Oh the bliss of being retired from the business world and in particular from commuting. A couple of years ago I would be among the heaving masses attempting to enter overflowing trains and buses, feeling the blood pressure rise, the temper flare, the hatred of all humanity – well you get my drift. I commuted for three hours a day in and out of the City for nearly twenty years. Before that I commuted on the Los Angeles freeway for ten years. I paid for it with the aforesaid high blood pressure. But one strategy kept me sane. I read and as soon as the technology was available I listened to audio books.

I have a fairly large library of audio books, many of them Georgette Heyers. Nothing wafts you away from a hot, sticky train journey like a dip into the Regency. There are some I won’t buy, however, either because the narrator just doesn’t have the right voice for me or because the works are abridged. How can you abridge Heyer when every word is golden? 

I enjoy Cornelius Garrett’s Reluctant Widow and Clifford Norgate’s Frederica but I really feel that, for Heyer, the narrator’s voice ought to be a woman. And of all the narrators the best by a huge distance is Phyllida Nash. For me, she is perfect. Every nuance, every sentence is just as I have heard it in my head for years. Her comic characters are wonderful, for example Lord Dolphington and Lady Legerwood  in Cotillion and Sir Bonomy Ripple in False Colours are skillfully and effortlessly brought to life. She even makes A Civil Contract, my least favourite Heyer, enjoyable.

Other much loved audio books, with brilliant narrators are: Middlemarch narrated by Maureen O’Brien; Jane Eyre narrated by Juliet Stevenson, King Solomen’s Mines narrated by Toby Stephens and anything at all narrated by velvet voiced Michael Jayston.

So don’t let the strikes get you down, just close your eyes, plug into another world and feel the stress drain away. It works.

 
Amazon.co.uk Cotillion audio 

Amazon.com Cotillion by Georgette Heyer Unabridged CD Audiobook