Listen free for 30 days
-
Call for the Dead (Dramatised)
- Narrated by: Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron, Anna Chancellor
- Length: 1 hr and 27 mins
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Classics
People who bought this also bought...
-
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mr George Smiley is small, podgy, and at best, middle-aged. He is disillusioned, wrestles with idleness, and has been deserted by his beautiful wife. He is also compassionate, ruthless, and a senior British intelligence officer in short-lived retirement from the Circus, the British Secret Service organisation situated in London. But Moscow centre has infiltrated a mole into the Circus, and it's more than likely the perpetrator is Karla, Smiley's old adversary and his opposite number in Moscow.
-
-
Absolutely fantastic - loved it!
- By ella on 11-05-15
-
The Russia House
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the third summer of perestroika. Niki Landau, philanderer and travelling rep, attends the first Moscow audio fair and is asked by beautiful young Katya to take a parcel back to England. It’s addressed to Barley Blair, jazz-player and drinker, and contains information vital to the defence of the West. But times and heroes are changing. And Barley Blair is a man who makes his own rules of engagement.
-
-
Perfect voice for the master's stories
- By Peter on 21-06-11
-
A Perfect Spy
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 20 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Magnus Pym, counsellor at the British Embassy in Vienna, has suddenly vanished, believed defected. The chase is on for a missing husband, a devoted father, and a life-time secret agent. Pym's life, it is revealed, is entirely made up of secrets. The race is on to find the perfect spy.
-
-
Fascinating insight into the mind of a spy
- By Mr on 13-04-13
-
A Small Town in Germany
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The British Embassy in Bonn is up in arms. Her Majesty's financially troubled government is seeking admission to Europe's Common Market just as anti-British factions are rising to power in Germany. Rioters are demanding reunification, and the last thing the Crown can afford is a scandal. Then Leo Harting - an embassy nobody - goes missing with a case full of confidential files. London sends Alan Turner to control the damage, but he soon realises that neither side really wants Leo found - alive.
-
-
Slow to start but worth sticking with
- By Steve Hocking on 18-07-17
-
The Constant Gardener
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The beautiful Tessa Quayle is murdered near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, the birthplace of mankind. And her putative African lover and travelling companion has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa’s husband, a career diplomat and amateur gardener at the British High Commission in Nairobi, sets out on a personal odyssey in pursuit of the killers and their motive. On his way he meets terror, violence, and conspiracy, but his greatest discovery is the woman he barely had time to love.
-
-
Emotional, addictive and typical Le Carre
- By joanna green on 30-11-14
-
The Little Drummer Girl
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 20 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this enthralling and thought-provoking novel of Middle Eastern intrigue, Charlie, a brilliant and beautiful young actress, is lured into ‘the theatre of the real’ by an Israeli intelligence officer. Forced to play her ultimate role, she is plunged into a deceptive and delicate trap set to ensnare an elusive Palestinian terrorist.
-
-
Superb. lé Carre at his best
- By Janine on 02-06-14
-
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mr George Smiley is small, podgy, and at best, middle-aged. He is disillusioned, wrestles with idleness, and has been deserted by his beautiful wife. He is also compassionate, ruthless, and a senior British intelligence officer in short-lived retirement from the Circus, the British Secret Service organisation situated in London. But Moscow centre has infiltrated a mole into the Circus, and it's more than likely the perpetrator is Karla, Smiley's old adversary and his opposite number in Moscow.
-
-
Absolutely fantastic - loved it!
- By ella on 11-05-15
-
The Russia House
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the third summer of perestroika. Niki Landau, philanderer and travelling rep, attends the first Moscow audio fair and is asked by beautiful young Katya to take a parcel back to England. It’s addressed to Barley Blair, jazz-player and drinker, and contains information vital to the defence of the West. But times and heroes are changing. And Barley Blair is a man who makes his own rules of engagement.
-
-
Perfect voice for the master's stories
- By Peter on 21-06-11
-
A Perfect Spy
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 20 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Magnus Pym, counsellor at the British Embassy in Vienna, has suddenly vanished, believed defected. The chase is on for a missing husband, a devoted father, and a life-time secret agent. Pym's life, it is revealed, is entirely made up of secrets. The race is on to find the perfect spy.
-
-
Fascinating insight into the mind of a spy
- By Mr on 13-04-13
-
A Small Town in Germany
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The British Embassy in Bonn is up in arms. Her Majesty's financially troubled government is seeking admission to Europe's Common Market just as anti-British factions are rising to power in Germany. Rioters are demanding reunification, and the last thing the Crown can afford is a scandal. Then Leo Harting - an embassy nobody - goes missing with a case full of confidential files. London sends Alan Turner to control the damage, but he soon realises that neither side really wants Leo found - alive.
