Derby Day, D. J. Taylor
Derby Day, D. J. Taylor
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Derby Day

Author: D. J. Taylor

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 12 hr 40 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/01/2012

Synopsis

As the shadows lengthen over the June grass, all of England is heading for Epsom Down—high life and low life, society beauties and Whitechapel street girls, bookmakers and gypsies, hawkers and thieves. Hopes are high, nerves are taut, hats are tossed in the air—this is Derby Day. For months people have been waiting and plotting for this day. Everyone's eyes are on champion horse Tiberius, on whose performance half a dozen destinies depend. In this rich and exuberant novel, rife with the idioms of Victorian England, the mysteries pile high, propelling us toward the day of the great race, and we wait with bated breath as the story gallops to a finish that no one expects.

About D. J. Taylor

D.J. Taylor was born in 1960, went to Norwich School and St John’s College, Oxford, and is the author of two acclaimed biographies, Thackerary (1999), and Orwell: The Life, which won the Whitbread Biography Prize in 2003. He has written eleven novels, the most recent being The Windsor Faction (2013),joint winner of the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, Derby Day (2011),long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, At the Chime of a City Clock (2010), Ask Alice (2009) and Kept: A Victorian Mystery (2006). David is also well known as a critic and reviewer, and his other books include A Vain Conceit: British Fiction in the 1980s (1989) and After the War: the Novel and England since 1945 (1993). His journalism appears in the Independent and the Independent on Sunday, the Guardian, The Tablet, the Spectator, the Wall Street Journal and, anonymously, in Private Eye. He is married to the novelist Rachel Hore. They have three sons and live in Norwich, UK.

About Simon Vance

Simon Vance, a former BBC Radio presenter and newsreader, is a full-time actor who has appeared on both stage and television. He has recorded over eight hundred audiobooks and has earned fifty-seven Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, including one for his narration of Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini. A multiple Audie finalist, Simon has won Audie Awards for The King's Speech by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan, and The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. Winner of the 2008 Booklist Voice of Choice Award, Simon has also been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Elaine

The only "mystery" in this book (despite the billing) is why I read the whole (quite lengthy) thing. The book is structured as if it were a complex puzzle, and you read it, accordingly, with extremely close attention to detail at the beginning, but eventually it becomes evident that there is no myst......more

Goodreads review by Kirsty

I enjoyed reading this but am not quite sure what to make of it. It's billed as a "Victorian mystery" but didn't really seem to contain many elements of a mystery to me as it's a fairly straightforward story of misdoings in the horse racing world. It's written in some kind of Victorian style which I......more

Goodreads review by Gayla

This book is written in a very fun and engaging way and you will most likely have a rollicking good time while reading it. Having said that, I could not escape a feeling at the end that there was no there there. Entertaining but ultimately (I suspect) forgettable. But the ride is thoroughly enjoyabl......more

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