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The Black Prince
- Vintage Classics Murdoch Series
- Narrated by: Anthony Howell
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Classics
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The Sea, the Sea
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- Length: 23 hrs and 3 mins
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Charles Arrowby has determined to spend the rest of his days in hermit-like contemplation. He buys a mysteriously damp house on the coast, far from the heady world of the theatre where he made his name, and there he swims in the sea, eats revolting meals and writes his memoirs.But then he meets his childhood sweetheart Hartley, and memories of her lovely, younger self crowd in - along with more recent lovers and friends - to disrupt his self-imposed exile. So instead of 'learning to be good', Charles proceeds to demonstrate how very bad he can be.
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Thank you Richard E. Grant
- By AH on 28-04-20
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The Sandcastle
- Vintage Classics Murdoch Series
- By: Iris Murdoch
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When Bill Mor falls in love with Rain Carter, he discovers a new way of being and a new joy in the world and his surroundings. To be with Rain he must abandon his prosaic life as a schoolmaster, his domineering wife, Nan, and his troubled teenaged children. He must draw on the powers of selfishness, hatred and anger in order to make the final break. But what love could survive all that violence?
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super super Iris
- By michael procter on 17-08-20
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Everyone is thinking about Julius King. For comfortable, long-married Hilda and Rupert, he is a mystery. For Morgan, Hilda’s tormented sister, he is an obsession. For Morgan’s abandoned husband, Tallis, he is the source of ruin. For Simon and Axel, deeply in love, he stirs up jealousy and unease. What is Julius thinking about? He’s thinking about Hilda, Rupert, Morgan, Tallis, Simon and Axel, and they will not all survive his malevolent attention.
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Another richly-rewarding Iris Murdoch novel
- By Amazon Customer on 05-02-21
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The Bell
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A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home of an enclosed order of nuns. A new bell, legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. Dora Greenfield, erring wife, returns to her husband. Michael Mead, leader of the community, is confronted by Nick Fawley, with whom he had disastrous homosexual relations, while the wise old Abbess watches and prays and exercises discreet authority. And everyone, or almost everyone, hopes to be saved whatever that may mean.
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Absolute pleasure
- By Karen on 03-10-12
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Under the Net
- By: Iris Murdoch
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Iris Murdoch's first novel is set in a part of London where struggling writers rub shoulders with successful bookies, and film starlets with frantic philosophers. Its hero, Jake Donaghue, is a drifting, clever, likeable young man who makes a living out of translation work and sponging on his friends. A meeting with Anna, an old flame, leads him into a series of fantastic adventures.
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Over the net
- By Francis on 18-07-11
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The Good Apprentice
- By: Iris Murdoch
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- Length: 20 hrs and 39 mins
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Stuart Cuno has decided to become good. Not believing in God, he invents his own methods, which include celibacy, chastity, and the abandonment of a promising academic career. Interfering friends and relations question his sincerity, his sanity and his motives.
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Iris, really, you've gone too far this time
- By clive on 03-09-12
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The Sea, the Sea
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Overall
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Performance
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Charles Arrowby has determined to spend the rest of his days in hermit-like contemplation. He buys a mysteriously damp house on the coast, far from the heady world of the theatre where he made his name, and there he swims in the sea, eats revolting meals and writes his memoirs.But then he meets his childhood sweetheart Hartley, and memories of her lovely, younger self crowd in - along with more recent lovers and friends - to disrupt his self-imposed exile. So instead of 'learning to be good', Charles proceeds to demonstrate how very bad he can be.
-
-
Thank you Richard E. Grant
- By AH on 28-04-20
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The Sandcastle
- Vintage Classics Murdoch Series
- By: Iris Murdoch
- Narrated by: Juliet Aubrey
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
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Overall
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Story
When Bill Mor falls in love with Rain Carter, he discovers a new way of being and a new joy in the world and his surroundings. To be with Rain he must abandon his prosaic life as a schoolmaster, his domineering wife, Nan, and his troubled teenaged children. He must draw on the powers of selfishness, hatred and anger in order to make the final break. But what love could survive all that violence?
-
-
super super Iris
- By michael procter on 17-08-20
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A Fairly Honourable Defeat
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- By: Iris Murdoch
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- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
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Everyone is thinking about Julius King. For comfortable, long-married Hilda and Rupert, he is a mystery. For Morgan, Hilda’s tormented sister, he is an obsession. For Morgan’s abandoned husband, Tallis, he is the source of ruin. For Simon and Axel, deeply in love, he stirs up jealousy and unease. What is Julius thinking about? He’s thinking about Hilda, Rupert, Morgan, Tallis, Simon and Axel, and they will not all survive his malevolent attention.
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- By Amazon Customer on 05-02-21
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- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
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Performance
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A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home of an enclosed order of nuns. A new bell, legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. Dora Greenfield, erring wife, returns to her husband. Michael Mead, leader of the community, is confronted by Nick Fawley, with whom he had disastrous homosexual relations, while the wise old Abbess watches and prays and exercises discreet authority. And everyone, or almost everyone, hopes to be saved whatever that may mean.
