Georgina Sutton has narrated 16 audiobooks on Listento.it by 11 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 17 ratings. The most-rated is Shirley.
Cave in the Snow
Summary
Includes a bonus track of Tenzin Palmo introducing a retreat. This is the story of Tenzin Palmo, the daughter of a fishmonger from London's East End who became a Tibetan nun. After meditating for 12 years in a cave 13,000 feet up in the Himalayas, she became a world-renowned spiritual leader and champion of the right of women to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Diane Perry grew up in London's East End. At the age of 18, however, she read a book on Buddhism and realised that this might fill a long-sensed void in her life. In 1963, at the age of 20, she went to India, where she eventually entered a monastery. Being the only woman amongst hundreds of monks, she began her battle against the prejudice that has excluded women from enlightenment for thousands of years. In 1976, she secluded herself in a remote cave 13,000 feet up in the Himalayas, where she stayed for 12 years between the ages of 33 and 45. In this mountain hideaway she faced unimaginable cold, wild animals, floods, snow and rockfalls, grew her own food and slept in a traditional wooden meditation box, three feet square - she never lay down. In 1988, she emerged from the cave with a determination to build a convent in Northern India to revive the Togdenma lineage, a long-forgotten female spiritual elite. Despite her international teaching schedule, Tenzin Palmo maintains a deep commitment to her nunnery, Dongyu Gatsal Ling, in Himachal Pradesh.
©1999 Bloomsbury Plc (P)2015 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Shirley
Summary
Following the tremendous success of Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë returned to pen a novel every bit as romantic and compelling as her first, but with deeper, heartier themes as she captured the social and political currents of the newly industrialized United Kingdom of 1812. Set in a chaotic time in England, during the height of the Napoleonic Wars, Caroline Helstone's world is turned upside down when she meets the vivacious Shirley Keeldar. Shirley becomes a beacon of light for Caroline as the two become close friends. However, Caroline is soon shocked to discover that Shirley has won the affections of Robert Moore, the impoverished mill owner whom she loves. Fully representative of Yorkshire life at the time, Brontë's second novel is completely gripping, unrelenting and utterly wrenching in its portrayal.
Public Domain (P)2014 Naxos AudioBooks
The Diary of a Provincial Lady
Summary
'Lady B. stays to tea. (Mem.: Bread-and-butter too thick. Speak to Ethel.) We talk some more about bulbs, the Dutch School of Painting, our Vicar's wife, sciatica, and All Quiet on the Western Front. (Query: is it possible to cultivate the art of conversation when living in the country all the year round?)' If the question suggests a qualified answer, there is no doubt that the art of diary writing is alive and well and very, very funny in Devonshire in the 1920s. At least in the hands of E. M. Delafield. Though poles apart in many ways, Bridget Jones's Diary could not have existed without her sometimes arch, often lofty, but deeply English upper middle class forbear. Diary of a Provincial Lady is a classic of its time, revealing the thoughts and concerns of a Lady embedded in family life and the mores of comfortable country life. She has a husband 'raised to the peerage', two children and servants; she is burdened by the superior Lady Boxe, the tiresome vicar's wife and the constant temptation to live beyond her monthly household allowance. But she soldiers on, recording her days with acute observation, wit, self-deprecation and colour. A balance to the Bloomsbury intensity of the day, this is a classic that has never been out of print and now comes to life in this pitch-perfect reading by Georgina Sutton.
©2016 PD (P)2016 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Vanity Fair
Summary
Vanity Fair, with its rich cast of characters, takes place on the snakes-and-ladders board of life. Amelia Sedley, daughter of a wealthy merchant, has a loving mother to supervise her courtship. Becky Sharp, an orphan, has to use her wit, charm, and resourcefulness to escape from her destiny as a governess. This she does ruthlessly, musing: "I think I could become a good woman, if I had £5,000 a year." Thackeray’s story is set at the time of the battle of Waterloo, in which the Sedley fortunes are lost - and Amelia is back to square one - while Becky rises with contemptuous ease. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
Public Domain (P)2013 Naxos AudioBooks
The Provincial Lady in America
Summary
No one could have been more surprised than our Provincial Lady to receive an invitation from her American agent to travel transatlantic and embark upon a programme of lectures and signings. She was particularly amazed because, having received an overture sometime before and feeling that she would rather stay in the English countryside, she requested that they meet quite a few ‘requirements’ before she would agree to go. They met every stipulation. ‘Am completely thrown on my beam-ends by this. Can I possibly be worth this?’ And so off she goes. And, courtesy of her diary, we have an entertaining account of her shipboard life, her arrival and immediate encounters with enthusiasm - which sometimes stretches her credulity, and English patience. It is all go, window-shopping on Fifth Avenue, cocktails, meetings with a wide range of writers, society ladies, and even an old acquaintance. And then there are the book shop signings, the lectures to the good, the great - and the lesser great. It is a whirlwind. How does our Provincial Lady respond to all this after the slower pace (really? What about the domestic dramas?) in her country home? Georgina Sutton once again represents her with vigour, humour and a lively personality. This is book 3 in the Provincial Lady series.
