Audiobooks by Frank Delaney

Say the Word: A BBC Radio 4 comedy panel show

"Frank Delaney's witty wordplay panel quiz game. Frank Delaney's language based panel quiz game series revolves around the English language. This upbeat, fun word battle sees a host of well-known contributors battling to Say the Word first. The series is filmed in front of a live audience at a wide range of literary festivals in the UK and live in the BBC Studios. In each episode the contestants move through five varied quiz rounds, from creating new words derived from a known writers work, guessing the origins of words, guessing the spelling of hard English words, too untangling the dramatic riddles to find the connecting syllables. In the round Loose Change the contestants look at words that have changed meaning. Can they guess the old definition and come up with the true new meaning? The finale is the definitive round Say The Word where famous passages from famous literature works are read out with words missing. Will the contestants succeed in guessing the words, the novel and the author? Expect jokes, silliness and laughs a plenty. On hand to offer a witty musical perspective on the world of words is the Nimmo Twins, opening each episode with skits and dramas based on well-known playwrights and novelists. Credits and Cast: Episode One Recorder live at The Way with Words literary festival in Totnes, Devon. With Sandi Toksvig, Tommy Pearson, Laura Wright and Christopher Matthew. Episode Two Recorded live at Cheltenham Festival of Literature in Glouchestershire. With Sheridan Morley, Jan Dalley, Humphrey Carpenter and Katie Fforde. Episode Three Recorded live at Cheltenham Festival of Literature, Gloucestershire. With Pam Ayres, Adam Hart-Davies, Sue Limb and John Julius Norwich. Episode Four Recorded live at Radio Theatre, Broadcasting House. With Christopher Cook, Miles Kington, Valerie Grove and Carol Boyd. Episode Five Recorded live at the Radio Theatre Broadcasting House. With Andrew Sachs, Felix Dexter, Helen Lederer and Kathy Lette Episode Six Recorded live at the Radio Theatre, Broadcasting House. With Hunter Davies, Sheila Steafel, Roger McGough and Helen Atkinson Wood. Producer: Simon Elmes First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2001 ©2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd"

Frank Delaney (Author), Andrew Sachs, Frank Delaney, Full Cast, Pam Ayres, Roger Mcgough, Sandi Toksvig, Sue Limb (Narrator)

Audiobook

Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show: A Novel of Ireland

""She sprang from the womb and waved to the crowd. Then smiled and took a bow." And so we first meet Venetia Kelly, the beguiling actress at the center of this new, spellbinding, and epic novel by Frank Delaney, the bestselling author of Ireland and Shannon. January 1932: While Ireland roils in the run-up to the most important national election in the Republic's short history, Ben MacCarthy and his father watch a vagabond variety revue making a stop in the Irish countryside. After a two-hour kaleidoscope of low comedy, Shakespearean recitations, juggling, tumbling, and other entertainments, Ben's father, mesmerized by Venetia Kelly, the troupe's magnetic headliner, makes a fateful decision: to abandon his family and set off on the road with Miss Kelly and her caravan. Ben's mother, shattered by the desertion, exhorts, "Find him and bring him back," thereby sending the boy on a Homeric voyage into manhood, a quest that traverses the churning currents of Ireland's fractious society and splinters the MacCarthy family. Interweaving historical figures including W. B. Yeats, and a host of unforgettable creations-"King" Kelly, Venetia's violent, Mephistophelean grandfather; Sarah Kelly, Venetia's mysterious, amoral mother; and even a truth-telling ventriloquist's dummy named Blarney-Frank Delaney unfurls a splendid narrative that spans half the world and a tumultuous, eventful decade. Teeming with intrigue, pathos, and humor, Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show explores two of Ireland's great national passions: theater and politics. Writing with his signature mastery and lyrical prose, Frank Delaney once again delivers an unforgettable story as big and boisterous as the people and events it chronicles."

Frank Delaney (Author), Frank Delaney (Narrator)

Audiobook

Shannon: A Novel of Ireland

"In the summer of 1922, Robert Shannon, a young American hero of the Great War, lands in Ireland. A Marine chaplain, he was present at the frightful Battle of Belleau Wood, and he still suffers from shell shock. His mentor hopes that a journey Robert had always wanted to make to find his family roots will restore his equilibrium and his vocation. But there is more to the story: On his return from the war, Robert Shannon witnessed startling and lethal corruption in the Archdiocese of Boston. As a consequence, he has also been sent to Ireland to secure his silence permanently. At dawn one morning, Robert steps ashore from a freighter in the river’s estuary and is thrust headlong into the maelstrom of Irish politics, with the country now roiling from the civil war that followed the 1921 Treaty with Britain. While Robert faces the dangers of a strife-torn nation and is pursued by the venom of true evil, Ireland’s myths and people, its beliefs and traditions, its humor and wit, unfurl healingly before his feet every step of the way. Shannon is a timeless and unforgettable account of salvation, belief, duty, and the healing power of discovering one’s roots."

