STALINGRAD by Antony Beevor £21.99, 17hrs, 28 mins, unabridged WHILE
listening to an audiobook to beat motorway boredom, the mind is in a flux of all those thoughts that swirl unbidden in the head as well as those required by the task in hand. Our attention is constantly reined back to the audiobook, unconscious of having strayed, and we happily carry on listening. Listening to Stalingrad is differ- ent. Beevor uses some of the techniques of the fiction writer and these are fully exploited by Tudor Barnes's faultless read- ing: the tremendous narrative drive, the many quotations from primary sources which in the reading sound like direct speech, his licence in graphic description and the almost unbearable details — of rats already fat from dead flesh gnawing the feet of dead soldiers, of comrades knocking insensible those whose minds have given way and who raved and howled beside them. But this is not fiction; it is 17 hours detailing one of the most appalling military engagements of all time. The manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres directed by the manic leaders are complex and the figures are staggering (the Soviet authorities executing 3,500 of their own soldiers at Stalingrad; the Wehrmacht in Russia depended on 600,000 horses in addition to their weaponry). It is intense and intellectual. Forget your aerobics and your ironing — Stalingrad must be listened to with total concentration for short peri- ods at a time. Some will prefer to read the book, but there will be others who will be happy to let someone as capable as Tudor Barnes do the reading.
All three titles available by mail order from Isis Audiobooks: tel: 0800 731 5637.
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