Listen free for 30 days
-
Dusty Answer
- Narrated by: Jenny Agutter
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Classics
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for £19.69
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Crowded Street
- By: Winifred Holtby
- Narrated by: Claire Goose
- Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All 10 Episodes of the BBC Radio dramatisation of Winifred Holtby's novel about Muriel Hammond's journey to womanhood and independence in 1900s Yorkshire. Muriel lives a frustrated life. Constrained by the limits of Edwardian society, her options are limited. Either marry, or stay at home, confined to the small town in Yorkshire in which she was born. However, a friendship she creates and the eve of the First World War set to change her future, and her ambitions for good. Starring Claire Goose and Brigit Forsyth.
-
Vanessa
- By: Hugh Walpole Peter
- Narrated by: Peter Newcombe Joyce
- Length: 27 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vanessa Paris is besotted with Benji, the devil-may-care son of John and Elizabeth Herries. Despite returning her all-consuming passion, Benji will not commit himself to marriage because he fears he can never remain constant and will eventually betray her. Benji's actions finally prompt Vanessa to leave Cumbria and seek a life in London. She stays at Hill Street with the ever persistent Ellis, who worships her.
-
The Making of a Marchioness
- By: Frances Hodgson-Burnett
- Narrated by: Lucy Scott
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Frances Hodgson Burnett published The Making of a Marchioness in 1901. She had written Little Lord Fauntleroy 15 years before and would write The Secret Garden in 10 years' time; it is these two books for which she is best known. Yet Marchioness was one of Nancy Mitford's favourite books, was considered 'the best novel Mrs Hodgson Burnett wrote' by Marghanita Laski, and is taught on a university course in America together with novels such as Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and Daisy Miller.
-
-
A tale in 2 halves
- By Elisabeth on 14-01-16
-
Kiss Myself Goodbye
- The Many Lives of Aunt Munca
- By: Ferdinand Mount
- Narrated by: Paul Blezard
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aunt Munca never told the truth about anything. Calling herself after the mouse in a Beatrix Potter story, she was already a figure of mystery during the childhood of her nephew Ferdinand Mount. Half a century later, a series of startling revelations sets him off on a tortuous quest to find out who this extraordinary millionairess really was. What he discovers is shocking and irretrievably sad, involving multiple deceptions, false identities and abandonments.
-
-
CONCENTRATE
- By gary l. on 19-01-21
-
Bad Blood
- By: Lorna Sage
- Narrated by: Jenny Agutter
- Length: 3 hrs and 1 min
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From a childhood of gothic proportions in a vicarage on the Welsh borders, through adolescence, leaving herself teetering on the brink of the 1960s, Lorna Sage vividly and wittily brings to life a vanished time and place and illuminates the lives of three generations of women.
-
-
Slow read
- By prinders on 13-01-15
-
The Great Fortune
- By: Olivia Manning
- Narrated by: Harriet Walter
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was a strange, uncertain world that Harriet entered when she married Guy Pringle. Guy taught English at the university at Bucharest, a city of vivid contrasts, where professional beggars exist alongside the excesses of mid-European royalty and expatriate journalists with a taste for truffles and quails in aspic. Underlying this is a fitful awareness of the proximity of the Nazi threat to a Romania which is enjoying an uneasy peace.
-
-
Wonderful cast of characters, starring Bucharest!
- By Mary on 10-05-15
-
The Crowded Street
- By: Winifred Holtby
- Narrated by: Claire Goose
- Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All 10 Episodes of the BBC Radio dramatisation of Winifred Holtby's novel about Muriel Hammond's journey to womanhood and independence in 1900s Yorkshire. Muriel lives a frustrated life. Constrained by the limits of Edwardian society, her options are limited. Either marry, or stay at home, confined to the small town in Yorkshire in which she was born. However, a friendship she creates and the eve of the First World War set to change her future, and her ambitions for good. Starring Claire Goose and Brigit Forsyth.
-
Vanessa
- By: Hugh Walpole Peter
- Narrated by: Peter Newcombe Joyce
- Length: 27 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vanessa Paris is besotted with Benji, the devil-may-care son of John and Elizabeth Herries. Despite returning her all-consuming passion, Benji will not commit himself to marriage because he fears he can never remain constant and will eventually betray her. Benji's actions finally prompt Vanessa to leave Cumbria and seek a life in London. She stays at Hill Street with the ever persistent Ellis, who worships her.
-
The Making of a Marchioness
- By: Frances Hodgson-Burnett
- Narrated by: Lucy Scott
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Frances Hodgson Burnett published The Making of a Marchioness in 1901. She had written Little Lord Fauntleroy 15 years before and would write The Secret Garden in 10 years' time; it is these two books for which she is best known. Yet Marchioness was one of Nancy Mitford's favourite books, was considered 'the best novel Mrs Hodgson Burnett wrote' by Marghanita Laski, and is taught on a university course in America together with novels such as Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and Daisy Miller.
