Conversations With Myself by Nelson Mandela | Dear Mr Bigelow by Frances Woodsford | Ladies of Letters Go Crackers by Carole Hayman and Lou Wakefield
Conversations With Myself, by Nelson Mandela, read by John Kani (10hrs unabridged, Macmillan, �19.99)
During his 27 years in prison Nelson Mandela wrote hundreds of letters to his family and friends, half of which never arrived. Fortunately the South African authorities, like the Nazis, were bureaucratic obsessives and since his release in 1990, a steady trickle has been released. It is these that provide the basic material for this latest collection of memorabilia, together with excerpts from recordings of the interviews Mandela gave to Richard Stengel, now editor of Time magazine, who collaborated with him on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. This latest addition to the bottomless Mandela industry is less a book than an audio album ? Stengel's 50 hours of recordings offer rich pickings for reader John Kani, who has managed to catch Mandela's distinctive way of speaking ? slow, passionate, ponderous, staccato punctuated with infectious chuckles ? even more faithfully than Morgan Freeman's award-winning performance in Invictus. Freeman had the teeth, Kani has voice. There's a lovely bit where he describes the Wembley Stadium concert Mandela went to during his triumphant 1990 world tour. Mandela had been hugely looking forward to seeing Tracy Chapman and the Manhattan Brothers. At last Tracy came on and started playing. "I've always been intrigued by that young lady and I was really excited. I was beginning to enjoy the music when someone told me that Neil Kinnock was here to see me and I had to come out. I was keen to see Kinnock," he goes on gamely, "because the Labour party had been a strong pillar in our struggle." But when he subsequently has to miss the Manhattan Brothers too, because the Russian ambassador wants to see him, he does allow a tinge of regret. It's the letters from prisoner 466/64 to his family that reveal most, such as the one to his wife Winnie, also in prison, in 1970: "Honour belongs to those who try over and over again, who are never discouraged by insult, humiliation and even defeat . . . men and women like you, darling, an ordinary girl from an ordinary village." Ten months after his mother died, Mandela's eldest son was killed in a car crash. He wrote to the governor requesting permission to stand by his son's graveside to say goodbye. Permission refused.
Dear Mr Bigelow, by Frances Woodsford, read by Patience Tomlinson (16�hrs unabridged, Soundings, �32.99)
In a perfect world I'd have followed Mandela's latest with Philip Larkin's Letters to Monica or Giuseppe di Lampedusa's Letters from London and Europe, but guess what ? they're not on audio. For some inexplicable reason genuine correspondents, unlike those who feature in The White Tiger, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and A Venetian Affair, all of which I have reviewed in the last few years, are not prized by audio publishers. Not even bestselling collections by Evelyn Waugh, Isaiah Berlin and the Mitfords. Apart from Dear Mr Bigelow, Helene Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road is the only non-fiction collection I've come across and, if you haven't heard it, you've seriously missed out. It's number 4 on my desert island audio list, and to compare it to this just isn't fair. But here goes. In 1949 Frances Woodsford, 36, starts writing to a deaf, retired 85-year-old American civil engineer in New York. She works in the Bournemouth municipal baths, lives with her mother and two cats, goes to weekly civil defence meetings and can turn a dental appointment into Vol 3 of The Forsyte Saga. It's a one-way correspondence; his letters don't feature. Pity.
Ladies of Letters Go Crackers, by Carole Hayman and Lou Wakefield (79mins, Audio Go, �9.49)
Latest from Radio 4's manic emailing viragos, touching on loneliness, breast cancer and homelessness. Hang on, isn't this billed as comedy?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/22/audiobooks
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