David Haig has narrated 3 audiobooks on Listento.it by 3 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 9 ratings. The most-rated is Us: A Novel.
Us: A Novel
Summary
Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that seduces beautiful Connie into a second date...and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades later, they live more or less happily in the London suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn’t be worse. Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.
©2014 David Nicholls (P)2014 HarperCollinsPublishers
The Old Wives' Tale
Summary
Exclusively from Audible 'An old woman came into the restaurant to dine. She was fat, shapeless, ugly, and grotesque. She had a ridiculous voice, and ridiculous gestures. It was easy to see that she lived alone, and that in the long lapse of years she had developed the kind of peculiarity which induces guffaws among the thoughtless. I reflected, concerning the grotesque diner: "This woman was once young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from these ridiculous mannerisms. Very probably she is unconscious of her singularities. Her case is a tragedy. One ought to be able to make a heartrending novel out of the history of a woman such as she."' So said Arnold Bennett when explaining what inspired the creation of The Old Wives' Tale. Broken up into four parts, the lives of two sisters are laid bare; one timid and unassuming, the other romantic and adventurous. From working as children in their family's drapery shop to their later years, Constance and Sophia's journey through life could not be more different. While one travels the world and defies male expectations, the other becomes a dutiful wife and mother. Despite this, Bennett's skilful and witty narrative ultimately leads our protagonists in the same direction, making The Old Wives' Tale an intriguing interpretation of the circle of life and, unsurprisingly, his most popular work. Arnold Bennett wrote over 20 novels and 10 plays, including Anna of the Five Towns, Clayhanger, These Twain, Hilda Lessways and Buried Alive. In June 2017, to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth, the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery commissioned a bronze statue of the author. He was elegantly immortalised sitting in a chair and holding an open book in his left hand. Narrator Biography David Haig is a classically trained actor, writer and LAMDA graduate. His film appearances include Two Weeks' Notice, Florence Foster-Jenkins and Four Weddings and a Funeral. He wrote The Good Samaritan which opened at the Hampstead Theatre in 2000 to great reviews. His first script, entitled My Boy Jack, had also been performed at the Hampstead Theatre in 1997 and later broadcast on ITV, starring David Haig and Daniel Radcliffe. Haig's theatre credits include Our Country's Good, for which he won a Laurence Olivier Theatre Award, Tom and Viv, which took him to Broadway, and the musicals Mary Poppins and Guys and Dolls. His notable television roles in series such as Doctor Who, The Darling Buds of May, The Thin Blue Line, and Penny Dreadful have also been exemplary of his varied acting skills and dynamic voice. Other than The Old Wives Tale, David has also contributed to the narration of The National Archives' In Their Own Words: A History in Letters.
Public Domain (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
In Their Own Words
Summary
The way we communicate has changed. Today many of our interactions are digital, but until recently writing letters was the norm. Drawing from over 100 miles of records held at the UK's official government archive, The National Archives at Kew, this collection of letters, postcards and telegrams will shine a spotlight on a range of significant historical moments and occurrences, recapturing a lost world in which correspondence was king. The audiobook includes letters from Karl Marx, requesting UK citizenship; an anonymous writer purporting to be Jack the Ripper; Josef Kramer, the commandant of Bergen Belsen; Winston Churchill to President Roosevelt, requesting US support against Hitler; Clement Atlee to Harry S Truman following Hiroshima; the spies Burgess and Maclean; as well as the 'real Charlotte Gray' spy, Christine Granville, amongst others. Topics covered include the Monteagle letter that warned about the Gunpowder plot, letters from the Wright brothers trying to get the War Office to fund their aeronautical research, a dispatch on the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Christine Keeler's Russian-British love triangle that begat the Profumo affair, US disapproval of British trade with Cuba, a letter reporting on the first day of the trial of Nelson Mandela, and the anonymous letter that framed the Krays. The audiobook features approximately 80 letters, each with a 600-word essay, and a 3,000-word introduction.
©2016 The National Archives (P)2016 Audible, Ltd