-
-
A tale in 2 halves
- By Elisabeth on 14-01-16
-
Kiss Myself Goodbye
- The Many Lives of Aunt Munca
- By: Ferdinand Mount
- Narrated by: Paul Blezard
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aunt Munca never told the truth about anything. Calling herself after the mouse in a Beatrix Potter story, she was already a figure of mystery during the childhood of her nephew Ferdinand Mount. Half a century later, a series of startling revelations sets him off on a tortuous quest to find out who this extraordinary millionairess really was. What he discovers is shocking and irretrievably sad, involving multiple deceptions, false identities and abandonments.
-
-
CONCENTRATE
- By gary l. on 19-01-21
-
Bad Blood
- By: Lorna Sage
- Narrated by: Jenny Agutter
- Length: 3 hrs and 1 min
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From a childhood of gothic proportions in a vicarage on the Welsh borders, through adolescence, leaving herself teetering on the brink of the 1960s, Lorna Sage vividly and wittily brings to life a vanished time and place and illuminates the lives of three generations of women.
-
-
Slow read
- By prinders on 13-01-15
-
The Great Fortune
- By: Olivia Manning
- Narrated by: Harriet Walter
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was a strange, uncertain world that Harriet entered when she married Guy Pringle. Guy taught English at the university at Bucharest, a city of vivid contrasts, where professional beggars exist alongside the excesses of mid-European royalty and expatriate journalists with a taste for truffles and quails in aspic. Underlying this is a fitful awareness of the proximity of the Nazi threat to a Romania which is enjoying an uneasy peace.
-
-
Wonderful cast of characters, starring Bucharest!
- By Mary on 10-05-15
-
Less Than Angels
- By: Barbara Pym
- Narrated by: Patience Tomlinson
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Less Than Angels follows the loves, works and hopes of a group of young anthropologists. Catherine Oliphant is a writer and lives with handsome anthropologist Tom Mallow. Their relationship runs into trouble when he begins a romance with student Deirdre Swann, so Catherine turns her attention to the reclusive anthropologist Alaric Lydgate, who has a fondness for wearing African masks. Added to this love triangle are the activities of Deirdre's fellow students and their attempts to win the competition for a research grant.
-
-
Disappointing.
- By Norfolk Bookworm on 25-10-19
-
The Complete Mapp and Lucia, Volume 1
- By: E. F. Benson
- Narrated by: Georgina Sutton
- Length: 26 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sharply observant and wickedly funny, E.F. Benson's six Mapp and Lucia novels satirize the upper-middle-class social climbers in 1920s and '30s rural England. Games of bridge and cups of tea fuel hilarious gossip and vindictive plots a-plenty. It is a masterfully sustained spotlight on the minutiae of village life - a clever and ultimately heart-warming series that seems tailor-made for audio. Volume 1 contains the first three books.
-
-
Binge-worthy and masterfully read
- By Alison on 28-03-21
-
The Trials of Rumpole
- By: John Mortimer
- Narrated by: Bill Wallis
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The irrepressible, audacious defence barrister Horace Rumpole whose court scenes are proverbial, and whose home is ruled by Mrs Rumpole, is back in these short stories by John Mortimer. The much loved stories were adapted from his scripts for the hugely popular TV series of the same name.
-
-
A very enjoyable read
- By Flint on 07-12-14
-
Confusion
- By: Elizabeth Jane Howard
- Narrated by: Jill Balcon
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This, the third volume of the best-selling The Cazalet Chronicles, takes up the story of the Cazalet family in the spring of 1942 and follows them through the war to VE Day. Polly and Clary have left Home Place for London where Archie Lestrange keeps a close eye on them; Louise, surprisingly, has married; Polly makes a painful discovery; Zoe, despairing of Rupert's return, stumbles on solace; and Edward's duplicity demands a reckoning.
-
-
Addictive, Easy, Indulgent
- By Alison on 10-09-14
-
Letter from an Unknown Woman
- By: Stefan Zweig
- Narrated by: Heather Wood, K. Anderson Yancy
- Length: 1 hr and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Immediately following the death of her young son, distraught and heartbroken, a woman sends a heart-wrenching letter to the only man she has ever loved, chronicling their love affair, opening with, "To you, who have never known me."
-
The Lady with the Dog
- By: Anton Chekhov
- Narrated by: Max Bollinger
- Length: 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Unhappy in his marriage, a Moscow bank worker, Dmitri Gurov, is vacationing in Yalta, Crimea, where he sees a young lady walking along the seafront with her small dog. They are soon engaged in an affair and spend most of their time together walking and taking drives to Oreanda . Returning to Moscow and his daily routine, working by day and clubbing by night, Gurov expects to soon forget young Anna but finds he is haunted by her memory. Read in English, unabridged.
-
The Virginia Woolf Collection
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Tilda Swinton, Jessie Buckley, Kristin Scott Thomas, and others
- Length: 30 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Four books...one groundbreaking author. This collection includes Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), A Room of One’s Own (1929), and The Waves (1931).