Public Domain (P)2018 Ukemi Productions Ltd
The Provincial Lady Goes Further
Summary
The Provincial Lady Goes Further is the immediate sequel to Diary of a Provincial Lady - and life mirrors art. Our Provincial Lady has found herself, unexpectedly, with a literary success on her hands! She is suddenly 'somebody', both in her Devonshire environs and in London, where she establishes a bolthole - ostensibly so she could concentrate on the much-awaited sequel, but also so that she can enjoy the fruits of being a best-selling author! In real life, this sequel was the first of many to come, as E. M. Delafield worked imaginatively to satisfy the public demand for antidotes to modernism - especially the hauteur of the Bloomsbury Set. In art, The Provincial Lady Goes Further, using the same diary format, proves to be just as amusing (if not more so) as its predecessor, and full of pointed observations about her targets - in this case fashionable London of the 1930s (it was published in 1932). Reader Georgina Sutton again delights in the tones of an upper-class lady, who, up from the country and immersed semi-willingly in artistic and fashionable environs, can't quite equate the posing, the outrageous dresses and equally outrageous behaviour with her eminently well-grounded sense of humour.
Public Domain (P)2017 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Queen's Gambit
Summary
Widowed for the second time at age 31, Katherine Parr falls deeply for the dashing courtier Thomas Seymour and hopes at last to marry for love. However, obliged to return to court, she attracts the attentions of the ailing, egotistical, and dangerously powerful Henry VIII, who dispatches his love rival, Seymour, to the Continent. No one is in a position to refuse a royal proposal, so haunted by the fates of his previous wives - two executions, two annulments, one death in childbirth - Katherine must wed Henry and become his sixth queen.
Katherine has to employ all her instincts to navigate the treachery of the court, drawing a tight circle of women around her, including her stepdaughter, Meg, traumatized by events from their past that are shrouded in secrecy, and their loyal servant Dot, who knows and sees more than she understands. With the Catholic faction on the rise once more, reformers being burned for heresy, and those close to the king vying for position, Katherine's survival seems unlikely. Yet as she treads the razor's edge of court intrigue, she never quite gives up on love.
©2013 Elizabeth Fremantle (P)2013 Simon & Schuster
Adam Bede
Summary
George Eliot's first full-length novel Adam Bede is a profound rendering of 19th century English pastoral life. This timeless story of seduction and betrayal follows the virtuous carpenter Adam Bede, whose world is soon disrupted when the all-too-beautiful Hetty betrays him for another villager. Her actions precipitate a turmoil of tragic events that shake the very foundations of their serene rural community. Eliot's gift for leisurely and lyrical prose is in full effect here and her insight into human emotion and complexity is unrivalled.
Public Domain (P)2014 Naxos AudioBooks
The Book of the City of Ladies
Summary
Shocked and distressed by a male writer's vilification of women, Christine de Pizan has a powerful dreamlike vision in which she is visited by three personified Virtues: Reason, Rectitude and Justice. They tell her she has been chosen to write a book which will be like a city, housing virtuous women and protecting them from feminist attack. Heroines past and present form the foundations of this city - biblical and mythical heroines, ruling queens, Christian saints, and inventors are among them. Partly myth, partly fact, The Book of the City of Ladies is an extraordinary, pioneering and impassioned defense of women that set out to shatter medieval misogynist cliches, and serve to instill self-worth in its female listeners of the time. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Public Domain (P)2020 Naxos Audiobooks
The Provincial Lady in Wartime
Summary
The Provincial Lady in Wartime, though the last of the Provincial Lady series, is one of the finest. No further ‘Diaries’ had appeared since The Provincial Lady in America (published in 1934) when, in 1939, Harold Macmillan, then chairman of Macmillan publishers and a fan, made a personal request to E. M. Delafield for a new book. The onset of the war with Germany was serious, but, he said, Britain, was in need of the entertaining but pertinent observations from the Provincial Lady! Delafield duly set to work and produced the longest and in a way the most interesting of the ‘Diaries’ without losing its sense of fun, of seemingly casual frivolity. The Provincial Lady in Wartime covers a short time - from 1 September 1939 (just before the declaration of war on 3 September) to 21 November 1939, when fact again met fiction and E. M. Delafield was really ‘called up’ to work for the Ministry of Information. As a result, the focus in the book was on the ‘Phoney War’ when the country found itself in a fever of preparation without the intense action that was to follow a short time after. The Provincial Lady finds herself in London, looking for voluntary work to support the war effort, which proves an unexpectedly difficult thing to achieve. Her interactions with a varied host of companions, also caught up in a strange frenzy, reflect so clearly the mood and tension of the time, yet the account is witty, apposite - and so very English, with the stiff upper lip underpinning it all. This book is both hugely entertaining and a faithful portrait of the months before hostilities began in earnest - as seen, of course, from the quirky eyes and particular milieu of the Provincial Lady, whom we have come to love and admire. Sad, then, that it was to be the last ‘Diary’. However, this recording also contains The Provincial Lady in Russia, the three articles Delafield wrote for Harper’s Magazine in 1937 covering her three-month visit to the USSR. These deft pieces of more personal journalism are again witty, observant and informative, showing how ably Delafield combines a light touch with more serious conclusions. The three essays are: 'The Provincial Lady in Moscow' (Harper's Magazine, January 1937) 'They Also Serve: The Provincial Lady in Leningrad' (Harper's Magazine, February 1937) 'To Speak My Mind About Russia: The Provincial Lady in Odessa' (Harper's Magazine, March 1937) As always, Georgina Sutton serves E. M. Delafield so well, with a vivacious yet perfectly placed reading.
Public Domain (P)2019 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Between the Acts
Summary
Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf’s last novel, was finished in November 1940 and shortly afterwards delivered to her publisher Hogarth Press. The following March she committed suicide. Between the Acts is often an overlooked work in her oeuvre because she did express her intention to revise it before publication, though in the event this never happened. So it comes as a surprise to find that, while it probably would have benefited from revision, it is something of an unpolished gem, at times sparkling and actually very engaging. The writing is subtle, varied in tone and purpose; at times serious and complex and at others lighthearted and even downright funny. And unpredictable. The scene is an English country house, the home of the Olivers, presided over by the elderly Bartholomew – Bart. The date is 1939, the time of the ‘phoney war’, and the village comes to the house and gardens for the annual play put on by the locals. There are complex relationships within the family, and with the local villagers: in true Woolf style, small dramas take place, understated but quietly seismic. And the work is shot through with the phrase, the observation, the sleight of hand, the touch that is her special magic. With Bart is his sister, the sweetly vague Lucy Swithin, his son, Giles (who works in the city) and Giles’ unsettled, unsure wife, Isa. Taking centre-stage in the story are the amateur theatricals, who undertake to perform three short scenes devised and directed by the eccentric Miss Le Trobe. These three separate scenes, one Shakespearean, one Restoration (a romp this!) and one Victorian, hold the mirror up to society. But what to make of them? The threatened rain holds off so the performances are staged outside in the garden, but the clouds of war are perceptible. Georgina Sutton’s range and sympathy makes listening to this neglected work a surprisingly engaging, very English experience.
Public Domain (P)2020 Ukemi Productions Ltd
The Praise of Folly/Against War
Summary
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) was known as Prince of the Humanists - though a theologian, a Catholic priest and the leading European scholar of his time. A close friend of Sir Thomas More, Erasmus' writings had a strong influence on the growing movement for change in Christian Europe, both Lutheran and the Counter-Reformation. These two essays are among his most important - and well-known - writings. 'The Praise of Folly', written in Latin in 1509 and spoken by the goddess Folly (who champions a lively enjoyment of life), was a bold satire on (in the cautious contemporary environment) not only Western classical traditions but also the Catholic Church. Dedicated to More himself, Erasmus wittily challenged entrenched views in so forthright (and humanist) a style that it could have brought him in direct conflict with the papacy. Fortunately the pope, Leo X, enjoyed the humour and the challenge! It is here presented in the lively modern translation by Leonard H. Dean. 'Against War' (c. 1517) is 'an impassioned plea for peace among beings human, civilised, Christian'. A deeply humanist text, widely read through Europe in the ensuing years, it has a continuing currency. 'Nothing is either more wicked or more wretched, nothing doth worse become a man than war.' Leighton Pugh reads the classic translation by John Wilson.
