Tag Archives | Nicholas Boulton

Nicholas Boulton

Nicholas Boulton trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he won the Carleton Hobbs Award. His theatre credits include An Ideal Husband, After the Rain and Arcadia for Trevor Nunn. He has appeared on TV in many productions, including Game of Thrones, and was a member of the BBC Radio Repertory Company. He is a highly experienced and sought-after reader of classic audiobooks. Land of Men (Wind, Sand and Stars) by Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry is his first recording for Ukemi Audiobooks.

DAPHNIS AND CHLOE

By LONGUS
Read by Nicholas Boulton
2 hours 47 minutes

Daphnis and Chloe is one of the most engaging and gently erotic stories to emerge from the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome. It is a pastoral tale, telling of a boy and a girl, both abandoned (but separately) as babies on nearby hillsides; one becomes a goatherd, the other a shepherdess and a mutual attraction arises as they move from childhood to adolescence and to the slow discovery of desire. Will aggressive forces and rival suitors prevent a natural consummation and happy conclusion? Continue Reading →

THE ESSENTIAL ENGLISHMAN

By Duncan Steen and Nicolas Soames
Read by Nicholas Boulton
8 hours 36 minutes

There is no watertight excuse for this book. It strolls impertinently over ground that has been carefully mapped by the qualified authorities and elegantly appreciated by many devoted amateurs. Its purview is ludicrously broad – nothing less than an exhibition of the Englishman in his more characteristic manifestations through the ages. Continue Reading →

FOUR ARTHURIAN ROMANCES

By Chrétien de Troyes
Read by Nicholas Boulton
16 hours 48 minutes

The Arthurian Romances by Chrétien de Troyes form the wellspring of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Stories of knightly valour in the Welsh marches had existed before the 12th century, but it was the magnificent poetry and imagination of Chrétien, the 12th century French poet and trouvère, which brought alive the great characters of Arthur, his wife Guinevere, Lancelot and others. Continue Reading →

THE SATYRICON

By Petronius
Read by Nicholas Boulton
6 hours 55 minutes

Libidinous, licentious, salacious and very, very funny, The Satyricon is one of the most remarkable documents from ancient Rome. It tells the ribald story of Encolpius, a man of active and varied appetites (powered notably by his passion for his favourite lover, the handsome Giton), who plunges without inhibition into the life of Roman pleasures: orgies of food, feasting, abundant sex and escapades. Continue Reading →

BEWARE OF PITY

By Stefan Zweig
Read by Nicholas Boulton
14 hours 42 minutes

In the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a young cavalry officer is invited to a dance at the home of a rich landowner. There – with a small act of attempted charity – he commits a simple faux pas. But from this seemingly insignificant blunder comes a tale of catastrophe arising from kindness, and of honour poisoned by self-regard. Beware of Pity has all the intensity and the formidable sense of torment and of character, of the very best of Zweig’s work. Sensitively read by Nicholas Boulton. Continue Reading →

AGAINST NATURE

By Joris-Karl Huysmans
Read Nicholas Boulton
7 hours 56 minutes

Against Nature (A Rebours) was one of the most shocking French novels of the 19th century. When it was published in 1884 it thrilled the aesthetes, the poets, and the intellectuals of Europe on both sides of the Channel, (notably Oscar Wilde) because for all its lofty tone, it had, as its core, an unbridled decadence; and it was just this same character that challenged, even horrified, established bourgeois society. Continue Reading →

LAND OF MEN

LAND OF MEN (Wind Sand and Stars)

By Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Read by Nicholas Boulton
5 hours 18 minutes

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is known universally for the gentle charm of Le Petit Prince, but it is this book, Land of Men – known originally in English as Wind, Sand and Stars – which is his masterpiece. First published in 1939, it documents Saint-Exupéry’s life as a pilot in the pioneering days of long-distance flying and in particular his experiences as a pilot transporting mail across countries, across continents. Continue Reading →