Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks
Penguin, 7 CDs, £18.99 Buy the audiobook here
Buy the download from Audible here
Listen to a clip here

The Essential Kipling
CSA Word, 4 CDs, £15.99 Buy the audiobook here
Listen to a clip here

The presentation of the unabridged audiobook of Devil May Care matches the elegance of Sebastian Faulks's pastiche Bond thriller. It comes in a silver tin, with black-enveloped CD smartly labelled from 001 to (happy coincidence) 007.

Jeremy Northam's accents intensify the book's 1960s atmosphere nicely, but we soon realise that there is purpose as well as fun here. The Iran-set novel reminds us of how much damage our colonial past has done to our present. Its evil mastermind had a scheme to saturate British cities with heroin, and another to acquire The Times and other newspapers to destroy the credibility of British politics.

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BACKGROUND

• Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks and The Essential Kipling

• Why James Bond will never go out of fashion

• Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks

BACKGROUND

• The real James Bond?

• The Devil may care about Bond's secret car

• Don’t worry, 007, you’re still licensed to kill

BACKGROUND

• Fleming's James Bond: what links WW2 with 007

• Fleming's novel plan to outwit Nazis

• The life that led to 007

Older, less lascivious, and beginning to creak at the joints, Bond is feeling his years. But he is still a man of infinite resource and sagacity and now likes pepper - cracked, not ground - on his scrambled eggs.

Kipling is hugely enjoyable heard aloud: his words sing, especially voiced by such fine narrators as Rupert Degas, Liza Goddard, Martin Jarvis and Richard Pasco.

The Essential Kipling is a well-judged collection of stories (four Plain Tales from the Hills: How the Whale got his Throat), letters (between father and son), splendid poems such as Recessional, East is East and The Female of the Species, and the magnificent scene in which Mowgli leaves the wolves.

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