaking classic.
SoundCommentary Starred Review
Editor’s Pick of the Month
Francine Levitov, SoundCommentary
I recommend it highly
Jane Austen’s epistolary novel Lady Susan has never received much attention in comparison to her other six major novels. It is a short piece, only 70 pages in my edition of The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen: Minor Works containing forty-one letters and a conclusion. Scholars estimate that it was written between 1793-4 when the young author was in her late teens and represents her first attempts to write in the epistolary format popular with many authors at that time. In 1805, she transcribed a fair copy of the manuscript but did not pursue publication in her lifetime. The manuscriptwould remain unpublished until 54 years after her death with its inclusion in the appendix of her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh’s biography of his aunt, A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1871. Lady Susan’s greatest fault lies in its comparison to its young sisters. Since few novels can surpass or equal Miss Austen’s masterpieces, it should be accepted for what it is – acharming melodramatic piece by an author in the making. Notonly are we presented with interesting and provocative characters, Austen reveals anearly understanding of social machinations, wit,and the exquisite language that would become her trademark. Its greatest challenge appears to be in the limitations of the epistolary format itself where the narrative is revealed through one person’s perspective and then the other’s reaction and reply not allowing for the energy of direct dialogue or much description of the scene or surroundings. Withstanding its shortcomings, it is still a glistening jewel; smart, funny, and intriguing wicked. Given the obvious challenges of converting a novel written in letter format into audio recording, I was amazed and delighted at how listening to the novel enhanced my enjoyment. Naxos AudioBooks has pulled together a first rate production presenting a stellar cast supported by beautiful classical music. Casting British stage and screen actress Harriet Walter as the fabulously wicked Lady Susan was brilliant. She offers the appropriate edge and attitude necessary to complement the text. With Walter’s, we are never in any doubt of Lady Susan’s full capacity to scheme, manipulate and ooze immorality and deception. Unlike many audio recording where one narrator uses many voices to portray each character, this recording offers 7 actors, similar to a stage or radio production with each part cast with a unique actor offering variety and interest. We truly connect to eachportrayal of the character as they write their letters, inflect emotion into their train of thought, and personalize the production. The addition of period music by Romberg and Mozart equally enhance the setting. Running two hours and thirty minutes, this audio recording of Lady Susan actually enhanced my understanding and enjoyment of this often neglected yet highly amusing novella. I recommend it highly.
Laurel Ann, Austenprose.wordpress.com
This is a beautiful meditation on change
Sicily 1860: Prince Fabrizio has always lived contentedly with the “lovely mute ghosts” of the past. But now, with the impending unification with Italy and his nephew’s undesirable marriage, he fears ruin. This is a beautiful meditation on change, with Sicily and its golden landscape in the starring role. Brilliant.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
David Horovitch’s voice, rich in timbre and sepia in tone, is wonderfully paired with this masterpiece, a tale of degeneration and ruin. Like the declining House of Salina itself, Horovitch’s presentation possesses a certain ‘shabby grandeur’ that acquires a suitably obnoxious edge in conveying the vulgarity and ruthlessness of those who are tearing down the old order with the help of upstart money, main chance and relentless ambition.
Katherine A. Powers, The Washington Post
Even through the most active scenes, David Horovitch always projects a hint of the elegiac tone that suffuses this novel. Published in 1958, Lampedusa’s story recounts the changes in Sicilian culture that took place during the violent Italian unification of the mid-1800s. Listeners, many of whom might know nothing of mid-18th-century Sicily, will feel the strains of change – the one constant aspect of history. Most of the book is told from point of view of Fabrizio, a nobleman, and Horovitch's voice makes him gruff and cultured, noble with an edge of barbarism. We feel the prince's conflict between his love of his own past and his appreciation for the possibilities of the newly unified Italy.
D.M.H., AudioFile
In his bougainvillea-covered villa five hours by cart from Palermo, Prince Fabrizio faces change, even annihilation, as Garibaldi is about to hand over the whole of the Two Sicilies to King Victor Emmanuel to make a united Italy. The Prince meditates on change and growing older, seeing his future only too clearly with ‘beslobbered pillows and a pot under the bed’. Nevertheless the sensuous whole sparkles with colour and imagery: the ‘tyrannous sun’, the ‘yellow cheeks’ of peaches, the dogs ‘as passive as bailiffs’. Every listening yields more. Wonderful.
Rachel Redford, The Oldie
heartbreaking
This is the first of what is bound to be a stream of biographies celebrating the bicentenary of the composer's birth – but none, I bet, will include as much if any of the music. At least half this audio is devoted to the works, played with great passion and even greater panache by Turkish virtuoso Idil Biret. Everyone knows about Chopin's affair with George Sand, but I hadn't realised what a bitch she was towards the end, mocking his pain and accusing him of hypochondria. Fascinating older women, even if they're famous, sexy, clever and French, have their disadvantages. The story about Poland's national treasure penniless, alone and close to death in 1848, being taken to Edinburgh by rich, well-meaning patrons and seeking out a Polish family to talk to in his own all-but-forgotten native tongue, is heartbreaking. Just like his nocturnes.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
More than any musician or composer in history, Fredrick Chopin ‘owned’ the piano as an instrument, and made it sing. His fascinating life from prodigy to tragic death by consumption at age 39 is chronicled in The Life and Works of Chopinby Jeremy Siepmann, who also narrates, (with actor Anton Lesser reading excerpts from Chopin's letters). The audiobook intersperses biography with a wide sampling of music in such a way that the listener is beguiled into visualizing that bygone era in Paris when Romanticism flowered with imaginative, new melodies and tonal colors grown out of folk tunes and the symmetry of a classical past. Words fail to evoke the timeless and unique beauty of Chopin's creations then, which were not only among the greatest works for keyboard ever composed, but also the most universal. The story behind it all – including Chopin's unusual life and loves – is an intriguing snapshot of early 19th Century France, yet its distance in time shrinks to nothing with such a musical score as accompaniment. (As a companion video, we recommend the movie Impromptu, which starred Hugh Grant as Chopin.) A free thinker, shy and modest, Chopin was an unrivaled poetic genius who evolved, from nowhere, a new style of playing with a gift for composition that was boundless. His was art, not for art's sake, but for the heart's sake. Chopin's own words tell us why: ‘Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars. Beethoven embraced the universe with the power of his spirit. I do not climb so high. A long time ago I decided that my universe will be the soul and heart of man.’
Jonathan Lowe, burjreview.blogspot.com/
Jeremy Siepmann, one time Head of Music at BBC World Service and a life time teacher, broadcaster and author, has devoted himself to the cause of classical music. Naxos has already issued his audiobooks on Haydn, Beethoven and Baroque music and now we have the heart rending story of Frederic Chopin 1810–49. Siepmann’s graphic and moving biographical narrative is illustrated by Anton Lesser’s readings of letters and other historical documentary evidence (together with contributions by Neville Jason, Elaine Claxton and Karen Archer).
It is all here, from his early struggles for recognition in his native Poland to later triumphs at Vienna, Paris as leading figure in the salons. Here he was to meet Liszt who fatefully introduced him to Madame Dudevant (George Sand) in 1836. Chopin enjoyed (if that is the word) a tempestuous relationship with her until 1847. He was to receive a triumphant reception in this country, with sensational appearances at London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow. This arresting and moving story is lavishly illustrated throughout with a vast array of Chopin’s music played by Idel Biret. This beautiful set of 4 CDs is biographically led. The music here and there is gracefully faded. The wonder and range of the creative artistry remains dazzling and refreshing.
Chopin created exclusively for the piano, I’m convinced of that. He may have drawn inspiration from elsewhere – Mozart, Weber, John Field as well as the singing, arching legato of Bellini and Donizetti and the traditional dances of his native Poland - but his true voice was essentially through the piano keyboard. Throughout his creative career he was refining and perfecting his art as he further absorbed insight from the study of J. S. Bach and Cherubuni. The range of expertise he calls for is fascinating as much of his output can be managed by non experts yet at the height of powers only the virtuoso can make Chopin speak and dance and sing in his true voice. And even here skill alone is never enough. Because his genius is unique it takes a unique soloist to find him, bravura playing such as wins applause and prizes today or sentimentalizing of the classics (also in vogue) just cannot deliver the heart and soul. This is the beautiful sort of music we sometimes hear in dreams. Andre Gide had it when he wrote: ‘...everything should be made homogenous, so that the melody may remain enveloped in the friendly atmosphere created by the other voices, themselves evoking a continually pulsating, but immaterial landscape’.
This took me back. The dear lady who taught me German used to play Chopin to me if I had done well. One Friday afternoon, my mastery of the Plu Perfect Subjunctive earned me the 24 Preludes. ‘Chopin was the pianist’s pianist’ she said, as she sat at my dad’s upright. But George Sand was a complete and utter bitch.
Robert Giddings, Tribune
Chopin wrote the most romantic music ever composed. Thirty-four extracts are included here, the sensitive Nocturnes and Etudes and the Polish Mazurkas, entwined with his vividly told life-story. His long and rewarding affair with George Sand (which ended in illness and tears) and their miserable winter in Majorca are fascinating. So are his physical suppleness (he had ‘boneless fingers’ and could place his legs around his shoulders), his daily hairdressing, his flight from cholera, and the dreary teaching necessitated by his constant money worries.
