27 NOVEMBER 2004, Page 49

Recent audio books

Robert Cooper

Aclogged up motorway can provide the ideal conditions to play the balloon game; re-routed angst and venom will guarantee the ultimate cathartic experience. Raise your eyes to the heavens. The dot in the azure sky is a hot-air balloon heading earthwards at a disturbing rate. The basket dangling beneath the shrinking sac is crammed with every cad and rotter your imagination can concoct. There is panic on board. To maintain altitude human ballast is the only solution. Three passengers must be thrust overboard — quite possibly more.

There are stacks of candidates in Julian Fellowes' Snobs (Orion Audio Books. Abridged. 5 hours 20 minutes. CD 119.99. Tape 112.99). Fellowes is also the reader and narrator, but being hands-on doesn't grant him automatic immunity from the 'big push'. In his role of raconteur he plays a 'journeyman actor' and is entirely responsible for introducing Edith Lavery, an upwardly mobile minx, to the solid but wearisome Lord Broughton. Polyester meets eligible corduroy. And sparks really fly when Edith, bored rigid by flower shows, shooting parties and the woebegone Lord B, claps eyes on gorgeous Simon Russell, an actor pal of our misguided Cupid. She finds his thespian allure irresistible. Hardly surprising as we learn that Russell is being touted as 'the next Simon McCorkingdale.'

Fellowes' credentials are first-rate. He won an Oscar for his screenplay for GosfOrd Park and played the loveable buffoon Lord Kilwilly in the BBC television series Monarch of the Glen. Whereas in Gosford Park Ile ventured downstairs, here his domain is strictly the other side of the green baize door. His stentorian delivery never allows the plot to veer towards farce — far from it. as at times he sounds a bit too much like a Palle News reporter commenting on a county show. If one attempts to encroach on Wodehouse, Waugh or Mitford territory, humour must he the driving force. Although persistently amusing, the laughs are in short supply.

There is a 'health' warning on the packet promising 'strong or sexually explicit language'. Sorry to be a killjoy but there's nothing here to make even the vicar blush — although the wedding night doesn't quite go to plan, but they quite often don't. On the audio book fun-ometer the needle wavers between posh tosh and waspish satire. Rather like the car journey on which I listened to the tapes, Snobs is predictable but picturesque.

You don't have to be a soothsayer to prophesy the molten doom facing the inhabitants of Pompeii on 24 August AD 79. Whether he's Selling Hitler or unravelling Enigma, Robert Harris is a brilliant storyteller for all occasions. His Pompeii (BBC Audio Books. Unabridged. 10 hours 25 mins. CD 119.99) is perfect material for a gripping audio book. It's not all fire and brimstone although we're left with little doubt of the drama about to unfold. The story begins at sunrise, two days before Vesuvius blows its top. Early signs of there being trouble afoot are a strong smell of sulphur and of rivers running backwards into the earth. Our hero is Marcus Attilius, an engineer who has arrived in Pompeii to find Out why the Aqua Augusta ('the greatest aqueduct in the world') has been reduced to a trickle. Even in AD 79 good plumbers were in short supply. His enquiries are hindered by a corrupt millionaire bully-boy whose ravishing daughter has the hots for Attilius. Regardless of the imminent eruption Harris has moulded a compelling plot.

The reader, Steven Pacey, delivers a splendidly muscular performance, deftly balancing the sensitive with the bold. Pacey is an experienced West End actor and is currently performing in Simon Gray's play The Old Masters. Listeners here face an agonising build-up of almost four hours before the expected happens. As our imagination takes command it seems that a powerful voice is essential as 'the blizzard of rock' starts to bombard Pompeii. Rock and stones were roof-high before the magma and then lava started to flow. Almost as petrifying are the descriptions of ships in the Bay of Naples trying a futile escape. The most powerful navy in the world was now as capable as a boat in a bath.

As with Snobs there is an 'explicit scene and language' sticker on the package. Togas off at the drop of a helmet. Even premagma Pompeii was a hotspot with abundant brothels and steamy massage parlours. And descriptions of their eating habits are not for the squeamish either. Fancy a honeyglazed mouse (bones and all) as a prebanquet nibble — and was the rigor mortis tail the harbinger of the cocktail stick?

It is a major achievement by Harris to bring to life an event that has been confined to the history books for 2,000 years. He succeeds admirably. Just a pity that more were unable to escape the carnage — alas, no balloons here.