Audiobooks narrated by Joan Walker

Robert Browning: The Ring and the Book, The Pied Piper of Hamelin & more: BBC Radio dramatic reimagi

"BBC Radio dramatisations and readings of Browning’s most famous poems, performed by stars including Anton Lesser, Roger Allam and David Tennant, plus two bonus plays Victorian poet Robert Browning was renowned for his evocative dramatic monologues peopled with vivid, morally ambiguous characters. In 1846, he eloped with fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett, and they rapidly became Britain’s most famous literary power couple. This collection brings together four of Browning’s poetic masterpieces, juxtaposed with a play inspired by his work and a drama about Robert and Elizabeth’s romance. The Ring and the Book – In the aftermath of a triple stabbing, Rome is rife with speculation. Accused of murdering his young wife and her parents, Count Guido Franceschini is put on trial, and finds himself desperately fighting for his life. Anton Lesser, Roger Allam and Andrew Sachs star in this thrilling tale of of sex, lies, murder and justice. The Pied Piper of Hamlin – When a town fails to pay the rat-catcher who has lured all the rats away with his magic pipe, the piper takes a terrible revenge. Playing his music once more, he leads all the children from the town. Only one boy remains behind… David Tennant stars as the Narrator, with Bertie Gilbert as the boy. My Last Duchess – Based on Browning’s chilling poem about an aristocrat whose wife died young in suspicious circumstances, this intriguing dramatisation attempts to solve the mystery of what happened to the duchess, and who did the deed. Starring Roger Allam, Emily Mortimer and Tim McInnerny. Andrea del Sarto – Richard Pasco reads Robert Browning's monologue about the 16th-century Florentine artist known as ‘the faultless painter’, whose marriage was the source of deep unhappiness. The Contemplative Life – Brother James's loathing of oafish Brother Lawrence has led him to petty acts of destruction. As a punishment, he is forced to share a cell with him… Alan Rickman and Michael Aldridge star in this comedy inspired by Browning’s poem ‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’. The Barretts of Wimpole Street – Starring Dorothy Tutin and Jeremy Brett, this radio version of Rudolf Besier’s celebrated stage play explores the secret courtship of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, which took place at No 50 Wimpole Street, her father’s forbidding household. First published 1842 (‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’, ‘My Last Duchess’), 1855 (‘Andrea del Sarto’), 1868 (‘The Ring and the Book’) Cast and credits Written by Robert Browning The Ring and the Book Cast: Anton Lesser, Roger Allam, Lou Brealey, Dominic Rowan, Andrew Sachs, Frances Jeater, Dan Starkey, Stephen Critchlow, Ben Crowe, Chris Pavlo, Joan Walker, John Rowe, Michael Maloney, Stephen Moore The Pied Piper of Hamelin Cast: David Tennant, Bertie Gilbert With music and songs written and performed by John Harle, lyrics by Joyce Harle, sung by Thomas Platts, head chorister at Canterbury Cathedral with the choir of Wingham School, Kent My Last Duchess Cast: Roger Allam, Emily Mortimer, Tim McInnerny, Robert Hands, John Hartley, Jacob Heringman Andrea del Sarto Read by Richard Pasco The Contemplative Life Cast: Alan Rickman, Michael Aldridge, David Garth, Brian Smith, Colin Starkey, David Sinclair, Trevor Nichols, John Webb The Barretts of Wimpole Street Cast: Dorothy Tutin, Jeremy Brett, Paul Rogers, William Eedle, John Rowe, John Samson, Robin Browne, David Valla, Christopher Good, Kate Binchy, Jane Knowles, Kenneth Fortescue, Helen Worth, Michael Kilgarriff, Rolf Lefebvre, John Ruddock, Sheila Grant © 2026 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2026 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd"

Robert Browning (Author), Alan Rickman, Andrew Sachs, Anton Lesser, Ben Crowe, Chris Pavlo, Dan Starkey, David Tennant, Emily Mortimer, Frances Jeater, Full Cast, Joan Walker, Louise Brealey, Roger Allam, Stephen Critchlow, Tim McInnerny (Narrator)

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To Hear the Trees Speak: Adventures in Listening