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Absolute pleasure
- By Karen on 03-10-12
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Under the Net
- By: Iris Murdoch
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Iris Murdoch's first novel is set in a part of London where struggling writers rub shoulders with successful bookies, and film starlets with frantic philosophers. Its hero, Jake Donaghue, is a drifting, clever, likeable young man who makes a living out of translation work and sponging on his friends. A meeting with Anna, an old flame, leads him into a series of fantastic adventures.
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-
Over the net
- By Francis on 18-07-11
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Performance
-
Story
Stuart Cuno has decided to become good. Not believing in God, he invents his own methods, which include celibacy, chastity, and the abandonment of a promising academic career. Interfering friends and relations question his sincerity, his sanity and his motives.
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Iris, really, you've gone too far this time
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Paint dries before the war.
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Iris Murdoch: The Sea, the Sea, a Severed Head & Something Special
- A BBC Radio Collection
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- Original Recording
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Booker Prize-winning author Iris Murdoch is renowned for her sublime fiction, exploring themes such as art, passion, morality and human freedom. Included in this collection are adaptations of two of her finest novels and a reading of her only published short story, as well as an edition of Writers Revealed in which Murdoch discusses her ideas and beliefs.
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His most intimate and epic work to date, Inside Story is the portrait of Martin Amis' extraordinary life, as a man and a writer. This novel had its birth in a death - that of the author's closest friend, Christopher Hitchens. We also encounter the vibrant characters who have helped define Martin Amis, from his father Kingsley, to his hero Saul Bellow, from Philip Larkin to Iris Murdoch and Elizabeth Jane Howard, and to the person who captivated his 20s, the alluringly amoral Phoebe Phelps.
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A Tour de Force.
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Just brilliant
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Into the rarefied atmosphere of the Hotel du Lac timidly walks Edith Hope, romantic novelist and holder of modest dreams. Edith has been exiled from home after embarrassing herself and her friends. She has refused to sacrifice her ideals and remains stubbornly single. But among the pampered women and minor nobility Edith finds Mr Neville and her chance to escape from a life of humiliating spinsterhood is renewed...
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The very best Anita Brookner!
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Five Star
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Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.
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Completely compulsive and absorbing
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Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brilliant characters: his fiancée Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions; and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham's novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.
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One of my desert island books
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- A Romance
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Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars investigating the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time.
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Great book made greater by superb performance
- By Falluntilyoufly on 19-04-19
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The Comedians
- By: Graham Greene
- Narrated by: Adrian Lukis
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- Unabridged
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Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, a world in the grip of the corrupt 'Papa Doc' and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Brown the hotelier, Smith the innocent American, and Jones the confidence man - these are the 'comedians' of Graham Greene's title. Hiding behind their actors' masks, they hesitate on the edge of life. And, to begin with, they are men afraid of love, afraid of pain, afraid of fear itself.
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Great story but not much comedy
- By Kirstine on 19-05-20
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
Vintage Classics Murdoch: Funny, subversive, fearless and fiercely intelligent, Iris Murdoch was one of the great writers of the 20th century. To celebrate her centenary, Vintage Classics presents special editions of her greatest and most timeless novels.
Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.
Ex-tax collector and author of two unpopular novels, Bradley Pearson wishes to devote his retirement to writing a masterpiece. But the doorbell and the phone keep ringing and every ring brings with it an ex-wife, a friend in need, a sister in trouble or a young woman seeking a teacher and so dusty, selfish Bradley is plunged into the muddles and mysteries which will end in his doom.
Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1973.
What listeners say about The Black Prince
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- GalenSolon
- 29-04-20
Great
Thanks Excellent narration and a great book With a unique structure. I strongly recommend it.
2 people found this helpful
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- richard W
- 07-02-21
Challenging, fascinating and disturbing
This book is like a time capsule from early 1970's middle-class literally life which is interesting. It's structure is unusual (to me at least) and contains a really complex dislikable central character who has difficulty and sometimes hard to believe relationships with everyone in this life, particularly females. I found it very tough to get through to times as its hard to root or empathise with any characters. My conclusion is that Murdoch is a bit too highbrow for me, its clever but too close to smug and pretentious in the same way Martin Amis can be. Just tell us a good story...
Brilliant narration btw
1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Arty1
- 25-09-20
Reliability of the narrator
Enjoyed this fifth audio Murdoch novel for Murdoch's usual scathing insight into the human condition and philosophical enquiry. However, I found my enjoyment marred by the audio narration by Anthony Howell. He narrated as if he was a coach tour guide giving information about the interesting sights. Perhaps his tone of voice was not to my personal taste, but his deep burr felt out of keeping with the story. His rendering of the dialogue was a lot better and I was able to imagine the characters. But I was somewhat glad to reach the end of this audio book and that is an exceptional experience for me using audio books.
1 person found this helpful
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- M. J. Walsh
- 10-08-20
Not her best work
For much of its course, to draw a theatre comparison, this novel from the 1970s is a Shaftesbury Avenue comedy for the high minded. Misadventures and misalighnments proliferate as a ship of earnest fools sets out on a voyage to journey the sea of love.
Interesting and entertaining, and so far so good. Then the philosopher in Murdoch takes over in devising the progress to an end and dry wit morphs into dry waffle and the ship is beached.
Worth a listen, as it is beautifully read, but not the author's best.