On this page you’ll find a collection of Hugh Walpole Audiobooks gathered together for your listening pleasure.
In addition to my own productions, I’m featuring Hugh Walpole’s works that have been recorded as audiobooks by the talented people at Librivox who make their recordings available for free in the public domain.
More recently I’ve received generous direct reading contributions from David Wales for which I’m immensely grateful for.
I hope you enjoy listening to Hugh Walpole’s work.
Reading: An Essay – A Celebration of the Joy of Reading
In 1926, Hugh Walpole published Reading: An Essay to share his deep love for books and to champion the intrinsic joys of reading. Written with warmth and eloquence, this essay isn’t just about books—it’s about the profound, almost magical role they play in our lives.
My Religion
In 1926 the London Daily Express commissioned and published a collection of sixteen essays on religion by well-known people (mostly authors) including Hugh Walpole. Listen to Hugh’s thoughts on his spiritual life in this audiobook reading of his full essay.
My Religious Experience
Hugh Walpole contributed to a series of short booklets published in 1928, edited by Dr. Percy Dearmer, of King’s College, London, in which Hugh Walpole writes a deeply intimate autobiographical insight into his his thoughts and feelings towards spirituality and how his faith was formed.
Jeremy At Crale
This 1927 work is the third and final in Walpole’s Jeremy series. Jeremy’s home is in Polchester, a fictional English cathedral town in Walpole’s imagination. In this book Jeremy goes to boarding school.
The Captives
A story of young woman’s alienation from the society which holds one captive, whose life is suddenly disrupted, by a stumbling progression through constrained social cliques and frustrated romantic attachments, haunted by religious shadows.
Hugh Walpole: Selected Short Stories
Eleven short stories from The Windsor Magazine in the 1920s, Best British Short Stories of 1922, and Best British Short Stories of 1923.
The Green Mirror
Three generations of the Trenchard family live together in comfortable domesticity until Katherine, the favourite daughter, meets and falls in love with Philip, back from some years in Russia, and the whole stability of the family is threatened.
The Gods And Mr Perrin
Perrin and Traill are masters at a grim old-fashioned second-rate boarding public school in Cornwall – Perrin has been there many years and the youthful Traill has just arrived. Antagonism grows between the two turns into active dislike following an unfortunate incident which eventually has devastating consequences.
The Duchess Of Wrexe
Rachel, a spirited young girl, has to choose between Francis Breton, her difficult cousin who has been disowned by the family, and Roddy Seddon, a conventional and rather boring but wealthy young man.
Harmer John
Hjalmar Johanson is a boyish unworldly Swedish body builder who comes to Walpole’s fictional cathedral town of Polchester. He has a vision of transforming the town and its populace to a healthier and more beautiful state.
‘The Little Ghost’ – Another Tale Of The Supernatural From Hugh Walpole For Halloween
The supernatural story of how a man’s grief for the recent loss of his friend turns into companionship reaching out from the other side.
The Cathedral
The story of an arrogant 19th-century archdeacon in conflict with other clergy and laity was certain to bring comparisons with Trollope’s Barchester Towers (The Manchester Guardian ’s review was headed “Polchester Towers”), but unlike the earlier work, The Cathedral is wholly uncomic….
The Golden Scarecrow
The Golden Scarecrow, in nine chapters, presents nine stories of nine children, united by location, more or less. A tenth story of a tenth life, divided into Prologue and Epilogue, provides a different sort of unity.
Jeremy
The story of Jeremy and his two sisters, Helen and Mary Cole, who grow up in Polchester, a quiet English Cathedral town. There is the Jampot, who is the nurse ; Hamlet, the stray dog ; Uncle Samuel, who paints pictures and is altogether ‘queer’; of course, Mr. and Mrs. Cole, and Aunt Amy.
Jeremy & Hamlet
Hamlet is Jeremy’s dog. This 1923 book is Hugh Walpole’s second volume in his Jeremy semi-autobiographical trilogy (Jeremy and Jeremy at Crale being the others) about a 10 year old boy. It’s the story of Jeremy and his two sisters, Helen and Mary Cole, who grow up in Polchester, a quiet English Cathedral town.
Joseph Conrad
Written by Hugh Walpole, this is the literary biography of Joseph Conrad (1857 – 1924) who is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English literary history.
The Old Ladies
The Old Ladies (1924) is a study of a timid elderly spinster exploited and eventually frightened to death by a predatory widow.
The Prelude To Adventure
Olva Dune is a Cambridge undergraduate who commits a murder and at that moment feels the presence of God. In a tour de force Walpole novelizes the Francis Thompson poem The Hound of Heaven, about a fearful soul pursued by an insistently loving God.
The Secret City
Written in the first person, The Secret City is a novel in three parts of a journey through post World War I Russia and the Revolution, during a period of Civil War and economic collapse. Listen to the audiobook
The Thirteen Travellers
The year is 1919 and peace has sprung upon the world after the unspeakable carnage of World War I. Listen to the full audiobook.
The Wooden Horse
Walpole’s first novel (1909), The Wooden Horse is the story of the Trojans, a family which accepted tranquilly the belief that they were the people for whom the world was created.
Portrait Of A Man With Red Hair
Portrait Of A Man With Red Hair is a romantic macabre, a thriller of a melodrama written in 1925 and dedicated to his good friends Ethel and Arthur Fowler with whom he stayed with on many occasions whilst he was on his literary tours of America.