Winnie-the-Pooh
by A. A. Milne (Methuen, 1926)
audiobook read by Bernard Cribbins (Bolinda, 2015)
Winnie-the-Pooh has never lost its appeal as a collection of gentle, safe children’s tales featuring loveable anthropomorphised animals with foibles. Bernard Cribbins upholds the tradition of making Piglet sound unspeakably annoying, but redeems himself by giving us Eeyore à la Geoff Boycott.
Pyramids
by Terry Pratchett (Corgi, 1989); audiobook read by Nigel Planer (Isis, 2002)
Pratchett’s Discworld series truly hit its stride in this, the BSFA-winning seventh book. Pyramids is a self-contained and ingeniously conceived, desert-dry satire on the type of human thinking that underpins religious folly. Nigel Planer is suitably droll in voicing the befuddled participants.
Doctor Who: The Stealers of Dreams
by Steve Lyons (BBC, 2005)
Fiction is outlawed. The premise certainly has scope (it’s a nice touch that the Doctor, Rose and Jack don’t cotton on to the necessity behind the totalitarianism); but despite what Camille Coduri brings to the audiobook, the story itself feels rather belaboured.
Guards! Guards!
by Terry Pratchett; read by Nigel Planer (Isis, 1995)
[first published by Gollancz, 1989]
Some of the dialogue feels slightly laboured when read aloud (a small misgiving), but in the grand scale of all things magical and satirical this is the perfect introduction to Pratchett’s Discworld series. Planer handles with aplomb both narrative comedy and characterisation.
Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters
by Terrance Dicks; read by Katy Manning (Bolinda, 2014)
[first published by Target, 1977]
Precious few Target novelisations reach heights anywhere near those of the original broadcasts; certainly none by Terrance ‘run-of-the-mill’ Dicks. Carnival of Monsters is elevated somewhat in audiobook form by voice artist Katy Manning, whose range encompasses even a husky Jon Pertwee imitation.
Doctor Who: The Forever Trap
by Dan Abnett (BBC Audio, 2008)
For Doctor Who aficionados this is Paradise Towers meets The Long Game, plus a satire on bureaucracy. Unfortunately, this latter element is ipso facto less than riveting, and once overcome leaves nothing but the standard Tenth Doctor recourse to resolution via knob-twiddling.
Blake’s 7: The Way Back and Cygnus Alpha
by Trevor Hoyle (BBC Audio, 2010)
[first published as Terry Nation’s Blake’s 7 by Sphere, 1977]
{Read by Gareth Thomas and Paul Darrow, respectively}
A slavish and perfunctory novelisation of the first four episodes of Terry Nation’s dystopian space opera, its cult appeal lent a smidgeon of additional credibility in audio form by the narrative voices of series actors Gareth Thomas (Blake) and Paul Darrow (Avon).
Doctor Who: The Last Voyage
by Dan Abnett (BBC Audio, 2010)
The Last Voyage – a somewhat middling spaceship under siege story – would have been a flat read on page, but has some life breathed into it by David Tennant’s engaging narration and redolent-of-Doctor acting. Even so, both premise and prose seem awkwardly belaboured.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams (Macmillan Digital Audio, 2007)
[first published by Pan, 1979] {Read by Stephen Fry}
In embellishing the riotous and extemporised cerebral peregrinations of the Hitchhiker’s radio series, Douglas Adams crafted one of the funniest (and most-quoted-from) novels of any genre. Stephen Fry’s range of narrative inflections subsequently affords the audiobook status as a distinct dramatic production.
Life, the Universe and Everything
by Douglas Adams (MacMillan Audio, 2006) [First published by Pan, 1982]
read by Martin Freeman
Reprising the vast zaniness and existential satire of the original Hitchhiker’s duology, Adams ups his trademark discursiveness, redoubles his protagonists’ fecklessness and yet achieves an oddly cohesive transcendence (while Martin Freeman’s delivery makes a virtue of Adams’ sometimes facetious approach to prose).