-
-
Slow to start but worth sticking with
- By Steve Hocking on 18-07-17
-
The Constant Gardener
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The beautiful Tessa Quayle is murdered near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, the birthplace of mankind. And her putative African lover and travelling companion has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa’s husband, a career diplomat and amateur gardener at the British High Commission in Nairobi, sets out on a personal odyssey in pursuit of the killers and their motive. On his way he meets terror, violence, and conspiracy, but his greatest discovery is the woman he barely had time to love.
-
-
Emotional, addictive and typical Le Carre
- By joanna green on 30-11-14
-
The Little Drummer Girl
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 20 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this enthralling and thought-provoking novel of Middle Eastern intrigue, Charlie, a brilliant and beautiful young actress, is lured into ‘the theatre of the real’ by an Israeli intelligence officer. Forced to play her ultimate role, she is plunged into a deceptive and delicate trap set to ensnare an elusive Palestinian terrorist.
-
-
Superb. lé Carre at his best
- By Janine on 02-06-14
-
John le Carré
- The Biography
- By: Adam Sisman
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 26 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this definitive biography - blessed by John le Carré himself - Adam Sisman reveals the man behind the best-selling persona. In John le Carré, Sisman shines a spotlight on David Cornwell, an expert at hiding in plain sight - "born to lying," he wrote in 2002, "bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practiced in it as a novelist."
-
-
Comprehensive
- By Mark H on 24-03-16
-
The Night Manager
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 19 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The night manager is Jonathan, a veteran of clandestine operations. In flight from a failed marriage and his own past, he has taken refuge in the luxury hotel trade. Yet he finds no escape from his demons. Driven by a desire for atonement and by an inherited patriotism, Jonathan allows himself to be recruited as a British secret agent with a mission to expose the murderer of the woman he himself betrayed. His odyssey takes him across Britain and Canada to the Caribbean and the jungles of Panama.
-
-
Demands your attention, then rewards
- By Nils on 07-04-15
-
The Quiet American
- By: Graham Greene
- Narrated by: Simon Cadell
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious 'Third Force'. As his naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler finds it hard to stand and watch.
-
-
Love and War in Indo-China
- By Kirstine on 27-07-10
-
Single & Single
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A corporate lawyer from the House of Single & Single is shot dead on a Turkish hillside for crimes that he does not understand. A children’s entertainer in Devon is hauled to his local bank late at night to explain a monumental influx of cash. A Russian freighter is arrested in the Black Sea.... The logical connection of these events and more is one of the many pleasures of this story of love, deceit, family and the triumph of humanity.
-
-
A great book, but complex and hard to follow.
- By Hurtlejolt on 03-08-17
-
The Secret Agent
- By: Joseph Conrad
- Narrated by: David Threlfall
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Exclusively from Audible. The Secret Agent is based on an actual attempt made in 1894 to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. A labyrinth of greed, corruption, and betrayal, it is the most darkly humorous of all Conrad's tales. It follows a European secret agent, Adolf Verloc, 'a London shop owner' with anarchist leanings who becomes reluctantly involved in a plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. Full of great characters, melodramatic irony and psychological intrigue the tale is far from simple....
-
-
Faulty product
- By Steven on 25-08-16
-
Agent Running in the Field
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: John le Carré
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nat, a 47-year-old veteran of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, believes his years as an agent runner are over. He is back in London with his wife, the long-suffering Prue. But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him. Nat is to take over The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. The only bright light on the team is young Florence, who has her eye on Russia Department and a Ukrainian oligarch with a finger in the Russia pie.
-
-
Dire
- By P. Savage on 25-01-20
-
The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
- BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: full cast, Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The complete collection of acclaimed BBC Radio dramas based on John le Carré's best-selling novels, starring Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley. With a star cast including Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron, Brian Cox, Ian MacDiarmid, Anna Chancellor, Hugh Bonneville and Lindsay Duncan, these enthralling dramatisations perfectly capture the atmosphere of le Carré's taut, thrilling spy novels.
-
-
A satisfying marathon listen
- By CrisH on 07-03-17
-
Patriot Games
- Jack Ryan
- By: Tom Clancy
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 20 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
CIA analyst Jack Ryan, historian and former Marine, is vacationing in London with his wife and young daughter. Suddenly, right before his eyes, a terrorist group launches its deadly attack. Instinctively, Jack dives forward to intervene. By his impulsive act, he gains both the gratitude of a nation and the enmity of its most dangerous men who will not sit on their hate. In an explosive wave of violence, Jack's new enemies will seek to make him pay for his act of salvation...with his life.