Rachel Redford, The Oldie
A superb portrait of a one-of-a-kind artist
The Life and Works of Liszt is the unabridged audiobook adaptation of a biography of Franz Liszt, possibly the greatest 19th century pianist of Europe. Liszt’s love affairs were nearly as legendary as his passion for music, and his generosity to young musicians earned widespread admiration. A superb portrait of a one-of-a-kind artist, brought to life with the dual performances of author Jeremy Siepmann (formerly Head of Music at the BBC World Service) and Neville Jason, The Life and Works of Franz Liszt is especially recommended for public library audiobook collections.
Library Bookwatch
The life, music, and career of Franz Liszt were equally unconventional and groundbreaking for his time. Jeremy Siepmann’s concise biography defines Liszt’s glamour and mystique, and the accompanying musical selections highlight what was so distinctive and revolutionary in the great composer/pianist’s work. The text, narrated by Siepmann, with Neville Jason reading for Liszt, is well paced and illuminating. Additional voices render contemporary letters and journals. Here, in the most pleasing way, is a two-hour seminar on Liszt and the glories of the piano, and one wouldn’t wish it a minute shorter, or longer. The centre of this production is the musical selections, which pick up their cue from the text and expand our understanding and appreciation of the music for its own sake and for the tumultuous life that produced it – and for life itself, in all its beauty, tumult, and mystery.
D.A.W., AudioFile
Lesser has fun with the comic characters
Charles Dickens’s tale of debtors’ prisons, cheating bankers, inept bureaucracies, and slowly sinking working people will resonate in today’s economic meltdown. Dickens always mixes commentary with romance and humor, and the enthusiastic Anton Lesser, a master of timing, character, and accent, understands that. The title character is born in the Marshalsea Prison, and her sense of delicacy and thoughtfulness, as well as her discomfort with sudden wealth, are effectively rendered by Lesser. Arthur Clennam, who cannot see that Little Dorrit loves him, sounds thoroughly decent and likeable. Lesser has fun with the comic characters. The listener will laugh out loud as the unrelentingly silly Flora chatters on and on at great speed and Pancks’s dedication to work (with his hair standing straight up) is tested by his grasping capitalist boss.
A.B., AudioFile
with Anton Lesser’s magical voice
Holding court in the debtors’ prison of the Marshalsea symbolises the vanity and arrogance of society, just one of Dickens’s many targets in this classic novel. He lashes the prison system, and his characters are grotesque and horribly flawed: bed-ridden Mrs Clennam rails against the world she has wronged; Flora Finching spews out non-stop romantic gush as she pursues her love of twenty years before. Only in ‘blessed’ Little Dorrit herself, one of Dickens’s unfeasibly good women, is there any hope for the future. Sprawling, and lacking a strong central character, Little Dorrit isn’t one of Dickens’s best, but with Anton Lesser’s magical voice, who cares?
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Narration and script combine to present a merry audiobook
The image of Little Lord Fauntleroy as a pampered, golden-curled boy in a ridiculous suit of velvet and lace is a travesty of the original and hugely successful 1855 story. Eight-year-old Cedric inherits riches: a castle and a title. He has to leave America where, despite his own poverty, he has befriended unfortunates, to join his old Scrooge of a grandfather in England. Of course his innate goodness and generous little heart win over the curmudgeonly old man. The unsentimental narration – and the drifts of Elgar – lift it into the realm of fable.
Rachel Redford, The Oldie
This meticulous abridgment does a good job with Burnett’s classic rags-to-riches story. Kindly fate transports an American boy, Cedric Errol, to England when he is discovered to be heir to the earldom of Dorincourt. Prepared to hate the American upstart, the crusty earl finds he can’t resist his grandson’s love. Teresa Gallagher’s gentle, refined voice brings the precocious Cedric into listeners’ hearts with arresting success. Equally well depicted are the pithy sayings of the ancient earl and Cedric’s mother’s bell-like tones. Characters and significant dialogue appear seamlessly, and there are few continuity issues in the abridgement. Narration and script combine to present a merry audiobook.
Audiofile Magazine, February/March 2008
A well-narrated collection
A well-narrated collection features five pieces of short fiction originally published in 1891, to which has been added Wilde’s mawkish fairy tale The Birthday of the Infanta. The anthology includes Wilde’s best-known story, The Canterville Ghost, a satiric and ultimately touching account of a brash American family frustrating a British ghost, and the enigmatic Portrait of Mr. W.H., in which research into the identity of the dedicatee of Shakespeare’s sonnets leads to monomania and suicide. All the selections drip with irony, paradox, and iconoclasm while showing off the author’s celebrated cleverness and wit. Narrators Rupert Degas, David Timson and Anthony Donovan well understand and communicate these qualities. In addition, they mercifully tone down the instances of excessive sentiment that could otherwise tumble them into bathos.
Y.R., AudioFile
Glen McReady reads with relish
The upside of creating the world’s most famous (and smuggest) detective is celebrity, fortune and a knighthood; the downside is that you’re stuck with him. In desperation Conan Doyle killed Sherlock Holmes off, but his publisher insisted he resurrect him.
In 1912, twenty years after his Baker Street sleuth first appeared on the Victorian crime scene, Conan Doyle wrote The Lost World, his best and last non-Sherlock Holmes novel. Cross Scoop with Jurassic Park and you’re getting close. Lovesick young reporter Edward Malone is briskly informed by Gladys that if he wants to marry her he has first to prove his heroism, for it is her wish to bask in the reflected glory of a husband whose great deeds are universally acclaimed. Malone’s kindly news editor suggests he expose a bogus explorer, one Professor Challenger who claims to have stumbled across a lost civilisation in Brazil. Perched on an inaccessible plateau roughly the size and shape of Sussex at the back end of the Amazon, it is inhabited by prehistoric monsters and primitive tribes. Alas, all the evidence – the bones, hides, feathers etc – were lost on the return journey. A second debunking expedition is proposed. Glen McReady reads this good old-fashioned ripping yarn with relish. I liked the pterodactyls roaring as fearsomely as Hendon aerodrome on a race day.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
In 1912, Doyle took his Victorian readers deep into the South American jungles where, high atop a treacherous plateau, a small band of British explorers encountered a terrifying world of prehistoric creatures long thought lost to the sands of time. The adventurers included a young newspaper reporter, Ed Malone; the swashbuckling aristocrat, Lord Roxton; the skeptical scientist, Professor Summerlee; and the brilliant and bombastic Professor Challenger, who leads the party. Doyle unfolds high adventure at its best with fantastic encounters with pterodactyls, stegosaurs and cunning ape-men. Glen McCready’s performance captures the time and tone of Doyle’s material perfectly without straying into melodrama. He nicely balances Malone’s sense of youthful wonder with the professors’ scientific pragmatism, while fully exploiting the humor spread strategically throughout, planting numerous chuckles among the thrills. McCready’s entertaining reading more than fulfils the author’s introductory wish to ‘give one hour of joy to the boy who’s half a man, or the man who’s half a boy.’
Publisher’s Weekly, February 2008
In this science fiction thriller about a death-defying search for dinosaurs in the uncharted depths of South America, Conan Doyle drew on contemporary interest in palaeontology and Darwinian evolutionary theory. Young journalist Edward has joined Professor Challenger’s expedition to prove himself worthy of his beloved Gladys’s hand, but his romanticism is soon rocked by the terrifying dangers of pterodactyls and ape men. As Thinking Boy’s Adventure it can’t be beaten – and the narrator sounds uncannily like a driven nineteenth-century adventurer himself!
Rachel Redford, The Oldie, April 2008
Meyers manages to create his own Sam Spade and also does a good job voicing the remaining characters
Sam Spade, the hard-boiled detective, must deal with several shady characters, all of whom would (and do) kill for the statue of the Maltese Falcon in this classic mystery by Dashiell Hammett the creator of the “hard-boiled” detective novel. The statue has a very long history and under a black coating is rumored to be encrusted with priceless jewels. Spade is cool and never shows much emotion, but his brain works overtime to figure out which are the bad guys and gals. Since his character is forever linked with Humphrey Bogart in the film version, it takes a special reader to resist the temptation to imitate Bogart. However Eric Meyers manages to create his own Sam Spade and also does a good job voicing the remaining characters. Meyers began his career working on radio. He has since appeared in many films as well as providing narration in documentaries for National Geographic, The History Channel, The Discovery Channel amongst others. He is a well-known character actor and voice artist. His experiences stand him in good stead here; the females are particularly well-drawn and when they cry it sounds absolutely true. Not for everyone, it is a bit dated, but for those who recall the movie with nostalgia, this will have appeal.
Sue Rosenzweig, Sound Commentary
Silver-tongued Juliet Stevenson makes herself the personification of Jane
The audiobooks I most cherish are Juliet Stevenson’s unabridged readings of Jane Austen, all of which are now available from Naxos AudioBooks. Austen’s novels were written in the knowledge that they would be read aloud: it’s easy to imagine both chuckles and tense intakes of breath as their characters display foibles familiar to all of us, get into scrapes and misadventures, and emerge stronger and wiser.