Frank Delaney (Author), Frank Delaney (Narrator)

Audiobook

Tipperary: A Novel of Ireland

""My wooing began in passion, was defined by violence and circumscribed by land; all these elements molded my soul." So writes Charles O'Brien, the unforgettable hero of bestselling author Frank Delaney's extraordinary novel-a sweeping epic of obsession, profound devotion, and compelling history involving a turbulent era that would shape modern Ireland. Born into a respected Irish-Anglo family in 1860, Charles loves his native land and its long-suffering but irrepressible people. As a healer, he travels the countryside dispensing traditional cures while soaking up stories and legends of bygone times-and witnessing the painful, often violent birth of land-reform measures destined to lead to Irish independence. At the age of forty, summoned to Paris to treat his dying countryman-the infamous Oscar Wilde-Charles experiences the fateful moment of his life. In a chance encounter with a beautiful and determined young Englishwoman, eighteen-year-old April Burke, he is instantly and passionately smitten-but callously rejected. Vowing to improve himself, Charles returns to Ireland, where he undertakes the preservation of the great and abandoned estate of Tipperary, in whose shadow he has lived his whole life-and which, he discovers, may belong to April and her father. As Charles pursues his obsession, he writes the "History" of his own life and country. While doing so, he meets the great figures of the day, including Charles Parnell, William Butler Yeats, and George Bernard Shaw. And he also falls victim to less well-known characters-who prove far more dangerous. Tipperary also features a second "historian:" a present-day commentator, a retired and obscure history teacher who suddenly discovers that he has much at stake in the telling of Charles's story. In this gloriously absorbing and utterly satisfying novel, a man' s passion for the woman he loves is twinned with his country's emergence as a nation. With storytelling as sweeping and dramatic as the land itself, myth, fact, and fiction are all woven together with the power of the great nineteenth-century novelists. Tipperary once again proves Frank Delaney's unrivaled mastery at bringing Irish history to life. Praise for Tipperary "The narrative moves swiftly and surely. . . . A sort of Irish Gone With the Wind, marked by sly humor, historical awareness and plenty of staying power."-Kirkus Reviews "Another meticulously researched journey…Delaney's careful scholarship and compelling storytelling bring it uniquely alive. Highly recommended."-Library Journal (starred)"

Frank Delaney (Author), Frank Delaney (Narrator)

Audiobook

Simple Courage: The True Story of Peril on the Sea

"“HEAVEN HELP THE SAILOR ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS.” –old folk prayer In late December 1951, laden with passengers and nearly forty metric tons of cargo, the freighter S.S. Flying Enterprise steamed westward from Europe toward America. A few days into the voyage, she hit the eye of a ferocious storm. Force 12 winds tossed men about like playthings and turned drops of freezing Atlantic foam into icy missiles. When, in the space of twenty-eight hours, the ship was slammed by two rogue waves–solid walls of water more than sixty feet high–the impacts cracked the decks and hull almost down to the waterline, threw the vessel over on her side, and thrust all on board into terror. Flying Enterprise’s captain, Kurt Carlsen, a seaman of rare ability and valor, mustered all hands to patch the cracks and then try to right the ship. When these efforts came to naught, he helped transfer, across waves forty feet high, the passengers and the entire crew to lifeboats sent from nearby ships. Then, for reasons both professional and intensely personal, and to the amazement of the world, Carlsen defied all requests and entreaties to abandon ship. Instead, for the next two weeks, he fought to bring Flying Enterprise and her cargo to port. His heroic endeavor became the world’s biggest news. In a narrative as dramatic as the ocean’s fury, acclaimed bestselling author Frank Delaney tells, for the first time, the full story of this unmatched bravery and endurance at sea. We meet the devoted family whose well-being and safety impelled Carlsen to stay with his ship. And we read of Flying Enterprise’s buccaneering owner, the fearless and unorthodox Hans Isbrandtsen, who played a crucial role in Kurt Carlsen’s fate. Drawing on historical documents and contemporary accounts and on exclusive interviews with Carlsen’s family, Delaney opens a window into the world of the merchant marine. With deep affection–and respect–for the weather and all that goes with it, he places us in the heart of the storm, a “biblical tempest” of unimaginable power. He illuminates the bravery and ingenuity of Carlsen and the extraordinary courage that the thirty-seven-year-old captain inspired in his stalwart crew. This is a gripping, absorbing narrative that highlights one man’s outstanding fortitude and heroic sense of duty. “One of the great sea stories of the twentieth century… [a] surefire nautical crowd-pleaser.” --Booklist é (starred review) “Frank Delaney has written a completely absorbing, thrilling and inspirational account of a disaster at sea that occasioned heroism of the first order. In the hands of a gifted storyteller, the ‘simple courage’ of the ship’s captain and the young radio man who risked their lives to bring a mortally wounded ship to port reveals the essence and power of all true courage– a stubborn devotion to the things we love.” –Senator John McCain"

Frank Delaney (Author), Frank Delaney (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks by Frank Delaney

Join Our Community