-
-
Great storyline terrible narration
- By Jo on 08-04-15
-
The Fourth Protocol
- By: Frederick Forsyth
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Plan Aurora, hatched in a remote dacha in the forest outside Moscow and initiated with relentless brilliance and skill, is a plan within a plan that, in its spine-chilling ingenuity, breaches the ultra-secret Fourth Protocol and turns the fears that shaped it into a living nightmare. A crack Soviet agent, placed under cover in a quiet English country town, begins to assemble a jigsaw of devastation.
-
-
Espionage in the Cold War era
- By C on 23-12-12
-
March Violets
- By: Philip Kerr
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ex-policeman Bernie Gunther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin - until he turned freelance and he is sucked further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture. The year is 1936 and Berlin is preparing for the Olympic Games. Some of Bernie's Jewish friends are beginning to realise that they should have left while they could, and Bernie himself has been hired by a wealthy industrialist to investigate two murders that reach high into the Nazi Party.
-
-
Traditional detective idioms in an unusual setting
- By chris on 19-01-09
-
A Murder of Quality (Dramatised)
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale, Geoffrey Palmer, Marcia Warren
- Length: 1 hr and 27 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Murder of Quality, set in the early 1960s, sees George Smiley investigating a murder in a public school. When the wife of one of the masters is found bludgeoned to death, Smiley, out of loyalty to an old friend, agrees to look into the case. But his investigation raises a multitude of questions. Who could have hated Stella Rode enough to kill her? Why was her dog put down shortly before the murder? And what did Mad Janie see on that fatal night?
-
-
interesting story and dialogue
- By Colin on 17-04-10
-
Our Game
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: Michael Jayston
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 48, Tim Cranmer is a secret servant in retirement, free to devote himself to his manor house, his vineyard and his young mistress, Emma. But a rival in love disappears with Emma, and Tim sets off in pursuit.
-
-
I could listen to Michael Jayston all day.
- By Kirsty Lloyd on 20-07-15
Summary
This dramatisation, set in London in the late 1950s, finds Smiley engaged in the humdrum job of security vetting. But when a Foreign Office civil servant commits suicide after an apparently unproblematic interview, Smiley is baffled. Refusing to believe that Fennan shot himself soon after making a cup of cocoa and asking the exchange to telephone him in the morning, Smiley decides to investigate - only to uncover a murderous conspiracy with its roots in his own secret wartime past.
Starring the award-winning Simon Russell Beale as Smiley, and with a distinguished cast including Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron, and Anna Chancellor, this tense, thrilling dramatisation perfectly captures the atmosphere of le Carré's masterful début novel.
What listeners say about Call for the Dead (Dramatised)
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
- Thomas Broom
- 13-07-09
Brilliant
A great adaptation of a great story. Perfectly casted. If you have read any Le Carre or seen the television series with Alec Guinness you would do well to give this a listen.
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 19-03-18
warning: this is not the unabridged novel
this is not the unabridged novel, it is an abridged audio dramatisation. Bit misleading, really.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- JC Ruz
- 10-09-19
Amazing, chilling
A truly skilled rendition with really talented actors of an incredible spycraft novel by the timeless John LeCarre
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Andyjn
- 21-01-16
Very good
This is an excellent bbc drama. The cast is good. And the story is entertaining.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Paul Steckler
- 20-12-20
Abridged very heavily
I missed that this was abridged, oops - well done all the same. The actors were good.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Della
- 09-01-21
Beware: 'Dramatised' *and* Abridged
The acting is OK -- although the female characters are often kind of squeaky, which may just be BBC's interpretation of how women spoke 100 years ago (doubtful but whatever) -- however, I was not expecting that the length of the dramatized book would be reduced by almost 75%. It makes sense, given program scheduling and so forth, but wow, such a lot was lost.
It seems that most of LeCarré's audiobooks have been produced both ways -- dramatized and narrated -- although I couldn't find this particular title in a narrated version. I am now reading the e-book and I am much happier. His writing is wonderful! And I will keep watch for a narrated version as well.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- HMVincent
- 15-12-20
All Smiley all the time
This is for the Audible format. The ensemble cast reads so beautifully. There are no sound effects other than a voice fading a little as a character walks to the end of a room. No footsteps, no traffic noise, no glasses clinking. The professional voices add so much to the short story, which is excellent to begin with. All Smiley, all the time. Well, except for a couple of solos by Mendel.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- WD
- 26-08-20
George Smiley is always a great ride
LeCarre never delivers a boring Smiley story and this one was great. My only regret is that it was not longer. Excellent performance by several actors to complete a roaring good read.