"Imagine if you could hear the trees speak. How would it change your life? Your relationship to the world around you? This is the story of what happened when the trees whispered me to quit my job, leave my life in New York and go on a journey to listen. It is the story of what I learnt from ten trees on five continents – and the lessons that the trees have for all of us on how to be in a rapidly changing world. Olivia Sprinkel was sitting in her office in New York, an experienced international sustainability strategy and communications consultant, and as a newly single woman, she decided she had to make a change in her life and undertake a journey. To Hear the Trees Speak: Lessons on how to be from my journey to listen to ten trees is the story of her travels to Europe, North and South America, Australia, and South Asia, to discover ten of our world's essential trees and their habitats. The ten trees range from the banyan and bodhi to the olive, giant sequoia and beech. Powerfully crafted, this is important and accessible nature writing blended with insightful memoir."

Olivia Sprinkel (Author), Joan Walker (Narrator)

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Victorian Tales of the Weird

"From a dancing automaton running amok at a ball, to a prehistoric beast lurking in the depths of a Yorkshire cave, this anthology explores the nature of the ‘old weird’, and unordinary stories which go outside the boundaries of everyday life. The anthology includes not only stories by well-known writers like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jerome K. Jerome, but also by long-forgotten authors such as D. F. Hannigan and Reginald Bacchus. Focusing on the idea and history of what can be classified as ‘old weird’, compared to the ‘new weird’, Rennison applies experience and knowledge of Victorian literary history to bring these supernatural tales to the surface."

Nick Rennison (Author), Joan Walker, Jonathan Keeble (Narrator)

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The Lady, the Tiger and the Girl Who Loved Death

"A young woman is seduced by the glamour of the circus and drawn into a dangerous world of violence, cruelty and revenge. For readers of Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus and Helen Oyeyemi's Mr Fox. Sara Sidorova lies dying. As she hovers between life and death, she receives a visitation from Amba, the tiger god who will devour creation if he is released from the chains that bind him. Amba gives Sara Sidorova an extraordinary gift: a glimpse into the future. Years later, her granddaughter Irenda will grow up in a wartorn country where survival means obedience. When a devastating attack robs her of her mother, she travels to Hrana City. There, her grandmother agrees to teach her the ultimate secret: how to tame death. But it won't be easy… In the circus that offers her first taste of power, Irenda will have to tame another tiger if she is to survive. Amongst the magicians, the strongmen and the contortionists, she will start down a dangerous road, to carry out a revenge decades in the making... and bring justice into the world for herself and for her family. Rich with glamour and strangeness, brutality and deceit and the dark magic of the circus, this haunting fable will chill your bones and make your heart ache. ‘Intelligent, dark, wildly inventive.’ PAUL TREMBLAY"

Helen Marshall (Author), Jessica Preddy, Joan Walker, Victoria Fox (Narrator)

Audiobook

Twelve Post-War Tales: 'A marvel of the storyteller's art', Financial Times

"THE REMARKABLE NEW WORK OF FICTION FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF LAST ORDERS, WATERLAND, HERE WE ARE and MOTHERING SUNDAY In the aftermath of the Second World War Private Joseph Caan, a young Jewish soldier stationed in Germany, seeks the truth about lost family members; in the 1960s a father focuses on his daughter's wedding even as the Cuban Missile Crisis brings the world to the brink of disaster; in 2001, while planes fly into the Twin Towers, a maid working for US Embassy staff in London wonders if her birth on the day of the Kennedy assassination shaped her life; and at the height of a pandemic lockdown, Dr. Cole, a retired specialist in respiratory disease, returns to work and recalls a formative childhood encounter with illness and much more. These are just a few of the challenged characters we meet in Graham Swift's Twelve Post-war Tales. Tender, humane, funny and moving, Swift's latest work of fiction displays his quietly commanding ability to set the personal and the ordinary against the harsh sweep of history. It is an outstanding achievement, confirming his status as one of the great, most subtle voices of our age. Praise for Swift's most recent novel, Here We Are 'A magical piece of writing: the work of a novelist on scintillating form.' Guardian 'Here We Are smuggles within the pages of a seemingly commonplace tale depths of emotion and narrative complexity that take the breath away.' Observer 'The book's power comes precisely from the fact that it performs its magic in front of your eyes, leaving nowhere to hide . . . you wonder how he does it.' Financial Times 'With a wizardry of his own, Swift conjures up an about-to-disappear little world and turns it into something of wider resonance.' Sunday Times 'Swift has no equal in evoking the atmosphere of an era while probing human psychology with irony and tenderness.' L'Express, France 'Swift doesn't write, he whispers', Corriere della Sera, Italy "In a dozen pages Swift can embrace a whole life", Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany"