Public Domain (P)2017 Ukemi Productions Ltd
The Lays of Marie de France
Summary
The 12 Lays of Marie de France offer one of the most striking collections of short narrative poems of the 12th century - two centuries before Chaucer. Written in Anglo-French, they contain beguiling and entertaining stories of love and romance, of chivalry and adventure with sometimes even a magical twist. They are especially unique in early literature by being ascribed to a female poet, Marie de France: in the very first Lay - 'Guigemar' - is the introductory line: ‘Hear my Lords, what Marie says, who does not wish to be forgotten in her time.’ In this modern prose translation by Edward J. Gallagher, professor of French studies, Wheaton College, Norton Massachusets, the vigour and spirit of the Lays is foremost, balanced by gentle poetry and story-telling. Professor Gallagher, in his introduction, explains: ‘If Chrétien de Troyes’ five romances and the two Old French versions of the Tristan story constitute the medieval precursors of the modern novel, The Lays can be considered the medieval antecedents of the modern short story. What is undeniable is Marie de France’s place in literary history as the most accomplished writer of lays.’ Each of the Lays focuses on some extraordinary adventure involving in all cases a problematic love relationship in a chivalric society. The geographic setting is frequently, but not exclusively, Britain or continental Brittany. These are tales of honourable love, adulterous love, old men attempting to guard young wives, betrayal, hope and despair. Often, strict moral codes expected by the Church of the time are flouted as love conquers all. The Lays are read engagingly by Georgina Sutton. A short introduction leading to the Lays, and scholarly notes to conclude by Professor Gallagher are read by David Rintoul. In addition, the recording is accompanied by a PDF containing the prologue and the first Lay, 'Guigemar', in Anglo-Norman for further interest and insight. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2010 Hackett Publishing Company (P)2020 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Sisters of Treason
Summary
From the author of Queen's Gambit, a gripping historical novel about two sisters who tread as dangerously close to the crown as their tragic sister, Lady Jane Grey, executed after just nine days on the throne.
Early in Mary Tudor's turbulent reign, Lady Catherine and Lady Mary Grey are reeling after the brutal execution of their elder seventeen-year-old sister, Lady Jane Grey, and the succession is by no means stable. In Sisters of Treason, Elizabeth Freemantle brings these young women to life in a spellbinding Tudor tale of love and politics.
Neither sister is well suited to a dangerous life at court. Flirtatious Lady Catherine, thought to be the true heir, cannot control her compulsion to love and be loved. Her sister, clever Lady Mary, has a crooked spine and a tiny stature in an age when physical perfection equates to goodness - and both girls have inherited the Tudor blood that is more curse than blessing. For either girl to marry without royal permission would be a potentially fatal political act. It is the royal portrait painter, Levina Teerlinc, who helps the girls survive these troubled times. She becomes their mentor and confidante, but when the Queen's sister, the hot-headed Elizabeth, inherits the crown, life at court becomes increasingly treacherous for the surviving Grey sisters. Ultimately each young woman must decide how far she will go to defy her Queen, risk her life, and find the safety and love she longs for.
©2014 Elizabeth Fremantle (P)2014 Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Complete Mapp and Lucia, Volume 2
Summary
Sharply observant and wickedly funny, E.F. Benson's six Mapp and Lucia novels satirize the upper-middle-class social climbers in 1920s and '30s rural England. Games of bridge and cups of tea fuel hilarious gossip and vindictive plots a-plenty. It is a masterfully sustained spotlight on the minutiae of village life - a clever and ultimately heartwarming series that seems tailor-made for audio. This second volume contains the second three books. Mapp and Lucia: When Lucia goes to stay in Tilling, Miss Mapp's social pedestal starts to wobble. Far from falling into line as Miss Mapp expects, Lucia soon maneuvers herself - via dinners, luncheons, and games of bridge - into a position of control. Behind a facade of exaggerated manners, the gloves are off! Lucia's Progress: Lucia's 50th birthday is approaching, and she is determined to give her life more meaning. From rumors of pregnancy and Roman remains to Tilling's Town Council elections, renewed rivalry between Lucia and Elizabeth Mapp-Flint (who has married Major Benjy) ripples irresistibly through the novel with many a laugh-out-loud moment. Trouble for Lucia: Lucia is now rich, happily married, and mayor of Tilling - but the village gossip is in full swing, and Lucia's arch-rival Elizabeth is out for revenge. Will Lucia fall at the final hurdle? Delightfully witty and shamelessly entertaining, this is a fitting finale to the series - E.F. Benson's au reservoir! PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2021 Naxos Audiobooks (P)2021 Naxos Audiobooks
The Complete Mapp and Lucia, Volume 1
Summary
Sharply observant and wickedly funny, E.F. Benson's six Mapp and Lucia novels satirize the upper-middle-class social climbers in 1920s and '30s rural England. Games of bridge and cups of tea fuel hilarious gossip and vindictive plots a-plenty. It is a masterfully sustained spotlight on the minutiae of village life - a clever and ultimately heart-warming series that seems tailor-made for audio. Volume 1 contains the first three books.
©1927 E.F. Benson (P)2021 Naxos Audiobooks