"It's a really interesting piece, very unusual. And something quite different for me because it's a genre I enjoy watching and reading but I hadn't yet tackled as an audiobook. I'm really glad that I had the chance to visit the Fens before recording started as it gave me an important sense of time and place. To master the Lincolnshire accent, Joy sent me a dictionary which included a couple of colloquial words that appear in the writing. Joy's a brilliant writer who I think has something of the Agatha Christie about her - a quiet lady who accesses something quite dark in her imagination and writes it into her work but all the while wrapping it in a more comforting, nurturing blanket. I think the reason we're attracted to dramas like this is because the success of solving a crime is largely dependent on the characters of the people investigating it - they aren't just machines, they're living, breathing people. "

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"Even though it's a dark story set in such a horrific place, there's such a bubble of light and humanity in the middle of it, which was a real surprise to me. And the way that the story is captured by the author is equally fascinating."

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"When I was reading through this book in preparation for the recording, I remember thinking that it's possibly some of the best writing I've ever read. In The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter's digging deep into something which, I suspect, women haven't traditionally been able to talk about. It's almost post-feminism and I read it thinking how it sad it is that she died quite young, because I feel like in the third part of her life she would have explored some extraordinary themes."

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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in The Monster Collection

"It was a bit of a revelation because I'd never read the book before. I think there's a legend around the book where so much of it has been filled in by writers and directors. The side of the story which fascinates me is the idea of a split personality, which we probably all have. With the voices of Jekyll & Hyde, I really worked on shifting them as the story develops which was an exciting experiment and actually something I didn't plan for at all. Having lived in London for 20 years, knowing a very modern London and a very old London, I think maybe Gothic storytelling is borne out of this city - Jekyll & Hyde is definitely referenced as a London city and you don't have to walk far to recognise the streets they're talking about. Gothic writing is not blood and guts, it's more about the depravity of the human soul and how deep it can go and how high it can soar."

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"I think David Copperfield is one of my all-time favourite books and that's one of the reasons why I chose to narrate it. I've always read books with a cinematic head so I see stories as I'm reading them. My love of Dickens and storytelling came from that because he writes in a very descriptive, cinematic way."

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"I think it's the greatest, most prolific tragic love story ever told. What David Hewson did with this script was so exciting to me - I love the fact that he will take the essence of Shakespeare's words and create modern dialogue. I think Hewson has made an incredible character out of Juliet, whose sensibilities and sensitivities are of a very modern woman and I found this refreshing. Aside from the Nurse, the voices are more subtle than I've made in the past because I didn't want to create too many 'big' characters. There's romance, there's poetry, there's politics, there's humour and I really enjoyed reading it."

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Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by AJ Hartley

"I didn't expect Hamlet, Prince of Denmark to be so much fun. Hopefully what people will love about this interpretation of the story is everything that Shakespeare didn't explore, for example where people go when they're off stage. You have much more insight into the characters' motivations. Hamlet comes round and round again 400 years later probably because of the introspection of that character. This was written before any kind of Freudian analysis so the ability for one man to understand himself through a dialogue with himself is what brings people back to this story."

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Classic Love Poems

"I actually think 'love' is almost indefinable - it's a sensation, it's an idea. It's illusive and that's why there are endless poems, paintings, movies, stories told about love. Every single one of these poems has a different expression of something that the poet is trying to portray. Every listener will interpret the poems differently and I think that the poet invites that."

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