Silver-tongued Juliet Stevenson makes herself the personification of Jane, never overplaying her low-key sarcasm or missing a necessary emphasis. I’ve just whiled away a cold with the one I know least well: Mansfield Park, the tale of how timid Fanny Price charmed the hearts of her wealthy and worldly relatives.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Superb narration
Written after his 1842 trip to America and his disillusionment with what he came to see as a vulgar nation, Dickens thought this ‘immeasurably the best’ of his novels. Chuzzlewit, self-seeking and arrogant, travels across the Atlantic on a journey of self-knowledge. Along with its serious theme of selfishness, the novel is also comic, its humour epitomised by the slatternly nurse Mrs Gamp with her delightfully mangled language: ‘Rich folk may ride on camels, but it ain’t so easy for ’em to see out of a needle’s eye.’ Superb narration.
Rachel Redford, The Oldie
Dickens regarded this study in selfishness and obstinacy as his best novel, but the creaky and long-drawn-out beginning in which everybody seems on the make or gullible ended up losing it many readers. Persevere: there are fascinating scenes in America, a murder plot worthy of a penny dreadful, a fine range of grotesque villains (including Seth Pecksniff, pictured [on the cover] with an old Martin Chuzzlewit) as well as touching heroines and Dickens’s best hero, in the shape of Tom Pinch.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Charles Dickens is not known for subtlety, and Martin Chuzzlewit is typically unsubtle, satirical, often quite funny, and, in this case, vastly improved by the expertise of Sean Barrett. There are so many distinct and consistent characters here, and Barrett nails them all, especially the two Martin Chuzzlewits, the gruff grandfather and the feckless grandson. The younger Martin goes to America with the most optimistic man in the world, Mark Tapley, who has a slightly Cockney accent and a ’never-give-up’ tone. There they find racism, a land scam, and a fever that almost kills them. Barrett’s gushing and wheedling portrayal of Seth Pecksniff vividly renders this hypocritical character whose fall brings about everyone’s happiness in truly Dickensian fashion. Also noteworthy is Barrett’s portrait of the deluded and drunken Sairy Gamp, a nurse you would not want in your hour of need.
A.B., AudioFile
Liza Ross capably handles the many characters
Liza Ross capably handles the many characters in Baum’s sequel to The Wizard of Oz. She develops a voice and sensibility for each character and adapts her voice for quick-moving dialogue and nonstop adventures. Ross depicts a youthful Tip, a boy who lives with his guardian, the witch Mombi. The witch brings to life Jack Pumpkinhead, whom Ross incarnates with a voice as stiff as the squash-headed figure’s unbending legs. Threats from Mombi send these unlikely heroes to the Emerald City, where they unite with the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman to recapture the city from an all-girl army. New characters join the familiar ones, all of whom Ross imbues with appropriate vocal qualities. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award.
S.W., AudioFile Magazine
Rhind-Tutt cleverly indulges the satire and the fantasy
Rhind-Tutt cleverly indulges the satire and the fantasy in a novel unpublished until 26 years after Bulgakov’s death. The absurdity of the Stalinist system is inventively mocked, Christ is sympathetically re-examined and over all is a layer of idiosyncratic fantasy.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
First published 26 years after his death in 1940, Bulgakov’s extraordinary satire of life under the political, cultural, religious and bureaucratic strictures of Stalinist tyranny has been variously described as Solzhenitsyn crossed with Lewis Carroll and the most powerful Russian novel of the 20th century. His cast of characters, real and imaginary, make Dickens’s dramatis personae appear sparse. Bulgakov’s include Pontius Pilate, a talking cat who puts on black-rimmed spectacles to read official documents quite often upside down, the devil at whose annual grand ball Stravinsky conducts the band, a poet imprisoned in a psychiatric asylum not unconnected with the Master of the title, and his ever-faithful lover Margarita. Ah, Margarita – what a woman. But maybe I’d be, too, if I had the magic ointment that makes one look 10 years younger. It sounds like a test run for botox. She makes a Faustian pact with the devil for true love’s sake so that the Master can write his precious books without fear of arrest. A classic that can be read on many levels, it’s played strictly for laughs by Julian Rhind-Tutt. But there is a much darker side.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
This novel, considered by many a masterpiece of 20th century Soviet era literature, is complex and many layered. It tells three stories, including that of Pontius Pilate and Jesus, the story of the Master who is in an insane asylum and his true love Margarita, and a writer who wants to destroy his own masterpiece which is the first story of Pontius Pilate. The main story is set in Russia in the 1930’s [sic.] and involves the devil who is disguised as Professor Woland, who can use black magic. Actually, listeners may wish for some magic of their own to keep the three stories straight, to separate fantasy from reality and to appreciate the nuances of the stories, all of which require a knowledge of art, religion, history, the Soviet era and the life of Christ. In addition, there is the usual difficulty of keeping the Russian names straight as characters are called by alternating versions of their first, middle and last names throughout. And then there is the fact that this novel is a satire and so it is up to the listener to figure out if the author actually means what he is saying. Fortunately, narrator Julian Rhind-Tutt, a British actor, is a magician with his voice. Within a minute, he can voice three characters and the narrator, gliding silkily from one to another with great distinction among them. Even if listeners aren’t totally sure what is going on at all times, this audiobook is still is a pleasure to listen to. And after this audiobook, listeners can always go on to read the book with a confidence gleaned from this intelligent and entertaining interpretation.
Soundcommentary.com
Bulgakov’s satire of the greed and corruption of Soviet authorities illustrates the redemptive nature of art and faith, and Julian Rhind-Tutt’s superb interpretation does the classic full justice. With a dramatic flair and a deep, multilayered voice, he pulls off a host of fantastical characters including Professor Woland (Satan) and several of his associates, Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ, witches and madmen and a variety of early 20th-century Moscow literary and theater types. Two minor caveats: a few characterizations are too nasal, and his cockney accents for low-class Russian characters are a bit disconcerting.
Publisher’s Weekly
How this posthumously published satire got written in Stalinist Russia and survived is as fascinating a story as the one it tells. Upon finally being printed, it became an international sensation that literati still acclaim as a modern classic. This complex, multilayered, and Rabelaisian novel is impossible to summarize. Suffice it to say that when Satan incognito brings a hellish gang to the officially atheist USSR, mayhem ensues, in the course of which the author verbally skewers the Soviet literary, social, and political establishments. Incongruously for the American ear, Julian Rhind-Tutt gives a decidedly Cockney spin to his narration. But he also gives it mischief, invention, and unflagging energy. Thus, he makes even the more obscure passages enjoyable listening. A fine reading of an important book. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
Y.R., AudioFile
Rhind-Tutt cleverly indulges the satire and the fantasy
Rhind-Tutt cleverly indulges the satire and the fantasy in a novel unpublished until 26 years after Bulgakov’s death. The absurdity of the Stalinist system is inventively mocked, Christ is sympathetically re-examined and over all is a layer of idiosyncratic fantasy.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
The first recording of Bulgakov’s ‘The Master and Margarita’ blazes with vicious satire and obsessive love, cosmic vision, irreducible humanism, and the sheer joy of a talking, gun-toting, gherkin-spearing cat. Julian Rhind-Tutt smoothes the transitions between the story of Jesus and Pontius Pilate and that of the Devil’s dizzying visit to 1930s Moscow. The only hitch? It’s abridged, although I didn’t notice the cuts.
Bella Todd, TimeOut
First published 26 years after his death in 1940, Bulgakov’s extraordinary satire of life under the political, cultural, religious and bureaucratic strictures of Stalinist tyranny has been variously described as Solzhenitsyn crossed with Lewis Carroll and the most powerful Russian novel of the 20th century. His cast of characters, real and imaginary, make Dickens’s dramatis personae appear sparse. Bulgakov’s include Pontius Pilate, a talking cat who puts on black-rimmed spectacles to read official documents quite often upside down, the devil at whose annual grand ball Stravinsky conducts the band, a poet imprisoned in a psychiatric asylum not unconnected with the Master of the title, and his ever-faithful lover Margarita. Ah, Margarita – what a woman. But maybe I’d be, too, if I had the magic ointment that makes one look 10 years younger. It sounds like a test run for botox. She makes a Faustian pact with the devil for true love’s sake so that the Master can write his precious books without fear of arrest. A classic that can be read on many levels, it’s played strictly for laughs by Julian Rhind-Tutt. But there is a much darker side.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
This novel, considered by many a masterpiece of 20th century Soviet era literature, is complex and many layered. It tells three stories, including that of Pontius Pilate and Jesus, the story of the Master who is in an insane asylum and his true love Margarita, and a writer who wants to destroy his own masterpiece which is the first story of Pontius Pilate. The main story is set in Russia in the 1930’s [sic.] and involves the devil who is disguised as Professor Woland, who can use black magic. Actually, listeners may wish for some magic of their own to keep the three stories straight, to separate fantasy from reality and to appreciate the nuances of the stories, all of which require a knowledge of art, religion, history, the Soviet era and the life of Christ. In addition, there is the usual difficulty of keeping the Russian names straight as characters are called by alternating versions of their first, middle and last names throughout. And then there is the fact that this novel is a satire and so it is up to the listener to figure out if the author actually means what he is saying. Fortunately, narrator Julian Rhind-Tutt, a British actor, is a magician with his voice. Within a minute, he can voice three characters and the narrator, gliding silkily from one to another with great distinction among them. Even if listeners aren’t totally sure what is going on at all times, this audiobook is still is a pleasure to listen to. And after this audiobook, listeners can always go on to read the book with a confidence gleaned from this intelligent and entertaining interpretation.
