Jenny Agutter has narrated 16 audiobooks on Listento.it by 21 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 54 ratings. The most-rated is I Capture the Castle.
I Capture the Castle
Summary
Exclusively from Audible In this coming of age story, Dodie Smith introduces the visionary and eccentric character of seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain. The youngest daughter in a family of impoverished artists, it is her imagination and writing that takes us away from the ramshackle old English castle where they live, and towards an intriguing tale of husband-hunting and light-hearted sibling rivalry. With the arrival of their new landlords, the impossibly handsome and wealthy American brothers, Neil and Simon Cotton, the Mortmains are roused from their stupor and moved to action. Despite developing feelings for the younger of the two brothers, Cassandra's beautiful sister, Rose, plots to marry the eldest heir in a desperate attempt to escape the poverty which surrounds her. When Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the very first time with the same man as her sister, she explores her mixed emotions through her writing, making this a story which revels in irony and ambiguity. A deceptively complex and intelligent story, I Capture the Castle is Smith's first published work and one which will undoubtedly and simultaneously make listeners tut, laugh and reminisce. Narrator Biography Jenny Agutter is a celebrated English stage, film and TV actress who was first brought to the attention of British audiences as a child, starring in East of Sudan and The Railway Children. She made her Hollywood debut in the critically acclaimed film Walkabout, in 1971, followed by Logan's Run, An American Werewolf in London and Child's Play 2. Her TV career includes appearances on Spooks, Call the Midwife and The Man in the Iron Mask. Alongside this, Jenny is also considered one of the best classical actors of her generation and has performed with both the Royal Shakespeare Company and The National Theatre. She is an Emmy and BAFTA award winner and was awarded an OBE on the 2012 Queen's Birthday Honours List for charitable services. Jenny's other Audible audiobook narrations include Jane Austen's Emma, Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and E. Nesbit's The Railway Children.
©2000 Dodie Smith (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Emma
Summary
Exclusively from Audible Emma can be enjoyed as a charming love story, a detective story, and a comic and lively picture of English life 200 years ago. Austen's beautiful, clever, wilful but fallible heroine Emma Woodhouse believes she knows best. Perfectly content with her life she sees no need for either love or marriage, yet nothing pleases her more than meddling in the romantic lives of others. But when she fails to heed the warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley and schemes to arrange a suitable match for her protégée, Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. She discovers that she understands the feelings of others as little as she does her own heart. With a cast of unforgettable characters, it is a lively comedy of manners that explores the concerns of genteel women living in Regency times. Jane Austen was an English writer known primarily for her six major novels which focused on the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Her plots often explore women's dependence on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security.
Public Domain (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
A Web of Air
Summary
Two years ago, Fever Crumb escaped the war-torn city of London. Now she arrives in the extraordinary city of Mayda, where buildings ascend the cliffs on rails, and a mysterious recluse is building a machine that can fly. Fever is the engineer he needs - but ruthless enemies will kill to possess their secrets.
©2011 Philip Reeve (P)2011 Scholastic Audio
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Summary
Fleeing a disastrous marriage, Helen Huntingdon retreats to the desolate mansion, Wildfell Hall, with her son, Arthur. There, she makes her living as a painter. Finding it difficult to avoid her neighbors, she is soon an object of speculation and gossip. Brontë portrays Helen's eloquent struggle for independence at a time when society defined a married woman as her husband's property.
Public Domain (P)2015 AudioGO
Hons and Rebels
Summary
The Mitford family is one of the century's most enigmatic, made notorious by Nancy's novels, Diana's marriage to Sir Oswald Mosley, Unity's infatuation with Hitler, Debo's marriage to a duke and Jessica's passionate commitment to communism. Hons and Rebels is an enchanting and deeply absorbing memoir of an isolated and eccentric upbringing which conceals beneath its witty, lighthearted surface much wisdom and depth of feeling.
©1960 Jessica Mitford (P)2017 Orion Publishing Group
The Railway Children
Summary
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Railway Children by E. Nesbit, read by Jenny Agutter. When Father is taken away unexpectedly, Roberta, Peter, Phyllis and their mother have to leave their comfortable life in London to go and live in a small cottage in the country. The children seek solace in the nearby railway station and make friends with Perks the Porter and the Station Master himself. Each day, Roberta, Peter and Phyllis run down the field to the railway track and wave at the passing London train, sending their love to Father. Little do they know that the kindly old gentleman passenger who waves back holds the key to their father's disappearance.
