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Winchelsea

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Winchelsea

By: Alex Preston
Narrated by: Tigger Blaize, George Weightman, Gary Cross
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About this listen

AS READ ON BBC RADIO 4

The year is 1742. Goody Brown, saved from drowning and adopted when just a babe, has grown up happily in the smuggling town of Winchelsea. Then, when Goody turns sixteen, her father is murdered in the night by men he thought were friends. To find justice in a lawless land, Goody must enter the cut-throat world of her father's killers. With her beloved brother Francis, she joins a rival gang of smugglers. Facing high seas and desperate villains, she also discovers something else: an existence without constraints or expectations, a taste for danger that makes her blood run fast. Goody was never born to be a gentlewoman. But what will she become instead? Winchelsea is an electrifying story of vengeance and transformation; a rare, lyrical and transporting work of historical imagination that makes the past so real we can touch it.

©2022 Alex Preston (P)2022 Canongate Books Ltd Fiction Historical Fiction
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I really enjoyed this book. The storyline was great, the descriptions promoting the imagination with this swashbuckling adventure

adventurous tale

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Not so keen on Cullodon. Section. Story was gripping and I know Winchelsea so found all the story of the other villages fascinating.

The clarity of the voice for Goody

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Superbly written and plotted, this is as fine an historical novel as any I have read. Not entirely convinced by the main narrator, whose occasional lapses into Estuary English and inability to pronounce Goudhurst correctly are irritating. But, overall, 'Winchelsea' is a first-class story.

A wonderful story

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The writers prose is accomplished and elegant alas what appears to be an amateur female voice artist renders the book unlistenable - an argument for using professional voice artists at all times Why cut corners? . I’d suggest someone like Juliet Stevenson for work of this complexity and calibre.
The aforementioned voice actors voice is untrained has no sense of pacing and struggles with the simplest of vowels and consonants but above all its the shallow and unattractive tone lacking in both colour and natural range that forces the listener to abort the experience after a few excruciating minutes- please re-record this !!

Fine writing destroyed by abysmal narration

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I didnt think I would enjoy this at first listening, and the voices took a little getting used to, but I am glad I stuck with it. Lots of interesting histoical background, believable characters and interesting alternative perspectives on life linked to events in this area.

Really enjoyable tale

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