Great story ruined by terrible reading

George Shipway’s Imperial Governor remains one of the finest Roman novels ever written and one of the few books I have re-read several times. Having not read it for around 10 years and faced with a series of long car journeys on my own I decided to download the audiobook... and greatly regretted it.

I normally enjoy audiobooks and tolerate flaws in the telling without rancour, but this one drove me mad. I don’t know anything about Jeremy Arthur but I am sure he got his voice coaching from the Dick van Dyke School of British Diction.

His pronunciation of works like palm and calm (pro. parm & carm) come out as porm and corm. Passage becomes parsage and many more errors beside, but it’s the place names that get the worst of his emasculations. The river Thames becomes the Tims, Norwich becomes NorWITCH, and Anglesey becomes Englesey.

His ignorance of Roman and military terms is also equally awful. Option (the rank below Centurion) is properly pronounced OP-TEE-ON, while piquets is pronounced PICKETS, not peekays. You might think I’m nitpicking but a longish section about piquets becomes excruciating.

Great story worth 5 stars, but the reading is the worst I have heard on an audiobook, and that includes James Franco’s dire rendition of Slaughterhouse Five.

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1 person found this helpful

Iceni rebellion, no mercy.

I read and loved George Shipway's historical novels decades ago, [his Norman ones in particular.] He is a great historical writer with a feel for the military. After a summer of reading about prehistory I saw this was out and decided to listen to it while working.

Good move.

Although it shed little light on the late Iron Age there is an authenticity to this 'memoir' that is hugely impressive. The Roman political background, the push into North Wales, the strategy, intent, and mistakes, and the workings of the Roman army are all really impressively described while the disaster of the personal story is told brilliantly, all from a purely Roman perspective of course. And, seen as the enemy, and therefore necessarily distant, , the tribes of Iron age Britain also feel wholly authentic. Highly recommended.

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ROMAN PROPAGANDA

I know these events took place millennia ago but it still peeves me to hear the story of the Roman occupation narrated as if this military machine were the heroes of the seismic uprising of the British tribes. Mr Shipway has fallen into the same trap and perpetuates the view of Roman virtue first crystallised in the Victorian era when our own colonisations were justified by holding them up to the mirror of beneficial Rome. The legions came to Britain after wiping the Gauls off the face of the planet and continued their ethnic cleansing and their particular loathing of the Celts and the Druids on these islands. They were the Nazis of the Iron Age. I particularly resent the depiction of altars of burning corpses on Anglesey, nothing but Roman propaganda, and the assertion that it was Romans who threw slave chains etc. into the lake on Mon. No evidence for it whatsoever. I stopped listening for a while but endured it to the end. Wish I hadn't bothered.

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Decent but very dated

The narrator has some very odd ideas as to how some words might be pronounced. 'Optiones' being especially grating.

The story is decent and if you can overlook the very dated ideas about how the Roman army might have fought and can cope with modern place names being used for British and Roman settlements then it'd probably be worth a solid three stars.

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