Graham Swift (Author), Alex Jennings, Esther Wane, Joan Walker, Patrick Moy, Tania Rodrigues (Narrator)

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No Greater Love: A powerful historical tale of courage, love and found family

"No Greater Love is a powerful, heartwarming family drama set in Derbyshire around WW1, from bestselling author and Queen of the Saga, Margaret Dickinson. A troubled family. A young woman seeking refuge . . . Derbyshire, 1904. After a family tragedy and a broken engagement dramatically alter her circumstances, Lady Elizabeth Ingham seeks employment by training to be a nanny. Known only as Lizzie, she secures a post at Alstone-in-the-Dale Manor to care for a four-year-old boy, Charlie Spendlove, who badly needs her kindness and understanding. When Lizzie arrives at the manor, she is appalled at Charlie's condition. He is a little wild thing; his hair is a tangled mass of ringlets, and he does not speak but screams and kicks most of the time. The family and staff are at their wits' end and no one expects Lizzie to stay long. But with patience and love, Lizzie soon brings a change and the attitude of the staff towards her alters. As Charlie gradually improves, Lizzie begins to feel at home at Alstone-in-the-Dale Manor, and new love enters her life when she meets James, the master of the house's brother. But as the First World War looms and young men from the village begin to enlist - can Lizzie's new-found happiness withstand the hardships of war?"

Margaret Dickinson (Author), Joan Walker (Narrator)

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The Unfortunately, She was a Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome's Imperial Women

"'Pacy, witty and authoritative' Jonathan Freedland 'In her hands, ancient history becomes a vivid avenue of approach to a burning modern-world concern… a powerful and important book' Daily Telegraph A superb and illuminating history of Imperial Rome's most important women – dispelling the myths and misogyny that have distorted their reputations for over 2000 years. Writer, activist and journalist Joan Smith has worked for years to raise awareness of violence against women and girls, and has been instrumental in bringing the innate misogyny of the police to public attention. Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac reinterprets the bloody, violent story of twenty-three women closely associated with the Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome. Fewer than half a dozen of them can be said with any confidence to have died of natural causes. These were the wives, mothers and daughters of the emperors from Augustus to Nero, via their ‘mad’ relative Caligula. They were the most privileged women of their time, but their lives were overshadowed, dominated and controlled by these men. Raped, killed, ripped apart from their children and mostly airbrushed from history, Joan Smith brings their extraordinary and tragic stories back into focus. There are no nymphomaniacs here. Instead, the book pieces together the human stories, showing how they struggled for control of their lives at a time when both the law and culture were stacked against them. These women shared in a spirited, inspiring and sometimes reckless resistance to male authority. Smith brings to this history not only a fresh interpretation of the original texts but also an understanding of what we know now about the mechanics of domestic abuse. The way these women have been misrepresented for two thousand years speaks volumes not just about ancient misogyny but the origin and persistence of attitudes that continue to blight women’s lives today."

Joan Smith (Author), Joan Walker (Narrator)

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Traitor's Odyssey: The Untold Story of Martha Dodd and a Strange Saga of Soviet Espionage

"Ambassador's daughter, Nazi love interest, Soviet spy, author, FBI most wanted. Accompanying her parents to Berlin in the 1930s, Martha Dodd knew almost nothing about Adolf Hitler or the Nazis. Yet almost overnight, she stepped into the spotlight, and found herself at the over-heated centre of Hitler's 'New Germany', befriending and dating several high-ranking Nazis, including the then-head of the Gestapo. An affair with a dashing Russian diplomat saw her recruited as a spy, and so began a long and tumultuous career in both Berlin and America, including attempts to infiltrate First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's inner circle and playing a key role in Henry Wallace's disastrous 1948 presidential campaign. Betrayed by a Hollywood-hustler-turned-double-agent, Martha spent years under deep FBI surveillance - escaping twice - and went to ground in Cold War Prague, sad, lonely, rich and bored, living out her final decades in a Communist Sunset Boulevard. Largely forgotten, Martha Dodd began emerging as an iconic historical figure in the early 2000s. While her scandalous behaviour and pro-Soviet leanings were never much in dispute, the actual matter of her guilt remained unresolved. Using recently released KGB archived information and FBI files, in Traitor's Odyssey, author and journalist Brendan McNally corrects this, telling the full epic of Martha Dodd's life for the first time, casting her in a new and bright light."

