Penguins Stopped Play cover art

Penguins Stopped Play

Eleven Village Cricketers Take on the World

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About this listen

 It seemed a simple enough idea at the outset: to assemble a team of 11 men to play cricket on each of the seven continents of the globe - except that's not a simple idea at all. And when you throw in incompetent airline officials, cunning Bajan drug dealers, overzealous American anti-terrorist police, idiotic Welshmen dressed as Santa Claus, and whole armies of pitch-invading penguins, you quickly arrive at a lot more than you bargained for.

Read by Julian Rhind-Tutt (Doctor Mac from BBC2's Green Wing), Harry Thompson's hilarious book tells the story of one of those great madcap enterprises that only an Englishman could have dreamed up, and only a bunch of Englishmen could possibly have wished to carry out.

© The Estate of Harry Thompson; (P) John Murray Cricket Sports Witty Funny Comedy Christmas
All stars
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This book is full of great laughs and I can’t recommend it enough

While the ending is super sad, he sounds like a great guy with some amazing stories and I’m so glad he got to share these with us

Super entertaining

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Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I'd more likely recommend the unabridged book as this book doesn't fully make sense and you don't get to know so much about the characters in it.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Penguins Stopped Play?

I thought Julian did an excellent job of doing all the different accents.

Have you listened to any of Julian Rhind-Tutt’s other performances? How does this one compare?

No.

If this book were a film would you go see it?

No.

Any additional comments?

I found this book rather uninteresting and couldn't put anything into context till I read the full book. Julian does a great job with different accents but that was about all that redeemed it for me.

Not very interesting book.

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This is a terrific audiobook. Beautifully read and narrated and a wonderful story told with great humor. Characters abound and situations that you could not make up enhance the tale. Highly recommended

Brilliant

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This book is charming, sad, funny and heart-warming, whether you are a cricket fan or not. The narration is very good, with just that edge of English Upper Crust.

I enjoyed this immensely and plan to share it with my husband whilst on holiday.

Go ahead and have a listen - you won't regret it.

A Delight

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I must admit that despite the rather moving conclusion (albeit very brief!) I found the rest of the book just washed over me with tales of middle-upper class descriptions and cricket analogies. If you’re not a lover of cricket I’d suggest you give this one a miss. The narrator was good however and did his best with the material

Quirky and touching

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