Listen free for 30 days
-
The Forsyte Saga
- The Man of Property
- Narrated by: Neil Hunt
- Series: The Forsyte Chronicles, Book 1, The Forsyte Saga (Recorded Books), Book 1
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Classics
People who bought this also bought...
-
The White Monkey
- The Forsyte Chronicles, Book 4
- By: John Galsworthy
- Narrated by: David Case
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The White Monkey is the fourth of the nine novels in The Forsyte Chronicles and marks the opening of the second trilogy in the series, called A Modern Comedy. In this new chapter, Fleur and Michael Mont begin to question their marriage when their good friend, author Wilfred Desert, can no longer contain his passion for Fleur. Fleur finds herself torn between her love for Michael and passion for Wilfred.
-
-
Highly enjoyable if you like the narrator's style
- By Anonymous User on 14-02-21
-
The Lamplighters
- By: Emma Stonex
- Narrated by: Indira Varma, Tom Burke
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cornwall, 1972. Three lighthouse keepers vanish from a remote rock, miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped. The principal keeper's weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week. What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. Black rocks roll beneath the swell, drowning ghosts. Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves?
-
-
Beautiful and heartbreaking
- By S. Champeau on 24-03-21
-
Gone with the Wind
- By: Margaret Mitchell
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 47 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Gone with the Wind appeared in 1936, it became on overnight sensation. Nothing like it in American literature had ever been seen. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and become one of the most celebrated films of all time. It has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and been translated into 27 languages. Gone with the Wind is both an historical novel and an examination of the bewildering changes that swept Georgia in the 1860s.
-
-
Dreadful narration
- By Mrs Barbara Moffatt on 02-04-20
-
Maid in Waiting
- The Forsyte Chronicles, Book 7
- By: John Galsworthy
- Narrated by: David Case
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maid in Waiting is the beginning novel in the last trilogy of John Galsworthy's Forsyte Chronicles. In this 7th installment, the story continues of the lives and times, loves and losses, fortunes and deaths of the fictional but entirely representative family of propertied Victorians, the Forsytes.
-
The Forsyte Saga (Dramatised)
- By: John Galsworthy
- Narrated by: Dirk Bogarde, Sir Michael Hordern, Diana Quick, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The blockbuster BBC Radio 4 adaptation of John Galsworthy’s classic family drama, featuring a star cast including Dirk Bogarde, Sir Michael Hordern, Diana Quick, Michael Williams and Amanda Redman. Galsworthy’s epic story chronicles the decline and fall of the Forsytes through almost 50 years of material triumph, emotional disaster, and a terrible feud that splits them asunder.
-
-
British Drama at it's best
- By The Driver on 02-05-16
-
Brideshead Revisited
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece - a novel that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire. Through the story of Charles Ryder's entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Evelyn Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities.
-
-
A total delight
- By Jytte on 17-09-16
-
The White Monkey
- The Forsyte Chronicles, Book 4
- By: John Galsworthy
- Narrated by: David Case
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The White Monkey is the fourth of the nine novels in The Forsyte Chronicles and marks the opening of the second trilogy in the series, called A Modern Comedy. In this new chapter, Fleur and Michael Mont begin to question their marriage when their good friend, author Wilfred Desert, can no longer contain his passion for Fleur. Fleur finds herself torn between her love for Michael and passion for Wilfred.
-
-
Highly enjoyable if you like the narrator's style
- By Anonymous User on 14-02-21
-
The Lamplighters
- By: Emma Stonex
- Narrated by: Indira Varma, Tom Burke
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cornwall, 1972. Three lighthouse keepers vanish from a remote rock, miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped. The principal keeper's weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week. What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. Black rocks roll beneath the swell, drowning ghosts. Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves?
-
-
Beautiful and heartbreaking
- By S. Champeau on 24-03-21
-
Gone with the Wind
- By: Margaret Mitchell
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 47 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Gone with the Wind appeared in 1936, it became on overnight sensation. Nothing like it in American literature had ever been seen. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and become one of the most celebrated films of all time. It has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and been translated into 27 languages. Gone with the Wind is both an historical novel and an examination of the bewildering changes that swept Georgia in the 1860s.
-
-
Dreadful narration
- By Mrs Barbara Moffatt on 02-04-20
-
Maid in Waiting
- The Forsyte Chronicles, Book 7
- By: John Galsworthy
- Narrated by: David Case
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maid in Waiting is the beginning novel in the last trilogy of John Galsworthy's Forsyte Chronicles. In this 7th installment, the story continues of the lives and times, loves and losses, fortunes and deaths of the fictional but entirely representative family of propertied Victorians, the Forsytes.
-
The Forsyte Saga (Dramatised)
- By: John Galsworthy
- Narrated by: Dirk Bogarde, Sir Michael Hordern, Diana Quick, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The blockbuster BBC Radio 4 adaptation of John Galsworthy’s classic family drama, featuring a star cast including Dirk Bogarde, Sir Michael Hordern, Diana Quick, Michael Williams and Amanda Redman. Galsworthy’s epic story chronicles the decline and fall of the Forsytes through almost 50 years of material triumph, emotional disaster, and a terrible feud that splits them asunder.
