William Tell Told Again

By: P. G. Wodehouse

Narrated by: Lawrence Skinner

"William Tell Told Again" (1904) is a retelling of the William Tell legend in prose and verse. The main prose was written by P. G. Wodehouse, while the verses were written by John W. Houghton.

Excerpt:
Once upon a time, more years ago than anybody can remember, before the first hotel had been built or the first Englishman had taken a photograph of Mont Blanc and brought it home to be pasted in an album and shown after tea to his envious friends, Switzerland belonged to the Emperor of Austria, to do what he liked with...

Artist Bio Author:
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century.©2017 Audioliterature (P)2017 Audioliterature

A bit of history well told

I got this because I love P.G. Wodehouse. This story about the history/legend of the foundation of Switzerland is well told. To me the reader sounded a little bored at times.

Heroic tale, fun retelling, poor narration

The tale of William Tell rings through the ages, and the detail and depth of this story bring it to life.

P.G. Wodehouse, then a very young man, wrote it as a humorous children’s story, with plenty of playful punctuation. The future comic genius barely is barely audible in this seminal work, but listen closely and you’ll hear his earliest stirrings.

The narrator, unfortunately, is the wrong choice. A perfectly competent Childrens story teller, perhaps - but an American-accented one, who literally did not know how to pronounce Plum’s last name (“WOOD-house” is correct). That problem is compounded by the decision to have the narrator read the title of the book and the author’s name at the beginning of each chapter, inexplicably and gratingly.

Enjoy this if you’re trying to make a complete sweep of Wodehouse’s works - but only if you can’t find one with a British narrator familiar with the Master, and you’ve mastered all 95 of his other books first (perhaps excepting the early school stories, written in a public school cant impenetrable to those who don’t play cricket and rugger).