Vanity Fair Audiobook

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Set during the time of the Napoleonic Wars, this classic gives a satirical picture of a worldly society. The audiobook revolves around the exploits of the impoverished but beautiful and devious Becky Sharp who craves wealth and a position in society. Calculating and determined to succeed, she charms, deceives and manipulates everyone she meets.

A story of early 19th-century English society, it takes its title from the place designated as the centre of human corruption in John Bunyan’s 17th-century allegory Pilgrim’s Progress.

Receiving popular and critical success on first publication, the novel is considered Thackeray’s masterpiece, and this satire of society is as relevant now as when it first appeared. In 2003, Vanity Fair was listed at Number 122 on the BBC’s The Big Read poll of the UK’s best-loved books.

Thackeray was born in Calcutta in 1811. After his father’s death, he was sent to be educated in England at five years old, while is mother remarried in India. The canings and abuses he received in private boarding schools formed a basis for some of his work as did the culture of Anglo-Indians which also featured prominently.

Narrator Biography

After training at RADA, John’s professional career began in 1964 at the Regent’s Park Theatre.

Film credits include Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up, The Lion in Winter, Man of La Mancha, King David, Antony and Cleopatra, Robocop 2 and The Sparrow. Theatre credits include Bloody Sunday (The Tricycle Theatre), Claudius in Hamlet (National Theatre), Rat in the Skull (Duke of York’s Theatre), End Game (Tron Theatre, Glasgow), Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (London Shakespeare Group), Infidelities (The Boulevard Theatre), and Breaking the Code (The Comedy Theatre). Television credits include Tracate Middoth, The Fixer, Spooks, Poirot, Silent Witness, The Holocaust on Trial, Casualty, Princes in the Tower, Gods and Generals, Fight Against Slavery, Ben Hall, I, Claudius, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and Lillie.