New audiobook: The Soul of London by Ford Madox Ford

It’s been a while, but I’ve finished a new audiobook! Or, in truth, a rather patient editor finished it for me. I started recording Ford Madox Ford’s The Soul of London in 2013, after working on something rather challenging. I needed a change — something absorbing, but non-fictional — to avoid dealing with characters and voices for a while.

Having watched some of the BBC’s Parade’s End, and read all the books, I thought about recording Ford Madox Ford. Unfortunately, everything I knew of his fell foul of the No Fiction guideline. However, two minutes with Wikipedia informed me that he’d actually written on a wide variety of topics. So when I found The Soul of London at archive.org, the lovely prose and calm style convinced me to get going.

I finished the recordings that year, but then was immersed in editing other stuff, and wasn’t sure when I’d ever get around to poor FMF. Happily, another LibriVoxer was up for some editing and so we’ve been working on it on and off. Along the way, we discovered that my French is terribly rusty, Greek still non-existent, and I’ve been saying ‘infinitesimal’ wrong all my life.

Still, if you’re interested in a unique view of a Modern City — London in 1905 — then I can very much recommend this book. Ford has a flowing readability and tries to convey the atmosphere of the city, rather than going into history, facts and figures.

https://librivox.org/the-soul-of-london-by-ford-madox-ford/ (4h56m)

P.S. I found out just a few days ago that it was the first of a trilogy! The second part deals with the countryside, and the third with the British people. I’m not sure if I’ll undertake the others though. I have a veeeery long reading list already, even with occasional help from editors.