-
-
British Drama at it's best
- By The Driver on 02-05-16
-
Brideshead Revisited
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece - a novel that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire. Through the story of Charles Ryder's entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Evelyn Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities.
-
-
A total delight
- By Jytte on 17-09-16
-
Cranford
- By: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Narrated by: Prunella Scales
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A vivid and affectionate portrait of the residents of an English country town in the mid-19th century, Cranford describes a community dominated by its independent and refined women, relating the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances. Through a series of satirical vignettes, Gaskell sympathetically portrays changing small town customs and values in mid-Victorian England....
-
-
Best Cranford Reading!
- By Sharon on 26-05-09
-
A Suitable Boy
- By: Vikram Seth
- Narrated by: Sagar Arya
- Length: 68 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A modern classic, this epic tale of families, romance and political intrigue, set in India, never loses its power to delight and enchant listeners. At its core, A Suitable Boy is a love story: the tale of Lata - and her mother's - attempts to find her a suitable husband, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal. At the same time, it is the story of India, newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis as a sixth of the world's population faces its first great general election and the chance to map its own destiny.
-
-
Perfect in every way
- By ABraun on 10-04-21
-
The Diary of a Nobody
- By: George Grossmith
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Palmer
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written as the diary of someone who would not normally merit a memoir but considers that he should have one written about him anyway, The Diary of a Nobody chronicles in agonizing but very funny detail everyday life in the lower middle class suburbs of Victorian England and the attempts of a social climber to better himself. It was published in 1892. First published in the satirical magazine Punch as a serial between 1888 and 1889, with illustrations by the author’s brother, Weedon.
-
-
brilliant
- By stewart braeman on 14-01-17
-
The Woodlanders
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Rufus Sewell
- Length: 2 hrs and 48 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Grace Melbury, the only daughter of a timber merchant, arrives home in Little Hintock after an expensive education, and her father looks to find a husband for her. There are two rivals for her hand: Giles Winterborne, a good-hearted yeoman and her childhood sweetheart; and Edred Fitzpiers, an ambitious young doctor of good family. Fitzpiers wins her, but the mismatch brings unhappiness not just to the young couple but to a wider circle in the woodland community.
-
Wives and Daughters
- By: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Narrated by: Prunella Scales
- Length: 25 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Molly Gibson, the only daughter of a widowed doctor in the small provincial town of Hollingford, lost her mother when she was a child. Her father remarries wanting to give Molly the woman's presence he feels she lacks. To Molly, any stepmother would have been a shock, but the new Mrs. Gibson is a self-absorbed, petty widow, and Molly's unhappiness is compounded by the realisation that her father has come to regret his second marriage.
-
-
Very enjoyable.
- By M on 28-09-13
-
Ulysses
- By: James Joyce
- Narrated by: Jim Norton
- Length: 27 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ulysses is regarded by many as the single most important novel of the 20th century. It tells the story of one day in Dublin, June 16th 1904, largely through the eyes of Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter ego from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman. Both begin a normal day, and both set off on a journey around the streets of Dublin, which eventually brings them into contact with one another.
-
-
Amazing
- By Richard on 02-04-12
-
A Man Lay Dead
- By: Ngaio Marsh
- Narrated by: Philip Franks
- Length: 5 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wealthy Sir Hubert Handesley's original and lively weekend house parties are deservedly famous. To amuse his guests, he has devised a new form of the fashionable Murder Game, in which a guest is secretly selected to commit a 'murder' in the dark, and everyone assembles to solve the crime. But when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse....
-
-
excellent as always
- By Michelle C on 05-04-17
-
The Ruby in the Smoke
- By: Philip Pullman
- Narrated by: Anton Lesser
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unabridged reading of Philip Pullman's nerve-shattering thriller, set in the murky streets and opium dens of Old London. When 16-year old Sally's father drowns in suspicious circumstances, she is left to fend for herself in Victorian London. Although she doesn't know it, she is already in terrible danger.
-
-
A layered and satisfying listen
- By Barry on 08-09-16
-
Jane Eyre
- By: Charlotte Bronte
- Narrated by: Thandiwe Newton
- Length: 19 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following Jane from her childhood as an orphan in Northern England through her experience as a governess at Thornfield Hall, Charlotte Brontë's Gothic classic is an early exploration of women's independence in the mid-19th century and the pervasive societal challenges women had to endure. At Thornfield, Jane meets the complex and mysterious Mr. Rochester, with whom she shares a complicated relationship that ultimately forces her to reconcile the conflicting passions of romantic love and religious piety.
-
-
A beautiful audiobook!!