©2018 E. Nesbit (P)2018 Penguin Books Ltd
The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips
Summary
It's 1943 and Lily Tregenza lives on a farm in the idyllic seaside village of Slapton. Apart from her father being away, and the "townie" evacuees at school, her life is scarcely touched by the war. Until one day, when Lily and her family, along with 3,000 other villagers, are told to move out of their homes: lock, stock, and barrel. Soon, the whole area is out of bounds, as the Allied forces practise their landings for D-day, preparing to invade France. But Tips, Lily's adored cat, has other ideas; barbed wire and keep-out signs mean nothing to her, nor does the danger of guns and bombs. Frantic to find her, Lily makes friends with two young American soldiers, who promise to help her. But will she ever see her cat again? Lily decides to cross the wire into the danger zone to look for Tips herself. Now, many years later, as Michael is reading his Grandma Lily's diary, he learns about The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, and wonders how one adventurous cat could still affect their lives 60 years later.
©2005 Michael Morpurgo (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Summary
Exclusively from Audible The story of a woman's struggle for independence from an abusive husband. Helen 'Graham' has returned to Wildfell Hall in flight from a disastrous marriage and to protect her young son from the influence of his father. Exiled to the desolate moorland mansion, she adopts an assumed name and earns her living as a painter. Gilbert Markham, a local man intrigued by the beautiful young 'widow' offers his friendship but becomes distrustful when her reclusive behaviour sparks rumours and speculation. When she offers her diary for him to read only then does he discover the dark truth of her shocking past. The second and last novel written by Anne Brontë, the youngest of the six Brontë children, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall deals with alcoholism, physical and emotional abuse, unhappy marriages and adultery. Anne's novels are distinctly different from that of her sisters, filled with gritty realism. After her death, Anne's sister, Charlotte, prevented its republication perhaps due to her belief that it was overly graphic and an 'entire mistake'. Despite first being published in 1848, The Independent described it as a 'frighteningly up-to-date tale of single motherhood and wife-battering.' It is considered one of the more shocking of the Brontë stories and due to Helen's breaking of social convention and law holds firm as one of the first feminist novels. Narrator Biography Three-time Olivier Award winner actor Alex Jennings is known for portraying Prince Charles in The Queen (2006) as well as appearing in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004), Babel (2006) and The Lady in the Van (2015). His television work has included Cranford (2007), Silk (2011-2014), and Victoria (2016). He has narrated many audiobooks including Charlie Connelly's Attention All Shipping, which in 2008 was chosen as one of the top 40 audiobooks of all time. Jenny Agutter began her acting career as a child in 1964's East of Sudan and is well known for appearing in three adaptations of The Railway Children. She starred in the critically acclaimed 1971 film Walkabout as well as receiving a string of Hollywood roles. She won an Emmy for her role in The Snow Goose (1971), as well as a BAFTA for her role in Equus (1997). More recently she has appeared in several television dramas, including Spooks (2002-2003), and Call the Midwife since 2012. She has performed in numerous theatre productions, including roles with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. She has also narrated audiobooks Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle and Jane Austen's Emma and featured in the Doctor Who audio dramas The Bride of Peladon and The Minister of Chance. In 2012 she was appointed OBE for her charity work.
Public Domain (P)2014 Audible, Inc
Music and Silence
Summary
In the year 1629, a young English lutenist named Peter Claire arrives at the Danish Court to join King Christian IV's Royal Orchestra. From the moment when he realizes that the musicians perform in a freezing cellar underneath the royal apartments, Peter Clair understands that he's come to a place where the opposing states of light and dark, good and evil, are waging war to the death.
©1999 Rose Tremain (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
The Rope and Other Stories
Summary
The rope hung from top to bottom of his dream.The rope hung softly, saying nothing, doing nothing. Then the rope began to swing very softly, very gently.. towards him.The need to face your fears; the comedy of family life; the pressure of others expectations… Intense experiences of childhood are vividly brought to life in these eight atmospheric tales.A gripping collection of short stories from award-winning author Philippa Pearce.