Soundcommentary.com
Bulgakov’s satire of the greed and corruption of Soviet authorities illustrates the redemptive nature of art and faith, and Julian Rhind-Tutt’s superb interpretation does the classic full justice. With a dramatic flair and a deep, multilayered voice, he pulls off a host of fantastical characters including Professor Woland (Satan) and several of his associates, Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ, witches and madmen and a variety of early 20th-century Moscow literary and theater types. Two minor caveats: a few characterizations are too nasal, and his cockney accents for low-class Russian characters are a bit disconcerting.
Publisher’s Weekly
poetry – good, bad, or indifferent – can be appreciated most when read aloud
What price, fame? One would wish to ask that question of the shade of William McGonnagle [sic.] (1825–1902), who for more than 100 years has had the dubious distinction of being hailed as the worst poet to have ever written in the English language. His rhymes are trite. His meter is erratic, and the tone of his poems frequently doesn’t comport with the subject at hand. Someone adept at greeting card jingles displays more talent than McGonnagall [sic.]. Witness his “Tay Bridge Disaster” as only one example, for the man was, alas, utterly serious about his “art” and, thus, prolific. By compiling a selection of McGonnagall [sic.] work, Naxos Audio has not only provided a highly entertaining hour’s diversion but has confirmed something that every teacher of English has always known: poetry – good, bad, or indifferent – can be appreciated most when read aloud. Gregor Fisher, with an intelligent performance and a lovely Scots accent, lends what credibility he can to the author’s efforts, exposing the weakness of his verse while never letting the audiobook descend to the level of a cheap joke. Academics will enjoy this and might find the audiobook a useful tool around which to build a poetry and literary aesthetics lesson. Other lovers of literature who may (or may not) find much admirable in poetry to begin with will be amused by just how bad it can really get!
soundcommentary.com
The 1879 Tay Bridge disaster killed 90 rail passengers. Here’s how McGonagall, 1830-1902, ‘the world’s worst poet’, begins his requiem: ‘Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay! / Alas! I am very sorry to say / That ninety lives have been taken away / On the last Sabbath day of 1879, / Which will be remember’d for a very long time…’ Well, it made me laugh, especially read by Rab C. Nesbitt. But maybe after two weeks of non-stop rain on Loch Linnhe, anything would.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
The calm rich voice provides instructions and guidance for each stage of the meditation
The author/narrator Jinananda’s gentle cultured voice weaves a vibration of peace even as he begins speaking the introduction to Buddhist meditation known as Vipassana, the practice of mindfulness. He begins with preparation for meditation, insight into and guidance through the progressions of human thought and feelings as attention is paid to the breathing during the stages of meditation. Jinananda discusses the development of loving kindness as another level of Buddhist meditation, and shares methods for dealing with distractions and hindrances which often arise in meditation practice. In the fourth and final CD an actual meditation is led. The calm rich voice provides instructions and guidance for each stage of the meditation. A long entoned, clear vibration meditation bell rings, followed by a deep silence in which meditation happens. The bell rings again before the instruction for the next stage begins. The publisher includes helpful, printed album notes. A written essay on meditation follows the chapter outline. It helps to read this first to understand the direction and development of Jinanada’s instructional book. This is culmination without denouement. The continuity of mindfulness, as taught by Jinanada remains, even as the CD ceases spinning. Do be certain to put this on its own playlist on your iPod so there is no next album which comes on to disturb the peaceful silence.
Rachel Claire, SoundCommentary.com
wonderful audiobook listening
Begin – to begin is half the work. Let half still remain; again begin this, and you will have finished. Little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself. The only wealth that you will keep for ever is the wealth you have given away. The sexual embrace can only be compared to music and with prayer. Sex is merely the spasmodic excretion of mucus. No – not my musings, but the sometimes contradictory Meditations (Naxos 4CDs) written down by the stoical Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. Were they his own thoughts, or a book kept to record what struck him in his own readings. No one knows, but there is no doubt that the Meditations make wonderful audiobook listening, especially when you have set off to pace the hills and escape the conflicting demands of ife. They are read with calm conviction by the Buddhist Duncan Steen.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
This new set surpasses ... all
Thanks to an interesting coincidence, a new CD recording of The Merchant of Venice has appeared on the Naxos Audiobooks label. I finished listening to it on the very day that I watched an episode of John Barton’s marvelous 'Playing Shakespeare’ master class on DVD, in which Patrick Stewart and David Suchet switched Shylocks in some of that character’s famous moments.
Not only were their readings radically different, but their very bodies and facial expressions added to the masterful – but different – characterizations. I labor the obvious, because it is difficult to judge a performance accurately from an audio medium rather than from a visual one. I am sure that this Naxos version was based on the much-celebrated performance of Antony Sher as Shylock. I found it hard to get a good idea of how he might have looked on stage, but he came across vocally as a man who has kept his dignity at the expense of great suffering all these years, and is then driven into madness by his daughter running off with a good deal of his riches.
The question of the play’s possible anti-Semitism is best avoided here; but a lot depends on Shylock to treat the subtext one way or the other.
The fact that the rest of the cast is just as greedy for money as Shylock is well handled, such as laughter at the money lender. Although his role is fairly small, Roger Allam creates a noble Antonio, while Emma Fielding (Portia) and Cathy Sara (Nerissa) handle their first scene with good pacing and humor. It is not clear if Portia knows in the trial scene exactly how she is going to beat Shylock, or if she is winging it, but any director would be hard put to ‘show’ that on a CD.
I like that the Prince of Aragon (Sam Dastor) and Prince of Morocco (Ray Fearon) are not played as pantomime fools, but instead show just enough arrogance to get what they deserve in choosing the wrong caskets. Good grades go to director John Tydeman.
Older recordings I have heard feature Tony Church, Hugh Griffith and Trevor Peacock as Shylock. This new set surpasses them all.
Frank Behrens, SentinelSource
Juliet Stevenson is unmatched in her narration
Middlemarch has something for all grown-ups, and [Juliet] Stevenson’s reading makes all the somethings that much better.
Joanna Theiss, soundcommentary.com
Juliet Stevenson is unmatched in her narration of George Eliot’s sweeping novel, which puts a lens to the fictitious English town of Middlemarch. Eliot’s complex plot takes the listener into various households and lives, revealing scandal, secret longings, and unexpected ties. Stevenson’s pleasant, friendly voice makes this relatively lengthy audiobook a listening delight. She enhances the narrative passages through her consistent enthusiasm and ease of language. Capturing the voices of Eliot’s characters adeptly, Stevenson shifts flawlessly from gruff elderly bachelors to flirtatious young women. She displays a keen ability for a range of British accents, perfectly sorting the servants from the aristocracy and everyone in between. Stevenson’s execution heralds the triumph of female spirit that Eliot embodies within this literary classic.
D.M.W., AudioFile
Having read her way through the Austen oeuvre, Juliet Stevenson now makes her mark on another Eng. Lit. classic, with a performance of Middlemarch that creates a vocal landscape of tones and accents: a highly sympathetic interpretation, given Eliot’s emphasis on the qualities that her characters’ voices reveal about them. Eliot’s ambitious study traces the causes and effects in a single Midlands community of the great upheavals in England’s economic, social and political life in the 1820s and 1830s. The writing is often gloriously comic – a deathbed, funeral and will-reading sequence is particularly entertaining – but for the modern reader it is the vivid misery produced by the mésalliance between clever but priggish Dorothea Brooke and the desiccated scholar Edward Casaubon that compels most powerfully.
Karen Robinson, the Sunday Times
Whether new to this classic 19th century novel or familiar with George Eliot’s elegant examination of English provincial life in the 1830s, listeners should not miss this splendid performance by actress and seasoned narrator Juliet Stevenson. Eliot uses multiple intertwined plots—the philosophical and romantic pursuits of Dorothea Brook, her uncle’s bid for Parliament, the tribulations of enterprising doctor Lydgate as he struggles to reform medical practices of the day while suffering an unfortunate marriage, and the unexpected alliance between Mary Garth and Fred Vincy—to address issues of her time from the rights of women to the institution of marriage and political reforms. Many other side stories and complications fill Eliot’s pages resulting in a novel rich in intriguing characters, both good and bad. Stevenson’s clear tones and precise accents transport listeners back in time and into the lives of the denizens of Middlemarch. Aged scholar Mr. Casaubon’s tedious pronouncements are made in a thin, whining voice that reflects his mean-spirited, pedantic nature. In contrast, Dorothea’s bright and crisp alto brims with energy and life. The other voices are equally distinctive and Stevenson’s incisive vocal portraits reflect the nature of each character. Mr. Brooke speaks quietly in slowly thoughtful and removed tones; Lydgate’s voice mirrors both his earnestness and his ultimate disillusionment. Fred Vincy is all sophomoric enthusiasms, while Caleb Garth’s stolid laborer’s drawl underlines his innate common sense. Among the women Rosamond Lydgate’s cool, self-centered, disparaging comments contrast neatly with Mary Garth’s sweet nature and sensible grasp of every situation. Stevenson’s elegant, heartfelt narration catches us up in these lives that explore Eliot’s social and moral concerns. Her sublime narration reflects every nuance of Eliot’s elegant prose. A stellar addition to Naxos’ collection of classics on audio.