- By Philip on 13-02-17
-
A Question of Proof: Nigel Strangeways, Book 1
- By: Nicholas Blake
- Narrated by: Kris Dyer
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the first book in the Nigel Strangeways classic crime series, an obnoxious schoolboy is found dead at his school Sports Day. Can amateur detective Nigel Strangeways help find the killer?
-
-
Classic English Golden Age murder
- By common reader on 28-11-13
-
Something Fresh
- By: P. G. Wodehouse
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Wodehouse himself once noted, "Blandings has impostors like other houses have mice." On this particular occasion, there are two imposters, both intent on a dangerous enterprise. Lord Emsworth's secretary, the Efficient Baxter, is on the alert and determined to discover what is afoot - despite the distractions caused by the Honorable Freddie Threepwood's hapless affair of the heart.
-
-
Excellent Wodehouse!
- By R on 20-02-12
-
The Documents in the Case
- By: Dorothy L Sayers, Robert Eustace
- Narrated by: Jane McDowell
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best of the golden-age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field, including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. But in this thrilling murder story, she tells her story instead through the letters of the victim and the suspects. The bed was broken and tilted grotesquely sideways. Harrison was sprawled over in a huddle of soiled blankets.
-
-
Excellent book.
- By Mrs Eileen Elliott on 30-05-15
Summary
The three novels that make up this trilogy have long been recognized as masterpieces of 20th-century literature, and Galsworthy as one of its leading exponents. But don’t let that be the reason you put off listening to this wonderful work. There are passion and lust in these pages, high art and low comedy, and unthinking violence that ride alongside ever-correct manners. Scandal, tragedy, despair, rape, accidental death, marriage, remarriage and a healthy leavening of births all unfold against a rolling backdrop of a world war.
More from the same
Author
Narrator
What listeners say about The Forsyte Saga
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- asm09090
- 15-06-16
A wonderful and engrossing story
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
I would wholeheartedly recommend this book. It is a nearly contemporaneous account of the attitudes of a sector of Victorian society which has strong parallels in our own times. We are familiar with dramas of the "upstairs, downstairs" style, involving the upper classes and their servants, or Dickensian explorations of the injustices of the age. This story is of the upper middle classes, lawyers, architects, landlords and auctioneers. The authenticity rings through, and links those times with our own.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Old Jolyon Forsyte, whose humanity and love for his son win out in the end over the judgementalism od his peers.
What about Neil Hunt’s performance did you like?
Neil gives a dry, quite clipped performance. I could see that it might not be to everyones taste, but it was definitely to mine. The book is written in a very concise way, such that every word counts, and yet invites the reader to consider the values on display by the Forsytes. Neil conveys this, and ultimately his performance is all the more moving because of this.
If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
Ownership or Love
Any additional comments?
I found it hard to get into the book, and ended up listening to the first chapter several times over. Every detail needs to be listened to and absorbed. Once the details of the cast of characters sank in and I knew who was who, I was then firmly hooked.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Beverley
- 27-04-16
Odd choice of narrator
Would you listen to The Forsyte Saga again? Why?
I might.
What other book might you compare The Forsyte Saga to, and why?
I wouldn't.
Which character – as performed by Neil Hunt – was your favourite?
There are a lot of characters and Neil Hunt's performance doesn't help distinguish them.
If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
I wouldn't make a film about anything - it's not my line of work!
Any additional comments?
The narrator is an odd choice - he sounds English yet pronounces some words like an American would; I can only assume he is actually American. (eg: vase = 'vayce', leisure = 'lee-sure', dubious = 'doobious', z = 'zee'.) If you can get past this, he's not bad - and thankfully such words don't crop up very often. I do wonder if a little less staid narration would be better, but the story is about hopelessly staid people so maybe he's ideal in that respect. I just don't understand why an apparently American narrator was chosen.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mr. M. G. Helliwell
- 29-04-16
Much better than expected
Why did nobody ever tell me how good this book was. I wish I'd read it years ago. In terms of the audio book itself, the narration was spot on, clear, expressive with a convincing range of voices. A few times there was an American pronunciation (eg vase and leisure) but as it was only may be 5 times over the whole book, I can't really complain.
as well as "a man of property", the book includes "an Indian summer" so don't go searching for a separate download for that. There's no other way to describe "an Indian summer" other than beautiful.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- daisy&co
- 15-08-16
Excellent reading of a fantastic book
Neil Hunt brilliantly brings the Forsytes to life. A fantastic and touching story with unforgettable characters.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Pam Reed
- 08-03-18
enjoyed it
fascinating historical perspective. strongly male biased but still with some empathy towards the women in the story. good narration.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Christine MacDonald
- 22-08-18
excellent story, wonderfully narrated.
do not hesitate to choose this version, as Neil Hunt was perfect. gave the various characters distinct voices and conveyed just the right sentiment and emotion. highly recommend.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Sue Smith
- 07-06-20
A rediscovered classic, chock full novel
Even after recently viewing the 2002 BBC production I found this book entrancing, full of wit, rock solid characters, and concrete wisdom. I finished the whole thing in two days.