Stephen Fry's Victorian Secrets

by Stephen Fry, Nick Baker, and John Woolf

[MurderByDeath]

20% of why I bought this was a mild interest in 'Victorian Secrets', but 80% was because Stephen Fry was narrating it.     Neither disappointed.  If you don't like Stephen Fry - and I don't know how that would be possible - you won't like this audiobook.  If you do, you'll probably enjoy it even if some of the stuff he discusses is old hat.   The recording is broken up into 12 episodes that each cover a different facet of Victorian culture.  It's debatable whether or not a lot of these are "secrets" in the strictest sense of the word; more that some of these are things the average modern day person might not have known about the era, or had ever given any thought to (sewer pirates anyone?).  It seems this was created specifically for Audible by Audible, but it sounds much like the BBC Radio Shows in format - each episode in introduced, and there are excepts read by other authors/scholars about their work as it pertains to the episode's subject.  I was chuffed to not only recognise some of them, but to have already read their work.    My personal prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box (or my Kinder surprise for the younger demographic) was the last episode: it was about Sherlock Holmes - squeeee!  He talks about the mystery surrounding aspects of Holmes' life, but even better, the episode includes a recording of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself discussing Sherlock's creation.  Bliss, with a hint of Scottish burr.