Marc Bennetts Audiobooks

The Descent: a political and historical account read aloud by Marc Bennetts

1 audiobook reviewed

Who is Marc Bennetts?

Titles do a lot of work in non-fiction, and The Descent is a blunt one. It implies a trajectory rather than a snapshot, something going downwards over time, and the shelves our catalogue assigns it to point the same way: biography and memoir, history and heritage, politics and society.

That combination usually signals a book built around people rather than abstractions, where an argument about how things came apart is carried by the lives caught up in it. Just under eight hours is the length of a sustained case rather than a pamphlet, long enough to establish a period and follow it through.

Beyond the work itself, this page makes no claims about Marc Bennetts, and we would rather it stayed that way.

Marc Bennetts in audiobooks

The recording is read by Marc Bennetts, and an author at the microphone changes the character of political writing. The stresses fall where the writer intended them, and the passages that matter most are audibly the ones being leaned on.

Nothing has come in from listeners yet, so there is no score to weigh and no consensus to summarise. That leaves the sample doing the work, which for a book of this kind is no bad thing. A few minutes will establish the register, and register is usually what decides whether a political history keeps you to the end.

Take a look at the listing below.