Joyce Saricks, soundcommentary.com
’Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.’
Martin Amis has described George Eliot as the greatest writer in the English language and Middlemarch as the greatest novel. Now Juliet Stevenson has climbed this narrative Everest so that we can hear it as it was first enjoyed: read aloud in installments. My enduring memory of the book was of the idealistic Dorothea Brooke sacrificing herself on the altar of Mr Casaubon’s scholarly vanity, and of the self-confident Dr Lydgate falling for the feather-headed Rosamund. Any other novelist would somehow have got Lydgate and Dorothea together, but not, my twenty-something self was appalled to discover, George Eliot. Forty years later and aware of my aware of my failure to make the right choices, I am finding Eliot’s novel, her seventh, simultaneously provocative and deeply satisfying. Written in about 1870, but set in the yeasty early 1830s, its breadth is Dickensian, spanning attitudes to women, gambling, social reform, politics and evangelical religion. Don’t hurry your listening: enjoy Stevenson’s consistently intelligent and sensitive aural portraits of the vast cast.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Derek Jacobi is completely in his element when reading Milton
This collection of Milton’s poetry is Naxos’s contribution to the celebrations surrounding the 400th anniversary of the birth of the great English poet. It is an accessible choice featuring short poems, the famous sonnets on his deceased wife, Cromwell and blindness, plus some extracts from the epic Paradise Lost (also available from Naxos in a four-hour reading by Anton Lesser). The quality of Derek Jacobi’s audio performances can be erratic, but he is on top form here, his sparkling confidence with meter and rhyme allowing meaning to be revealed. Samantha Bond’s expressive empathy also transcends the complex language and the classical references to deliver powerful ideas on politics (Milton was a republican), religion and love. Musicality is central to the poet’s works: his friend Henry Lawes set many of the poems to music, so it is fitting that his pieces, performed on original instruments, are integral to this production.
Karen Robinson, The Sunday Times
The incomparable Derek Jacobi is completely in his element when reading Milton. His performance of the sonnet “On Shakespeare” seems particularly well suited to his voice, which is so closely associated with the Bard. Samantha Bond is equally comfortable with Milton’s verse, and the two work well together in the selections that call for two voices. While Paradise Lost is, no doubt, Milton’s most well-known masterpiece (if not his most widely read), this recording includes only brief selections from it, totalling less than seven minutes. This is a wise editorial choice as it leaves room for some shorter and more accessible poems that showcase the work of these two outstanding narrators.
D. B., AudioFile Magazine
Anton Lesser excels as the doomed but magnificently heroic Lucifer
October 2008 marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Milton, a man who rivals Shakespeare as a coiner of phrases still in everyday use (“Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new”, “They also serve who only stand and wait”, “A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit”, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven”, “Now, Voyager ...”).
To celebrate, Naxos has compiled The Essential John Milton, a tribute that should stand as a model for how to do a great writer honour. The first three CDs are devoted to Paradise Lost and the fourth and fifth to Paradise Regained. Both are read by Anton Lesser, who excels as the doomed but magnificently heroic Lucifer. The sixth is a chronological selection of Milton’s poetry, which shifts from rural idyll to thumping polemic. The seventh offers extracts from his most famous prose writings. If, like, me, you have always meant to read Paradise Lost, then do as I did and get to know Milton the man before attempting his awesome mountain of blank verse.
Begin by listening to the last CD, an illuminating biography written and read by Roy McMillan. It sets Milton in his age: the troubled Civil War years of the seventeenth century. He was a Protestant disowned by his father for leaving the Roman Catholic Church, an arrogant student convinced early of his own genius. He became a Puritan apologist whose arguments in favour of divorce (as a result of his own initially disastrous matrimonial experiences), the freedom of the press and parliamentary democracy are memorably trenchant.
Once I’d listened to the poems and prose, I knew the mindset of the man, and cantered confidently into Paradise Lost. OK, I haven’t finished listening to it yet – but this time I will.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Madoc’s plummy tones reverberate with authority
In this classic high fantasy, sequel to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen two British siblings named Colin and Susan continue to cross into a world populated by Tolkienesque characters—elves, dwarfs, and a wizard. First published in 1963, this adventure finds the youngsters unwittingly unleashing horsemen known as the Wild Hunt and facing their old evil-witch nemesis. Madoc’s plummy tones reverberate with authority. His characterisations are spot-on, and the classical music that opens and closes the chapters is moodily dark and atmospheric, adding cachet to the production. There is a ponderous quality to the tale, however, as the action never really catches fire. For listeners who enjoyed the earlier title and are fans of classic fantasy.
Karen Cruze, Booklist
a truly pleasurable, outstanding listening experience
Virginia Woolf’s modernist classic, Mrs Dalloway, is an iconic description of Post World-War I London. Its honesty is poignant. Stoic exteriors and rigorous social standards are depicted as convenient facades for disillusioned and fretful internal monologues. Frequent flashbacks and stream of consciousness storytelling give listeners insight into the characters’ need to repress their fears and concerns in order to force a sense of order on a cruel world. Juliet Stevenson, a leading actress in the UK, expertly performs the novel. If Claire Dalloway, herself, were to speak these words, they would sound no different. The tension, worry, and desires of the characters’ thoughts are magnified by Stevenson’s intonation. It is a truly pleasurable, outstanding listening experience.
The production Mrs Dalloway has received a SoundCommentary starred review – Outstanding Audio!
Kerry Keegan, SoundCommentary
Robert Donat’s finest performance
Murder in the Cathedral revives the awesome 1953 Old Vic performance of Eliot’s play about the power struggle between Henry II and Thomas Becket, originally performed in the cathedral itself at the 1935 Canterbury Festival. In it you will hear echoes – ‘Humankind cannot bear very much reality’ – taken up in Burnt Norton. The cut-glass feminine vowels of the chorus annoy in the opening scenes, but persevere: this was Robert Donat’s finest performance.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
This re-release of the 1953 recording of Eliot’s poetic drama is a real treasure. Robert Donat plays the pious Archbishop Thomas Becket as he struggles with his instinctive knowledge that King Henry II’s loose tongue will make Thomas a martyr. Donat’s Thomas is sensitive and resigned, without being annoyingly sanctimonious. Also of note are the excellent performances of Thomas’s tempters and of the Chorus. A knowledge of the history is essential to understanding the story as Eliot’s playwriting is a bit demanding for the casual listener. …a smooth, clean production and performance.
A.H.A., AudioFile
It took me a few minutes to get used to this 1953 Old Vic production of Eliot’s verse play about the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, directed by Robert Helpmann. I’ve never warmed to women choruses, especially ones with such plummy accents as this lot, talking about heppy, not happy, and Chianteh-berry. Still, you get used to them, and by the time Becket, played by the immortal Robert Donat, fearlessly confronts his assassins, you’re biting your nails with the tension. A classic period piece.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
It took me a few minutes to get used to this 1953 Old Vic production of Eliot’s verse play about the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, directed by Robert Helpmann. I’ve never warmed to women choruses, especially ones with such plummy accents as this lot, talking about heppy, not happy, and Chianteh-berry. Still, you get used to them, and by the time Becket, played by the immortal Robert Donat, fearlessly confronts his assassins, you’re biting your nails with the tension. A classic period piece.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
beautifully complemented by the three-voice narration
The delicacy of this haunting, mythical novel is beautifully complemented by the three-voice narration and the intermittent Dowland and Byrd. It creates the mesmerising, unhappy worlds of Christian IV’s Denmark, where his musicians play unseen in chilly cellars, and of crazed Count O’Fingal’s Ireland, where he pursues a tune heard in his dream.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Rose Tremain is an even more arresting and atmospheric writer than Zafón, and much better at intricate plots. Her Music and Silence is told from three points of view, made more vivid on audio by the use of three narrators: Michael Praed, who projects the eccentric but guilt-haunted King Christian IV of Denmark (1577–1648), Alison Dowling, horrid as his strident, sex-obsessed consort Kirsten, and Clare Wille as the gushingly romantic Francesca, Countess O’Fingal. Linking them all is the lute player Peter Claire (cue apt Naxos lute music by Dowling and Byrd) and his ill-fated affair with Emilia, Kirsten’s companion.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
Michael Praed shines in his performance of Tremain’s 1995 Whitbread Award-winning novel. His intimate, sensual voice and use of pacing – even within sentences – adds nuance to each scene. He has a distinct voice for each character, and his variety of accents are believable and without affectation. Especially engaging are the story’s central characters: King Christian IV of 17th-century Denmark has the quiet, gravelly voice of age and profound sadness; the lutenist Peter Claire (the central love interest) is very appealing. Clare Wille expertly handles the emotional swings of Christian’s childish, scheming and sex-crazed wife, Kirsten. The device of alternating voices becomes somewhat annoying in an abridgment, but the plot line is clear, and lovely 17th-century lute intervals signal omissions.
