Speaking Volumes
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Speaking Volumes
Narrated by:
Gordon Griffin
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Narrated by:
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Gordon Griffin
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By:
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Gordon Griffin
About this listen
How a fishmonger's son from Tyneside, growing up in the 1950s with a Geordie accent, become the person who recorded more than 900 audiobooks and received an MBE from the queen in the Birthday Honours of 2017. This 'charming', 'entertaining' and 'heart-warming' memoir answers that question.
©2020 Gordon Griffin (P)2020 W F HowesListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"Not simply a reader but an artist of the spoken word." (Audiofile Magazine)
"Gordon Griffin, an entire acting company in one person." (Audiofile Magazine)
“Witty and moving memoir of how a working-class boy becomes the voice of the spoken word. Honest and vivid account plus excellent advice for those of us who work with words.” (Miriam Margolyes)
Who is he? Never heard of him. Gordon Griffin is the Geordie lad who while still in shorts had a plan and he was going to make it work and he did! With commitment, determination, boundless energy, not waiting for doors to open or luck to come his way, he began a wonderful acting career, tv, radio and casting among other things before talking books.
The huge number of books recorded is no accident, nor the MBE. The dedication, professionalism, hours of preparation and research for each and every book before it gets anywhere near a studio added to a natural talent and passion for reading to the listener the spoken word has been the recipe for success.
Passing on that experience and helping people as he has done for years gives a new generation of narrators the opportunity to move the audiobook industry onwards.
“Come here, listen, I have this amazing story to tell you” He said….. I did and he was right!
A beautifully written book of the life and career of the man who became the master of the audiobook.
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But he is also an immensely versatile and accomplished actor, who from his earliest childhood knew that was what he wanted to be, despite his being a working class boy with a Geordie accent (at that time a bar to fame). This book is his account of his training, his aspirations, his enormously wide experiences in the theatre. He met and worked with many, many actors and other theatre people, some famous, some not; and his brief sketches of this panoply of players are delightful and sometimes unexpected.
He also describes the wide range of activities that he, as an actor, has undertaken: from music hall to the classics, from declaiming poetry to cabaret, and he recounts some of the unexpected vicissitudes and challenges he has encountered, from filming in the middle of the night without even hot coffee to keep him going (the director was a Jehovah's Witness) to carrying a flaming torch in a procession of knights (which frightened the horses).. He also describes, fascinatingly, the advent of audiobooks, and how they have developed, both the technology and the awareness of the role of the reader.
The book is of course superbly read, with the same clarity and fluency that Gordon brings to every book (and which, it turns out, is the result of absolutely meticulous preparation).It's a book from which I learned a lot about what it means to be an actor.
But the best thing about the book is that it's a story written by a man who really loves what he does, and who actively relishes the activities, the people and the immense diversity of challenges that his life brings him.
It's lovely. Do listen to it.
A man who loves what he does
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