©2000 Philippa Pearce (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Love and Devotion
Summary
At 32, Harriet Swift thinks she has the perfect life: a satisfying career, her own flat, and a new boyfriend. But when her only sister is killed in a car crash, Harriet is forced to give up her well-ordered life and to help her parents look after her orphaned niece and nephew. Moving back to her childhood home and sacrificing so much doesn't come easy, and Harriet discovers things about her family she never believed possible. As she uncovers a web of secrets and lies, while rekindling old friendships with the McKendrick boys - the dangerously dynamic Dominic and his brother, Miles - she learns that the sister to whom she was devoted was not all she seemed.The neighborhood's shabbiest house has a new occupant. In his mid-40s, Will Hart also thinks he has the perfect life. Having dispensed with an early mid-life crisis and swapped his career as a lawyer for that of an antiques dealer, he believes in living for the moment and is happy with his lot. He has everything he needs: two fantastic daughters to whom he is devoted and a comfortable home. But when he discovers he's about to become a grandfather, things unravel. From nowhere, tragedy strikes and he faces the biggest challenge of his life.Harriet and Will have no choice but to piece together a new future, but can they see it through?
©2004 Erica James (P)2004 Orion Publishing Group Ltd.
A Dog So Small
Summary
For months, Ben Blewitt has been thinking about dogs. So he is very disappointed when, for his birthday, he receives not a dog, but a picture of a dog. But Ben's imagination soon gets to work, and then the strange adventures begin.
©2001 Philippa Pearce (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Beauty of Britain
Summary
The complete series 1-3 of the BBC Radio 4 narrative comedy featuring Beauty Oolonga's adventures as a care worker, starring Jocelyn Jee Esien.
Beauty of Britain breaks the embarrassed silence about what happens to us when we get old and start to lose our faculties. It shows the process in all its chaotic tragi-comedy, but it does so from the point of view of a migrant worker, Beauty, whose Zimbabwean Shona background has taught her to respect age. Beauty sees Britain at its best and its worst and also sometimes without its clothes on running the wrong way down the M6 with a toy dog shouting, 'Come on!'
In the first series Beauty discovers the glories of Weston-super-Mare's charity shops, has a disastrous crush on worship leader Wayne and looks after the elderly Mr Easterby, who has a new girlfriend and is behaving like a lovestruck teenager.
In the second series, Beauty’s employer, the Featherdown Agency, sends her to provide care for those who need it - and some who don't, but all of whom have relatives with guilty consciences.
In the third and final series Beauty's mother pays her a visit, finds herself on the receiving end of a surprising proposal and wonders is Stephen, a charming English gent, is just like Hugh Grant in those movies.
Jocelyn Jee Esien heads up a starry cast that includes Jenny Agutter, Felix Dexter, Pippa Haywood, Paterson Joseph, Julia Mackenzie, Felicity Montagu, Geoffrey Palmer and Clive Swift.
Written by Christopher Douglas and Nicola Sanderson.
Produced by Tilusha Ghelani.
©2019 BBC Worldwide Ltd (P)2019 BBC Worldwide Ltd
Bad Blood
Summary
From a childhood of gothic proportions in a vicarage on the Welsh borders, through adolescence, leaving herself teetering on the brink of the 1960s, Lorna Sage vividly and wittily brings to life a vanished time and place and illuminates the lives of three generations of women. Lorna Sage’s memoir of childhood and adolescence is a brilliantly written bravura piece of work, which vividly and wickedly brings to life her eccentric family and somewhat bizarre upbringing in the small town of Hanmer, on the border between Wales and Shropshire. The period as well as the place is evoked with crystal clarity: from the 1940s, dominated for Lorna by her dissolute but charismatic vicar grandfather, through the 1950s, where the invention of fish fingers revolutionised the lives of housewives like Lorna’s mother, to the brink of the 1960s, where the community was shocked by Lorna’s pregnancy at 16, an event which her grandmother blamed on ‘the fiendish invention of sex’. Bad Blood is often extremely funny, and is at the same time a deeply intelligent insight by a unique literary stylist into the effect on three generations of women of their environment and their relationships.
©2001 Lorna Sage (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
A Family Christmas
Summary
This is the audio program to play at home over Christmas or during the car journey to see relatives. Dylan Thomas, "The Little Match Girl," and "The Nutcracker" are read by Jenny Agutter with accompanying Tchaikovsky's music - this is a must for Christmas. It contains new recordings as well as some of the finest tracks from the Naxos AudioBooks catalogue.PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2007 Naxos Rights International (P)2007 Naxos Rights International
North & South
Summary
In this classic Victorian novel, Elizabeth Gaskell explores the themes of love and social justice in an industrial age. Set in the north of England, out-of-towner Margaret Hale finds herself simultaneously attracted to mill owner John Thorton, and repulsed by the way he treats his workers. Full of history, romance, and social commentary, North & South will provoke your mind and tug at your heart. This production is read for you by the accomplished screen, stage, and TV actress Jenny Agutter, most famously known for her role in The Railway Children.
©2012 The Copyright Group (P)2012 The Copyright Group