Publisher’s Weekly
English lutenist Peter Claire performs in the royal orchestra of King Christian IV’s 17th-century Danish court, stirring the hearts of the principal women in this novel. Royal family dynamics are interwoven with love and lust as Claire catches the eye of the king and achieves a far-flung influence on a number of fronts – his political clout reaches from a widowed Irish countess of Spanish origins to the workers in the Scandinavian silver mines. Chapters are interspersed with delicate lute chords, and the alternating voices of the readers animate the narrative of each of the main characters. Feminine and breathy, Alison Dowling and Clare Wille give velvety, expressive voices to the female characters’ tales. Michael Praed’s strong, unaffected speech depicts the intensity and desperation of the characters he portrays. Mortal danger and the prospect of tragedy build as the narrators deliver their spirited array of voices.
A.W., AudioFile Magazine
An enjoyable and painlessly informative listen
’In our time,’ Napoleon is reported to have said to an aide in 1796, ’no one has the slightest conception of what is great. It is up to me to give them an example.’ Neil Wenborn’s Napoleon – In a Nutshell explores the man behind the myth, not easy when, as his secretary wrote: ’Each of us, without ceasing to be honest, can show a different Napoleon.’ An enjoyable and painlessly informative listen, with Rupert Degas a splendid narrator.
Kati Nicholl, Daily Express
Adam Sims is a terrific narrator
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is adventure of a different sort – and the only full-length novel Poe ever wrote. Young Arthur stows away to go to sea with his friend Augustus, only to encounter mutiny, storms, cannibalism, a mysterious island in the Antarctic sea, ambush, and the loss of the ship. It’s a novel which influenced other writers such as Melville and Verne and one of the characters is named Richard Parker – the name which Yann Martell gave to the Bengal tiger in The Life of Pi – and though it’s a tad over-the-top, it’s hugely enjoyable nonetheless. Adam Sims is a terrific narrator.
Kati Nicholl, Daily Express
The crew of the whaler Grampus has mutinied with stowaway narrator Pym on board. The sufferings of the survivors are hideous, with starvation driving them to cannibalism. This is a teasing, gripping adventure that travels through the mysterious deep and the blackness of death to a strange world of ethereal whiteness.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
An unexpected turn of events transforms the novelty of life on the high seas into a nightmare. Going to sea with his best friend, the story’s first-person narrator, Arthur Pym, travels the world and miraculously survives abominable horrors—mutiny, shipwreck, abandonment at sea, and hostile natives in the Galapagos. Narrator Adam Sims has a youthful, slightly raspy voice that ideally suits the young narrator. His articulate enunciation and measured pace are consistent throughout the story. To accommodate Poe’s lengthy tangents, Sims shifts his tone to match the formality of the historical asides. Through his enthusiastic narration, Sims gives the listener an exciting rendering of Poe’s only novel.
T.D.M., AudioFile
In his late teens, Arthur Gordon Pym, hero of Edgar Allan Poe’s only full-length novel, runs away to sea with his friend, Augustus Bernard, on his father’s vessel, the American whaling brig, Grampus. Their plan is that Arthur will start the voyage as a stowaway, until they are far enough out to sea to prevent his return to Nantucket. Nothing goes according to plan, however. A couple of days out, a mutiny forces Augustus to conceal Arthur’s presence for his safety. Not only Arthur’s fate, but his very life is in question as conditions deteriorate, and the forces of man and nature rise against him. The tale is actually in two parts, the first records this voyage of the Grampus, the second deals with an ill-conceived and somewhat fantastical voyage to Antarctica. Poe’s sense of the macabre and unexpected pervades the novel, creating an ever-rising suspense. Adam Sims, a veteran of radio, television, and theater performances, renders a very successful recounting of Arthur’s tale, most of which is delivered in the first person. Sims conveys Arthur’s naivete, adventurous spirit, ingenuity, and optimism concerning all the perils that befall him during the two journeys. This audiobook will appeal to adult and teen readers alike who love sea stories with a captivating story line and laden with heightened suspense. Several graphic passages dealing with cannibalism and violence may not be appropriate for junior high audiences.
Susan Allison, Soundcommentary.com
a poetical hymn to pastoralism
Aficionados of Japanese literature (not me alas) will know all about these two seminal 13th and 17th-century philosophical texts about giving up material possessions. Why I included them in my holiday reading package I’m not sure – two weeks on a Scottish island isn’t exactly renouncing the world. I’m glad I did. Hōjōki, like Virgil’s Eclogues, is a poetical hymn to pastoralism. Bashō’s prose – he was a famous haiku master – is equally passionate. If you get bogged down by the historical and cultural allusions, download the fifty-page crib that comes with CD 2 and voilà. It takes a while to tune in to the Japanese readers but you’ll end up wanting to compose your own haikus. Here’s my favourite: Writing a poem / with 17 syllables / can be quite difficult.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
a myth-breaking study of wolf-pack organisation
The Canadian naturalist Farley Mowat, now approaching 90, is too little-known in the UK: think of Gerard Durrell crossed with Garrison Keillor. He is renowned for his books on the Inuit and the animals that they hunt. Never Cry Wolf, a myth-breaking study of wolf-pack organisation, altered the general perception at the time of wolves as unmitigated evil. It is also an hilarious satire on state bureaucracy that finds Mowat dumped in the middle of a frozen lake with a mountain of supplies and an utterly useless canoe. His mission is to prove that wolves are destroying indecent numbers of caribou. Instead, he finds that they live as much on mice and fish as on deer, and normally attack only the weakest members of the herd in a good demonstration of natural selection.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
In 1948 Mowat was commissioned by the Canadian Wildlife Service to investigate declining caribou numbers in the sub-Arctic wastes of northern Manitoba. Mowat’s brief was to prove that wolves were to blame for their disappearance and not, as a previous researcher had suggested, the ever-increasing numbers of trophy-bagging deer hunters. After a year in the wilderness monitoring various wolf packs, Mowat reached the astonishing conclusion that the staple diet of wolves (in Manitoba in 1948, at any rate) was not deer, but mice. But wolves eat 30lbs of red meat a day. How can they carry enough mice back to their dens to feed their cubs? They eat them and then regurgitate them, that’s how. Never Cry Wolf, published in 1963, did much to change the popular perception of wolves as savage, gratuitous killers. Forget White Fang and shots of slavering packs creating carnage on fleeing caribou in David Attenborough documentaries. One day Mowat sees three wolves loping along the crest of a crag and follows them to grasslands full of grazing deer, through which they pad leisurely. ‘The scene was all wrong,’ he writes. They pass within feet of cud-chewing bucks, who turn their heads but keep on munching. Until they see Mowat, who had been skinny-dipping and hadn’t had time to get dressed. Then the terrified herd stampeded.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
The Canadian wolves ignored Mowat when he first arrived in the Arctic to study them. Their indifference allowed him to observe every part of the predators’ lives: monogamous reproduction, a nuclear family, and a surprising diet. Sentimentalists’ complaints to the government that “the wolves were killing all the deer” caused Canada to send Mowat to investigate the claim. Narrator Adam Sims makes listeners feel welcome. His soft, youthful voice becomes plausible as the author’s; he recounts the expedition as if from memory yet makes the scientific discoveries unfold with the drama of a novel. He also creates a cast of wolf pack members and the shy Eskimos who become the conservationist’s close friends and teachers. This 1963 book became a classic that shifted the public’s perception of wolves.
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award
J.A.H., AudioFile
What a pleasure to become reacquainted with Farley Mowat’s adventures with the wolves in the subarctic regions of Canada. On his first assignment for the Canadian government in the late 1940s, he is given a lot of rules to follow, a ton of stuff, but no clear way to get where he is going. The first few chapters are funny and replete with how bureaucrats don’t seem to get it. Luckily when he finally arranges transportation (and hides his heavy supplies in the canoe on the underside of the plane overloading it) his radio expires because there is no way to run it after the batteries are used up. Having gone there to investigate the declining caribou population and with the officially preconceived notions that wolves are deadly predators needing to be exterminated, his intimate observations of the wolves endear them to him and to his listeners and prove not to be such deadly predators. Anyone who ever enjoyed Gerald Durrell’s Birds, Beasts and Relatives will enjoy Farley Mowat’s experiences with the wolves. There are many humorous incidents as Mowat seems to relish laughing at himself. British trained television and theater actor Adam Sims (Band of Brothers and the RSC’s Alice in Wonderland) has a young voice which he deepens for the Inuit who becomes Fowat’s friend, mentor and colleague. Sims appears to enjoy what he is reading and sharing it with all of us.
