Not quite what I expected.

Interesting as stories of famous people, but goes off on some wild tangents at points.

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Brilliant

I absolutely thought this books was very informative and gruesome in places. It was a very good and I couldn't put it down.

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a good listen

I enjoyed these stories but felt some went on a lot more than needs be

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Not that good

Not what it promises to be. Very disappointed. Not social history as you'd expect. Darwin's beard; forget it ...

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1 person found this helpful

Wonderful

Such fantastic stories. Told very well by the narrator. I was so engrossed and sad when it ended. there should be more please.

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Pronunciation howlers throughout.

Would you try another book written by Kathryn Hughes or narrated by Jenny Funnell?

I'd definitely be interested in more work by this author. This is a good book but important names were completely mispronounced throughout eg Baroness Lehzen. The narrator has a pleasant voice but really should have been given some sort of crib sheet. It spoiled my listening as I kept being jolted by pronunciation howlers. In works of non-fiction getting names right really matters. I'd listen to Jenny Funnell again, but reading a novel, not non-fiction.

What did you like best about this story?

The premise of the book is an interesting one and the way various eminent Victorians popped in and out of different chapters was engaging. I learned a lot about fascinating aspects of Victorian society that are rarely considered.

Who might you have cast as narrator instead of Jenny Funnell?

I would have liked to hear the author narrate this book. I think Jenny Funnell has a lovely voice but whoever produced this should have corrected pronunciation mistakes. It wasn't just names (Montevideo made me laugh though) but words like 'archipelago'. It came over as very sloppy production.

Did Victorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum inspire you to do anything?

I was inspired to write my first review because I think non-fiction should be produced well. This isn't a throwaway bit of frothy fiction. Non-fiction should be read with more care. To get historical names so very wrong (Euclid sounded like he'd been in a skating accident) is not fair on the author, the listener or the hapless narrator. I blame the producer.

Any additional comments?

Had it not been for the engaging content I would have returned it halfway through the first chapter. As it was I did a lot of wincing.

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1 person found this helpful

Warts and All!

Katherine Hughes has definitely amassed a wealth of detailed research for this portrait of Victorians (genital) warts and all!

In five sections she details the cruel treatment of Lady Flora Hastings in the court of the young, vicious Queen Victoria (whose painfully prolapsed womb was found only after her death). Lady Flora was subjected to a humiliating internal examination to prove that her swollen stomach was not a pregnancy. A virgin, she died of a massive tumour not long afterwards. The section on George Eliot has a fascinating recreation of her father’s dairy farm and the role of women in cheese-making in fact, and in Eliot’s fiction. Charles Darwin’s appalling life-long vomiting with resultant rotten teeth (severe acid reflux?) and extreme socially unacceptable flatulence made his marriage something of a miracle, and it’s interesting that a hair from his beard could provide the answer to his condition. Hughes shows that model (prostitute? kept woman?) Fanny Cornforth (she of the sensual lips in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's ‘Bocca Baciata’) was the life partner of the artist (who had at least one testicle surgically removed), even when she became his obese ‘elephant’. She ended her days toothless in an asylum. The trial of the clearly insane Fred Baker for the murder of little Fanny Adams (whose name became immortalised in ‘Sweet F.A.’) is a Penny Dreadful of horrific detail of the child’s innards and body parts draped around the hop field where he killed her, but also a sympathetic unfolding of the tragedy.

Each hour of listening brims with social issues and fascinating detail from Tennyson’s disgustingly filthy beard and unwashed clothes, Rossetti’s wild animals running amok after his death, the dark skin of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, to weak chins, bad skin and blubbery lips masked by excessively hairy beards. The whole is written in places in an over- slangy way which I felt unnecessary – it’s all fascinating enough without trying to be uber-accessible, and it does stray from the central thesis and become repetitive in places.

But the narrator should have been given some guidance! She clearly knows no French and should have asked for the pronunciation: ‘femme fatale’, ‘aide-de-camp’ and ‘Neuchatel’ are just three examples of words grotesquely mis-pronounced. One of her worst offences came at the very beginning where Hughes discusses biography and one of the greatest biographers Lytton Strachey is called ‘Stracky’ four times. Many words are given completely the wrong stress, for example ‘archipelago’, ‘legumes’, ‘calumniator’. For an academic work based on a decade of research, these many errors are unforgivable.

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24 people found this helpful

Fascinating - an unusual angle on the victorians

The essential subject matter of the book - the Victorians - feels like it has been done to death - but this is such an interesting take on the subject. The different chapters exploring different topics relating to the body (but including a huge amount of interest around Victorian society) are all fascinating and fun - except the final one, which is fascinating but very disturbing (I'd leave that one out if you don't like dark stories.). I highly recommend this.

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6 people found this helpful

bit dull

interesting start and finish but a bit long winded and dull. good narration but a but pointless if im honest

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1 person found this helpful

Tedious

Really difficult to relax and listen because I was conscious that the reader struggled at times to keep a natural rhythm.

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