Hold on to your e-readers and mp3 players, ladies! Our Friday Favorite this week is Richard Armitage. He’s best known for his portrayal of John Thornton in North and South, Lucas North in MI-5 (Spooks across the Atlantic), and most recently as Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit movies.
But in the last few years he’s also gotten into audiobook narration, including three of Georgette Heyer’s novels: The Convenient Marriage, Venetia, and Sylvester.
Audio clips:
Interview for The Convenient Marriage, where Richard talks about the difference between doing audiobooks and screen acting, and his love of music. (June 2010)
Interview for Venetia, where he talks about how he got started with audiobooks, and his reading habits. (March 2010)
Excerpt from Georgette Heyer’s Venetia, complete with separate voices for each character.
You can find these clips and other audio at Richard Armitage Central. But make sure you come up for air once in a while 😉
And Then She Kissed Him 
I have a friend who loves these audio books. Tweeted.
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I’ve never really been into audiobooks, but I may invest in one or two of these 😉
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Richard Armitage and Heyer? What a delightful combination!
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Isn’t that great? I wonder if someone would consider putting out videos of him reading…bet they’d be a big hit!
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I loved this! It has certainly fired my interest in audio books. Reading whilst driving never sounded so good.
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Right? Good story, great voice 😉 Enjoy!
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An excerpt from the novel North and South, as read by Richard: http://richardarmitagecentral.co.uk/racwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/06-north-and-south-extract.mp3
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Yay! I finally heard him reading this excerpt, but it’s not exactly the excerpt from the book. The dialogue is much longer than this.
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The dialog was clipped for the excerpt, I think–but fun either way 😀
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I have listened to audio books read by many narrators. But I adore RA’s voice. There’s something in his voice…something.. like cocaine. It massage your mind, soothe your soul, pacify your day and warm your heart… highly addictive.
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You said it! I have a couple of RA’s audiobooks on various devices that I sometimes use to help me fall asleep. Sometimes, though, I end up staying awake to listen to him instead 🙂
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I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve listened to his reading of Georgette Heyer. Absolutely sublime.
Check out also his readings of Bernard Cornwell’s Lords of the North, Dickens’ David Copperfield and The Chimes and Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, both by David Hewson.
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I tried and tried to find his version of Lords of the North, but it’s not available in the US outside the occasional clip on Youtube. I’ll have to look again–it’s been a while, and maybe I can score a used copy of the CD set from the UK 🙂
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