Mary Purucker, SoundCommentary
Teresa Gallagher gives every character a distinct voice
E. Nesbit’s The New Treasure Seekers takes us back to the start of the last century and the six Bastable children who get into scrapes by always trying to be good. Older children will sympathise with the senior Bastables as their younger siblings create havoc – while all listeners will chuckle at their Just William-type antics.
This Bastable book stands on its own but the earlier The Treasure Seekers and The Wouldbegoods are also available. And though they sound as though they are being read by a cast of dozens, it’s because reader Teresa Gallagher gives every character a distinct voice – an amazing performance. Suitable for 9–15 year olds.
Kati Nicholl, Daily Express
makes for an enthralling listen
Almost anyone can be a publisher if they are wiling to read widely, exercise good taste, and take a few risks. Naxos AudioBooks, which has pioneered great versions of Finnegans Wake, and the works of Jane Austen, is branching out this month with a 10-hour recording of William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley. William Lindsay who? I’d never heard of this forgotten Americancorrect crime writer, briefly married to Joy Davidman (who, later, was the doomed wife of C.S. Lewis). In its day, Lindsay’s highly original portrait of the dark side of the American dream, seen through the desperate world of carnival sideshows, was a hit. Read by Adam Sims, it makes for an enthralling listen for a long car journey. Hats off to Naxos for the discovery.
Robert McCrum, Observer
This extraordinary and mesmerising 1946 cult novel was born of the author’s lifelong fascination with the sophisticated tricks behind American carnival and the sideshows of Coney Island. Its clever and ambitious protagonist, Stan Carlisle, learns how to dupe the gullible public, and sets out to make huge bucks from faked spiritualism. He treats others as ruthlessly as he was treated as a child, but is plagued by his own demons which are as destructive as those he conjures. Matched by a spectacular narration.
Rachel Redford, Observer
Gresham’s little-remembered noir masterpiece deserves a whole new generation of readers, and Adam Sim’s dark performance is a marvellous way to reach them. The story begins in a carnival, which provides a narrator’s dream assortment of characters. Though some are unmistakably comic, Gresham’s vision is anything but lighthearted. His protagonist, Stanley Carlisle, is a mind reader cum spiritualist who preys on the lonely and despairing without recognising the blackness at his own centre. Sims is alive to the tragedy of Carlisle but never seeks to soften him. He coldly follows Carlisle on his unmerciful path – right to the devastating but inevitable end.
M.O., AudioFile
Gresham’s little-remembered noir masterpiece deserves a whole new generation of readers, and Adam Sims’s dark performance is a marvellous way to reach them. The story begins in a carnival, which provides a narrator’s dream assortment of characters. Though some are unmistakably comic, Gresham’s vision is anything but lighthearted. His protagonist, Stanley Carlisle, is a mind reader-cum-spiritualist who preys on the lonely and despairing without recognising the blackness at his own centre. Sims is alive to the tragedy of Carlisle but never seeks to soften him. He coldly follows Carlisle on his unmerciful path – right to the devastating but inevitable end.
M.O., AudioFile
William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley is noir at its finest. Originally published in 1946, this reissued audiobook is a pinnacle of the genre.
Stanton Carlisle wants what most everyone does, fame and fortune. The American dream. He will stop at nothing to achieve it. Working his way up from an amateur sleight-of-hand artist in the traveling Ten-in-one shows, to a successful fake mind-reading act in vaudeville, the more he gets, the more he wants. Together, he and his wife Molly start a ministry where they attract wealthy ’marks’ for séances to contact loved ones in the afterlife. All Stanton and Molly need is one big score, and they’ll be set for life. But greed is a dangerous thing, and sometimes, if you’re not careful, the tables can turn on you.
With stark detail, Gresham shows the life of a traveling carnival. Every detail of the ups and downs is chronicled, along with characters so real to life that they could jump off the page. Including some of the best dialogue in fiction. You could tell he really knew the subject well, and that shows through in spades. His insight into human psychology, and the vernacular of the times, really make this novel powerful.
I listened to this audio version and found the narration by Adam Sims extremely satisfying. He had a different voice for each character’s dialogue, and I found that it enriched the story nicely.
I truly believe this to be one of the best noir novels I’ve ever read (or listened to). It’s a shame the author didn’t write but two novels, but there is also something fitting about that as well. It seems to make this book all the sweeter. Highly recommended.
Noir Journal
Barrett delivers a standout performance
This week I travelled hopefully through Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men and Audrey Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry. Both made excellent audiobook journeys, possibly the better for being abridged. Like James Joyce, McCarthy is best appreciated when heard aloud rather than merely read, and the narrator, Sean Barrett, does his laconic, lapidary prose full justice. We are in the Big Country: Texas in 1980, with drug barons pumping slugs every which way. When Llewellyn Moss happens on a massacre and purloins a satchel containing $4.5 million, he appears doomed. But isn’t he our hero? Surely he can outwit a psychotic hit man who enjoys macabre rituals of death? Don’t hold your breath.
Christina Hardyment, The Times
It’s difficult to imagine a better narrator for No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy than Sean Barrett, (after hearing this short novel performed), although (knowing his work) I’m sure that Tom Stechschulte is also superb in his version. What makes Barrett a great choice to speak the killer’s words here is oddly similar to what made Javier Bardem a great choice for the character of Anton Chigurh in the Coen brothers movie version. Barrett has an understated, calm, but not quite laid-back air about his delivery, with vocal characteristics to match. There’s an element of tension present that the mirror surface can’t quite hide. You expect the worst to happen, and it does. As for the story, if you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s about a escaped killer tracking a man who found a bag of money related to a failed drug buy. Tommy Lee Jones plays the sheriff in the movie, and he’s trying to find both men before they find each other. Sounds simple enough. But as this morality tale plays out against the stark backdrop of west Texas it also expands its reach past mere entertainment into the realm of literature by extending its scope beyond three men in the desert to the bigger questions that have plagued man from the beginning. Hearing this “audio movie” version will be instructive for Coen brothers fans and screenwriters too, since you can compare, as I did, the dialogue between the book and the movie, and so see what choices the Coen brothers made in editing. Surprisingly, they stayed pretty much with the story, (except for one major scene), and were true to the dialogue too, but there are other subtle differences. (Some scenes were tightened, others emphasized by the Coens. Little extra dialogue was added, but some was subtracted.) By comparing, you will be able to figure out why (and which) things work better on the screen or on the page. As reader, Sean Barrett is an appropriate guide to this very original story, with spot-on west Texas accents and believable female characters, too. Speaking in the voice of the killer, though, he’s chillingly real and a minimalist just like Chigurh himself – a man of few emotions, attuned to destiny, accepting of fate, just telling it like it is, whether you like what truths are revealed about the world or not. (Naxos)
Jonathan Lowe, audiobookstoday.blogspot.com
Barrett delivers a standout performance in an artful abridgement that captures the essence of McCarthy’s classic. Set along the border between the U.S. and Mexico, the story follows the tragic and bloody adventures of Llewelyn Moss, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, and the sociopathic killer Anton Chigurh. When Moss makes off with millions of dollars of drug money, his life changes forever as both Bell and Chigurh pursue him, the latter leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake. Barrett’s portrayal of Moss, Bell, and Chigurh are pitch perfect as are his renditions of the secondary characters and of the sheriff’s first-person reminiscences interspersed throughout the novel. This audio book is a rare gem and a mandatory listening for McCarthy fans.
Publishers Weekly Best Books 2009
J.L., AudioFile
After I was warned that the movie would give me nightmares, the abridged version of this seriously violent story about double-crossing drug dealers on the Tex-Mex border seemed a wise choice. That old chestnut about a picture speaking a thousand words doesn’t apply to McCarthy. He is as frugal with words as George IV, who insisted on laying the fires in Windsor Castle himself, was with fuel. In fewer than 40 McCarthy can describe the full horror of a desert massacre down to the dying breath of the only survivor pleading for water. What I hadn’t reckoned on terror-wise was Sean Barrett’s reading. Suspense, panic, desperation, madness, despair – I’ve heard him do all of them brilliantly in Stalingrad, Perfume, Malone Dies and many more, but I’ve never heard anyone identify as menacingly with the cold-blooded inhumanity of a psychopath as Barrett does here. Anton Chigurh, the hitman sent to recover $2½m stolen by a rival gang (or, more likely, by a dodgy cop), makes the judge in Blood Meridian, another McCarthy spine chiller, look as dangerous as Peter Rabbit. He has opaque blue eyes, ostrich-skin boots and a cattle-killing bolt gun to dispatch his victims. It leaves one heck of a mess but it’s untraceable. If he’s feeling generous his targets can stake their lives on the toss of a coin, but more often than not he asks politely if they will please look at him when he shoots them so that he can see the final terror in their eyes. If it sounds like gratuitous violence, remember that The Road, McCarthy’s most recent book, won the Pulitzer prize. Nothing he does is gratuitous. Ed Tom Bell, the hapless sheriff on whose patch the drug drop takes place, is used to violence. His grandfather was gunned down on his doorstep, his father was killed in the first world war, his own platoon wiped out in the next, and the local guy who stumbles across the bullet-ridden bodies is a Vietnam veteran. But Chigurh’s brand of evil plumbs new, incomprehensible depths that Sheriff Bell’s old-school law can never hope to vanquish. Definitely not a feel-good book, but the combination of McCarthy and Barrett is addictive.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Excellent reading by Claire Wille
Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels explore the social divisions of the 19th century with a vivacity that resonates in the Britain of today when they are widening again. Which isn’t to say that they are worthy and consequently dull. No, Gaskell’s books are rich with romance and peopled by characters the listener truly feels for. North and South takes Margaret Hale, daughter of a C of E vicar, from the drawing rooms of London and the exquisite beauty of the New Forest to the grim northern industrial town of Milton where, appalled by the conditions his workers live and work in, she finds herself in conflict with mill owner John Thornton. Excellent reading by Claire Wille.