-
-
Absolutely sublime for fans of Virginia Woolf
- By mareepsasja on 22-07-21
-
Chatterton Square
- By: E. H. Young
- Narrated by: Patience Tomlinson
- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'You don’t mean you're going to divorce him?' Miss Spanner said with horror. A sophisticated, emotive novel, Chatterton Square concerns the complex web of relationships between two neighbouring families, the Blacketts and the Frasers. Framed by the advance of the Second World War, the subtle mechanics of marriage and love are laid bare through the observation of three of the marital options open to the mid-century woman: unmarried, separated, miserably married.
-
The End of the Affair
- By: Graham Greene
- Narrated by: Colin Firth
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Audie Award Winner, Audiobook of the Year, 2013. Audie Award Nominee, Best Solo Narration, 2013. Graham Greene’s evocative analysis of the love of self, the love of another, and the love of God is an English classic that has been translated for the stage, the screen, and even the opera house. Academy Award-winning actor Colin Firth (The King's Speech, A Single Man) turns in an authentic and stirring performance for this distinguished audio release.
-
-
Depressing story but beautifully performed
- By Dr on 31-10-16
-
The Architect's Apprentice
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Grant Cartwright
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There were six of us: the master, the apprentices and the white elephant. We built everything together ...Sixteenth century Istanbul: a stowaway arrives in the city bearing an extraordinary gift for the Sultan. The boy is utterly alone in a foreign land, with no worldly possessions to his name except Chota, a rare and valuable white elephant destined for the palace menagerie. So begins an epic adventure that will see young Jahan rise from lowly origins to the highest ranks of the Sultan's court.
-
-
Spoiled by the narrator
- By Chris on 13-10-15
-
The Other Passenger
- Valancourt 20th Century Classics
- By: John Keir Cross
- Narrated by: Kim Durham
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With a wide range of themes and styles, ranging from traditional ghost stories to contes cruels, black humor, tales of dark fantasy and surreal nightmare, and perhaps the best story about a ventriloquist and his dummy ever written, there are stories here to suit the tastes of any connoisseur of horror and weird fiction.
-
-
Good stories, ruined by bad accent work
- By J. Ramage on 21-03-20
-
Rebecca
- By: Daphne Du Maurier
- Narrated by: Anna Massey
- Length: 14 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Daphne du Maurier's young heroine meets the charming Maxim de Winter and despite her youth, they marry and go to Manderley, his home in Cornwall. There, the sinister housekeeper Mrs Danvers and the mystery she keeps alive of his first wife Rebecca - said to have drowned at sea - threatens to overwhelm the marriage.
-
-
A classic story of love and life.
- By Antagonist on 30-06-13
Summary
This is Judith Earle's story - her solitary childhood spent in the seclusion of her riverside house, her awkward, intense experiences at Cambridge rounded with passion and disillusionment, and her travels abroad with her elegant, socialite mother. Above all, this novel is about Judith's consuming relationship with the Fyfe family, who each fall in love with Judith, transforming her young womanhood.
More from the same
What listeners say about Dusty Answer
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Klara
- 17-05-15
Best for young people
Any additional comments?
I should have liked this book much better in my teens when I might have had more patience with the main character. She really is quite tiresome (which, of course, she is not meant to be). Everything circles around herself, and only what she can't have seems important to her. She takes no real interest in others - at least not if they are "common" - with the exception of the two people she is obsessed by and perhaps in love with. In a way, you must pity Judith as well. She has been brought up by a mother who seems to be indifferent to her as a person. When Judith is deeply unhappy, all her mother can do for her is to go shopping. New outfits are the best comfort she can think of - and Judith seems to be grateful. No wonder, perhaps, that she is emotionally confused. The novel is beautifully written and Jenny Agutter's performance is excellent. I appreciate that she does not try to act, giving different voices to the characters. Some narrators do - and the result is seldom a success.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- C. Lockhart
- 20-10-17
Youth, not so golden.
I first read this novel when I was fifteen and loved it. It expressed for me so accurately the intensity and self absorption of adolescence, the agony and the ecstasy . Now , in old age , oh dear, there is little to admire in the characters. Entitled , selfish , unhappy and unkind to each other.
I still love Rosamond Lehmann’s description of the garden....
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- C. Edwards
- 20-10-21
one of the best books I've read
this was a recommendation from a TV book programme, so I came with no real expectations other than the thanks the host gave the person who had made the recommendation seemed heartfelt and I thought "Might be good/interesting. The story unfolds within the protagonist's head much of the time, giving a wonderful perspective on internal fantasies, young love and insecurities without ever being maudlin, despite some troubling emotions. it spoke to me in a way I am unable to express as I do not possess the literary acumen. I don't really want to say anything about the plot other than she experiences nascent feelings for a number of her neighbours and when away from home a fellow student (who happens to be female, which given it was written in the 1920's I found interesting in the casual way this was addressed). the book essentially takes one on a journey from adolescence to adulthood and was written beautifully