Great Rulers of Ancient Rome by Hugh Griffith read by Benjamin Soames
Naxos Audio Books, £10.99
Fabergé’s Eggs by Toby Faber read by Jonathan Keeble
Whole Story Audio, £19.99
The Guardian’s reviewer of a recent Naxos audio book of Tolstoy’s The Cossacks admitted she had never even heard of this novel by the Russian master. An academic colleague of mine once said, during a research seminar, that he only liked Jane Austen on the telly and never enjoyed reading the novels. Pickwick Papers was his favourite audio book. He taught PR so allowances might have to be made. But this evidence points to something culturally significant.
It is a fact, however much the Leavisites may sneer and the loyal readers of The London Review of Books find it deplorable, that media versions of books create alternative texts that exist in their own right. And such alternative productions have a respected tradition. Classic works by writers we are called upon to admire, from Chaucer and Shakespeare onwards, have based their creations on originals by other writers. Where would Shakespeare have been without Cinthio, Sydney, Saxo Grammaticus, Plutarch, Holinshed, Boccaccio, Greene, Bandello and the other authors whose works he ransacked for plots? Dickens was put on stage while the serial parts were still in the course of publication. Early film versions of Vanity Fair and Pride and Prejudice were based on successful stage dramatisations.
The modern compact disc industry supplies a ready market for audio books. And here we have two very fine examples of alternative texts in their own right.
Hugh Griffith is a well known classicist and translator of Plato. Here on two CDs we have a guide to the history of Ancient Rome through the biographies of its most famous rulers. This democratizes education as what we have here is, in effect, the kind of thing taken for granted as part of the value of a good prep and public school education. A portable Mr Chips. A lucid, colourful and, in effect, potted version of Plutarch and Gibbon such as that given by generations of kindly, eccentric, dedicated schoolmasters.
The narrative rightly focuses on these rulers but we pick up a vast amount of stuff along the way, including the importance of the Mediterranean, the origins of the Julian calendar, a great deal about how the Roman empire developed and functioned as well as the importance of the Antonines. It’s illustrated with occasional bits of source material, mostly Plutarch and the booklet (which might have been more extensive) has a good selection of enduring Latin phrases we still use. This set will nourish curiosity and encourage an interest in the classics.
Benjamin Soames has a light touch and a humorous tone and carries this elaborate narrative along with its strong story lines, with plenty of battles, conflict and bloodshed. It’s delightfully supported by well chosen excerpts from Schumann’s orchestral music. It’s described as a “Junior Classic” but do not be deceived, this is scholarly stuff. It taught me
a lot.
Tony Faber’s book, beautifully realized here in a reading by Jonathan Keeble, is not only a fascinating saga of the French Huguenot émigré Fabergé family, official jewellers to the Russian royal family since the 17th century, and their wonderful Easter eggs, but a gripping narrative of the Romanov family. l
Robert Giddings