Kati Nicholl,The Daily Express
When Margaret Hale’s father has a crisis of faith and questions his vocation as a cleric, he renounces the Church and moves his wife and daughter from sophisticated southern England to the industrialized north. Margaret is a beauty, but her imposing looks and her haughty, mannered formality, so appropriate for her former social set, doesn’t endear her to the people in her new community. Nor does the community please Margaret, who finds the townspeople ignorant and coarse, especially John Thornton, the prosperous local mill owner, to whom her father becomes a friend, tutor and mentor. However, as time goes on Margaret discovers in herself a surprising strain of social activism and becomes concerned about the plight of the mill workers and determined to help improve their lot. That throws her initially into personal and ideological conflict with Thornton, until the two find a middle ground in which respect and love can bloom and grow.
A highly political 19th Century novel, yet a gentle love story, the book boasts a female protagonist who is far ahead of her time. Margaret is no shrinking violet in an English drawing room, but one who literally places her life on the line in the struggle between labor and management in a fiercely heated strike.
Reader Claire Wille [provides] a sensitive fully-vocalized, well-paced rendition of the novel. Both literally and figuratively, listeners will want to hear more of her.
Francine Levitov, SoundCommentary
Margaret Hale learns firsthand about nineteenth-century labor concerns when she moves from a rural parsonage to a bustling mill town in northern England. In the process, she experiences personal tragedy and romance. This complex story requires a narrator who can accurately convey the historical conditions and character motivations. Clare Wille certainly fits the bill. She animates Gaskell’s classic story with faultless characterizations. John Thornton emerges as haughty yet honorable. With her willful determination, Margaret is his perfect foil. Wille uses accents to indicate social status as well as to create memorable personalities. The desperation of the impoverished workers comes through in passionate dialogue that is intense and immediate. Wille’s reading of this social history makes it more accessible to contemporary audiences.
C.A., AudioFile
a wonderful testament to one of [Austen’s] less appreciated novels
In the late 1700s, romantic gothic fiction was a popular genre epitomised by Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, which involved a beautiful heroine who suffers mental torture at the hands of her aunt’s husband in his ruined castle. Writing a few years later, Austen presented herself as the literary equivalent of Dawn French and mocked Radcliffe’s work with her own version, Northanger Abbey. This satire laughed at the idea that all young girls were beautiful and good-natured and all large buildings imposing and full of mystery. Juliet Stevenson conveys all the irony that Austen intended in her work, and this is a wonderful testament to one of her less appreciated novels.
Kim Bunce, The Observer
Northanger Abbey is the exuberant lesser known child of Jane Austen’s oeuvre. Even though it was her first novel to be completed and sold in 1803, much to Austen’s bemusement it was never published and languished with Crosby & Co for thirteen years until she bought it back for the ten pounds that the publisher had originally paid. It was finally published posthumously together with Persuasion in late 1817. If its precarious publishing history suggests it lacks merit, I remind readers that in the early 1800’s many viewed novels as lowbrow fare and unworthy of serious consideration. In “defence of the novel” Austen offered Northanger Abbey as both a parody of overly sensational Gothic fiction so popular in the late eighteenth-century and a testament against those opposed to novel reading. Ironically, Austen pokes fun at the critics who psha novel writing by cleverly writing a novel defending novel writing. Phew! In a more expanded view it is so much more than I should attempt to describe in this limited space but will reveal that it can be read on many different levels of enjoyment for its charming coming of age story, astute social observation, allusions to Gothic novels and literature, beautiful language and satisfying love story. I always enjoy reading it for the shear joy of its naïve young heroine Catherine Morland, charmingly witty hero Henry Tilney and the comedy and social satire of the supporting characters.
It is believed that Jane Austen wrote many of her first works for the entertainment of her family and would read them aloud for their opinion and enjoyment. It is not hard to imagine that Northanger Abbey was presented to her family in this manner. The language and phrasing lends itself so freely to the spoken word, almost like a stage play, that I was quite certain that an audio book would be a great enhancement to the text. Add to that the talent of a creative narrator and you have a great combination for several hours of entertainment ahead of you. I adore audio books and listen to them in the car during my commute to work. This Naxos AudioBooks recording is read by the acclaimed British stage and screen actress Juliet Stevenson whose performance as the acerbic Mrs Elton in the 1996 movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Emma was amazingly as outrageously funny as Austen’s insufferable character. Stevenson’s reading did not disappoint and far exceeded my expectations. She added just the right amount of irony and humor to the reading that I was never in doubt that it is a burlesque of campy Gothic fiction or other overly sentimental novels popular in Jane Austen’s day. Her choice of characterizations was imaginative and captivating. Hearing her interpretation of the emptiness of Mrs Allen and her frivolous distinction for fashion, Isabella Thorpe and her shallow endearments, and Henry Tilney with his knack for reading and adapting to different personalities with wit and charm, I have a deeper appreciation and understanding of the novel and recommend it highly.
‘And what are you reading, Miss — ?’ ‘Oh! It is only a novel!’ replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. ‘It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda’; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best–chosen language.” Ch 5
Laurel Ann, Austenprose.com
Lesser does passion and romance brilliantly
There are scholars who argue that, given the glaring contrast in style, structure and characterisation between the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer could not possibly have written both.
Assuming you already have the Iliad produced by Naxos last year, here is your chance to decide for yourself. Personally, I prefer the Odyssey and, since Anton Lesser reads both, my preference has nothing to do with the voice. To be honest, I preferred Derek Jacobi’s more macho recording of the Iliad, no longer available, which was more suited to the relentless descriptions of blood-fests.
Homer’s scene changes are almost cinematic, a plus if you’re trying to get teenagers to engage with it. One minute you’re in Ithaca where the hero’s faithful wife Penelope is fending off a house full of unwanted suitors, then you’re on Olympus eavesdropping on the gods arguing, as usual, about which mortals to support and which to put the boot into, and then it’s over to the idyllic island where the beautiful nymph Calypso holds Odysseus prisoner.
The Odyssey, with its litany of challenges, betrayals and, of course, heroism, is the perfect vehicle for Lesser, whose musical voice does passion and romance brilliantly.
Sue Arnold, The Guardian
Anton Lesser is wonderful
The lascivious and repellent dwarf Quilp who dogs saintly Little Nell and her feckless grandfather is one of Dickens's most vividly nasty creations. Anton Lesser is wonderful in all the intricacies of this powerful fable – a sound investment for winter evenings.
Rachel Redford, The Observer
Narrator Hugh Ross goes to great lengths to bring his considerable expressive power to bear
The Roman Lucretius was a follower of Epicurus, who taught that knowledge, fraternity, and the practice of virtue lead to the greatest pleasures in life – tranquility and security. Lucretius set forth his interpretation of this philosophy in his only known writing, De Rerum Natura, or On the Nature of Things. It seems modern in its materialism, disdain of superstition, and trust in science, but remote in its phrasing and versification – for it is not only a treatise but a poem. Narrator Hugh Ross goes to great lengths to bring his considerable expressive power to bear on the meaning of the lines but falls short on the poetry. The graceless translation by Canadian scholar Ian Johnston does not help.
Y.R., AudioFile
In this first-century BCE epic poem, Roman poet/philosopher Lucretius explores the doctrines of Epicurean philosophy, systematically teaching how the universe is not the creation of a supreme being but can instead be explained by natural laws. He also anticipates several modern ideas, as in his theory of atomism, a belief in the existence of atoms that produce the materials we see around us. Ian Johnston, who produced a new verse translation for this recording, captures the poetic force of the original without sacrificing clarity, while narrator Hugh Ross (Aristotle: An Introduction) delivers a clear and lively performance. Though some listeners may have difficulty with the scientific explanations, this audio offers a poetic and persuasive rendition of a philosophical classic and is recommended for academic and large public libraries.
Nancy Ives, Library Journal
prepare to be delighted with Neville Jason’s transcendent reading
What pleasures await in this exceptional production of T.H. White’s classic retelling of the tales of King Arthur and Sir Kay and Merlin and the Sword and Round Table in magical once-upon-a-time England. For those who have never read these five books, prepare to be surprised by their adultness, their laugh-out-loud humor and tongue-in-cheek commentary on modern life; for those who know them well, prepare
