A mine of historical context for all Shakespearee fans

A massive amount of interesting commentary comparing and contrasting real history with Shakespeare's interpretation. It is clear the Bard took some liberties but who cares when he produced such magnificent works. I really enjoyed learning more about the historical setting of the plays.

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Happy I persevered...

Although I found the narrator irritating with his stilted reading and strange pauses, I am glad I persevered. The content is excellent. The author describes the actual written historical accounts of each of the Kings Shakespeare has written about and then explains how much is true and how Shakespeare condensed so much history into his plays, sometimes covering many years in one scene. All very interesting stuff. I will probably listen to it again. So much to absorb.....

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1 person found this helpful

Great book narrated by a robot

Loved the book fascinating how it deconstructs the history and matches it to the play but the narration was terrible. It’s obviously some sort of clever Siri device as it doesn’t know how to pronounce words and names. The reading was in a singsong style that was bearable and almost realistic but after a while quite wearing.

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4 people found this helpful

Hard to listen to

Very good book spoiled by the peculiar rhythms of the narrato.r like a hectoring scoolmaster

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6 people found this helpful

Tudor propaganda.

Very interesting comparison between Shakespears Kings and historical facts. How history was distorted to tow the Tudor propagandist line and malign the name of Yorkist kings and nobility.

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2 people found this helpful

Nice text, shame about the talk.

I am sure I would have enjoyed this book with a different reader. The guy is well spoken, but he doesn't know the pronunciation of various English words before we even mention the French. Roy was probably already "rwa" in the time we are talking about, but if not,then given the uncertainty you should use the Modern French version anyway, or go the whole hog on reconstructing Medieval French.

His intonation is tedious and rather than being coloured by the text, takes three to five words at a time and then pauses without regard to whether the meaning requires it

The book itself is great, but wasted by this reader.

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Erudite author; dreadful presentation

John Julius Norwich is a former diplomat and, as they say, an author and broadcaster. Radio 4 listeners of a certain age may remember his outstanding contributions to 'Round Britain Quiz'. He has written various books on history and on the arts, and so is ably qualified for this work in which he compares Shakespeare's major history plays with the actual historical events.

In particular, he makes the best case I have heard for bad king Richard III - that he really did have his nephews murdered. We'll never know for sure of course; for me, the politics don't work with Richard as the killer but they work very well for Henry VII.

JJ Norwich does an excellent job, which is more than I can say for the narrator, who, in addition to a number of pronunciation gaffes (fief pronounced fife for example), places pauses in entirely unnatural places in his sentences. It's as if he's been given randomly chopped up sentences to read - and it gets astonishing annoying after a while.

There is so much bad pronunciation in audio books that I have to wonder who edits this stuff.

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11 people found this helpful

Another good book spoilt by narration

Are you handing the narrator his text on flashcards, with short delays? Either that or his phrasing is really odd, he stops in the middle of a natural phrase. Initially I wondered if you were using AI.

There are some mispronunciations as well, but the phrasing is the main issue here.

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Easy Listening

When deciding whether to buy a title I'll often look for a book review online so when I came across a slightly sniffy New York Times review which call this "Lively if not particularly scholarly" I was sold. This is highly engaging and well written without being too demanding which is what I was in the mood for over the Easter break. Norwich paints lively, opinionated portraits of the movers and shakers of medieval England; in each case going on to show us how Shakespeare wrote about them a few generations after the fact. It's a device that worked really well for me; partly because Norwich is good at bringing historical characters to life in a convincing way through the little we know about them and also because we get an insight into the shifting politics of the period by seeing what Shakespeare could and could not safely write about a hundred or more year later under the Tudors.

If you enjoy medieval history this won't break particularly new ground but it's well written, well narrated, it brings characters and the period to life and there's enough in it to enjoyably hold your attention without taxing the brain too much.

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16 people found this helpful

Interesting book but terrible narration

I really enjoy JJN’s writing and had previously enjoyed his History of France on audible. I was intrigued by the premise of this book, which largely worked well through the chapters.

But this was an act of perseverance in the face of truly awful narration. Whether it was the really stilted pace of the delivery, where it was as if the narrator had chosen deliberately to put pauses in the most unexpected and nonsensical places, or his spectacular inability to pronounce many of the names of the protagonists, it was an act of vandalism towards what should have been a very enjoyable listen. As an aside, there were numerous places where additional narration had been edited into the dialogue, rendering the awfulness of the main narrative more starkly apparent.

One is left wondering whether JJN has ever listened to this and approved it. I would have given the performance zero stars, but the review process doesn’t allow it.

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6 people found this helpful