Tag Archives: fiction

Audio Books and Fiction on Spotify

Spotify is more than just about music. We’ve already covered some of the stand-up comedy (here and here) and excellent Blake’s 7 audio dramas, but did you know that there’s also a whole feast of classic audiobooks, audio drama and plays on Spotify too?

 

Audio Books on Spotify

While there aren’t any modern audiobooks on Spotify yet (Amazon’s audible.co.uk has seen to that), there are still quite a few classics recorded in the mid 90s and read by many famous names: Hugh Laurie, Joanna Lumley and Nigel Davenport for example. Here’s a small selection (more here):

You’ll also find a whole series of Sherlock Holmes stories, read and acted by Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson. Here’s Volume 1 with the first four stories.

One word of advice when searching for more audiobooks: avoid the Eternal Classic Audio Books series. While unabridged, they’re read by a computer-generated voice and sound absolutely awful!

 

Classic Plays on Spotify

EMI UK has made a series of classic plays available on Spotify, starring some the finest actors and thesps of the 20th century. These include:

  • Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker
    (with Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence, Peter Woodthorpe)

 

Shakespeare on Spotify

Argo Records have lots of classical content on Spotify, including many of their recordings of the complete works of William Shakespeare. Cambridge University’s Marlowe Players performed the plays, which by the mid-60s grew to include many professional actors. Here’s a few:

You’ll also find Romeo & Juliet, Measure For Measure, Two Gentlemen Of Verona and many more. Unfortunately the label search is a bit wonky here, so you’ll just need to search for each Shakespeare play by name.

 

Special thanks to Stuart Ian Burns (writer of the excellent blog Feeling Listless) for pointing out all these audio books and plays. Please let us know in the comments if you find any more drama or fiction on Spotify!

His Majesty’s Starship Derbyshire: A Science-Fiction Story with Spotify Soundtrack

Towards the end of 1980, His Majesty’s Starship Derbyshire, the pride of the British Space Agency fleet, blasted off into Outer Space on a mission of imperial urgency. The Derbyshire was crewed by six of Britain’s finest astronauts, hastily trained to prepare for a task of extraordinary circumstance. Jodrell Bank had detected an alien spacecraft briefly entering the inner solar system before retreating to an orbit around 90377 Sedna, the distant red dwarf planet that theoretically belongs to humanity. This attack on British soverign space could not be tolerated by the ruling Earth empire of the day, and so the Derbyshire mission was devised.

The HMS Derbyshire launched covertly on the 23rd November, 1980. All seemed well until it passed Saturn, when all radio communication was lost. Its crew were never heard from again. This is their story.

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