Brendan McNally (Author), Joan Walker (Narrator)

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Overland

"It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime: the open road, London to Kathmandu, just three young people looking for adventure. No one could have predicted the way it ended, and for fifty years the truth has been buried. But now, Joyce is ready to tell her story. London, 1970. Fresh out of a dead-end job, Joyce answers an ad in the local paper: Kathmandu by van, leave August. Share petrol and costs. Joyce is desperate to escape life in suburbia, and aristocrat Freddie looks like he can show her a wild time. Together with Anton, Freddie's best friend from boarding school, they embark on the overland trail from London to Kathmandu in a beaten-up old Land Rover. But as they cross the borders into Asia, Freddie can't outrun his family's history, leading to devastating consequences for everyone."

Yasmin Cordery Khan (Author), Joan Walker (Narrator)

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The Phoenix Ballroom

"Recently widowed Venetia Hamilton Hargreaves is left with a huge house, a bank balance to match and an uneasy feeling that she's been sleepwalking through the last fifty years. Determined to live fully again, she embraces life with an enthusiasm and purpose she'd forgotten she could muster. Buying the dilapidated Phoenix Ballroom and with it a drop-in centre and spiritualist church could be seen as reckless, but Venetia's generosity, courage and kindness provide a refuge for a touching cast of damaged and lonely people who find their chosen family. As their stories intertwine, long buried secrets are revealed, missed opportunities seized and lives are renewed as the Phoenix lives up to its name. The Phoenix Ballroom is a story of hope and second chances across the generations."

Ruth Hogan (Author), Joan Walker (Narrator)

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The Scandalous Life of Ruby M Devereaux

"A fun and gripping faux-memoir book club listen from an internationally bestselling author of historical fiction, perfect for fans of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Everyone knows Ruby Devereaux's books. But no one knows her story. until now. From a teenager in wartime England to a veteran of modern-day London - via 1950's New York, the Swinging Sixties, Cold War Berlin, Venice and Vietnam - Ruby Devereaux has lived one hell of a life: parties, scandals and conflict zones, meeting men and adventure along the way. In a writing career spanning seven decades and more than twenty books, she's distilled everything into her work. Or has she? Now beyond her 90th year, Ruby's energy is ebbing and her beloved typewriter put away. Until a call from her publisher presents Ruby with an ultimatum, and the impetus to embark on one last book - 'warts and all', as she says. Even in her dotage, Ruby.M Devereux has the power to surprise, because whatever this author does, she does on her own terms. Always. Is Ruby finally about to reveal the secrets of her infamous life? Taking the listener on a rollercoaster ride through the latter half of the 20th Century, The Scandalous Life of Ruby Devereaux is a mesmerising story of one unforgettable woman's place in an ever-changing world."

Mandy Robotham (Author), Joan Walker (Narrator)

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1689: The Haunting of Hadlow House Book 1

"All Richard Hadlow wants is a happy family and a peaceful home. Having built the perfect house deep in the Kent countryside, now all he needs is a wife. He's about to discover, however, that even the most perfectly-laid plans can go horribly and tragically wrong. The year is 1689 and England is in the grip of turmoil. A pretender is trying to take the throne, but Richard has no interest in the affairs of his country. He only cares about finding the perfect wife and giving her a perfect life. But someone – or something – at his newly-built house has other ideas. Is Richard's new life about to be destroyed forever? Hadlow House is brand new, but already there are strange whispers in the corridors and unexplained noises at night. Has Richard just been unlucky, is his new wife Rebecca simply imagining things, or is a dark secret from the past about to rise up and deliver Richard's worst nightmare? Who wins when the past and the present collide? 1689 is the first audiobook in the Haunting of Hadlow House series, which tells the story of one haunted house over the centuries from its construction to the present day. All the lives, all the souls, all the tragedies... and all the ghosts."

Amy Cross (Author), Joan Walker (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Joan Walker