Richard Coles Audiobooks

Richard Coles, born in 1962, is an English writer, radio presenter and Church of England priest – a combination few careers can rival. Before the priesthood came pop: he played in the 1980s band Bronski Beat, then found fame as the multi-instrumentalist alongside Jimmy Somerville in the Communards, scoring three UK top-10 hits including a chart-topping cover of Don’t Leave Me This Way, the best-selling single of 1986.

Broadcasting became the second act. From 2011 to 2023 he co-hosted Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4, and he remains a familiar face on QI, Would I Lie to You? and Have I Got News for You. Away from the microphone he is chancellor of the University of Northampton and a patron of Greatwell Homes, a social housing project in Wellingborough. Few public figures have lived so many distinct lives – pop star, priest, presenter – and fiction is the latest string to a famously well-strung bow.

Coles comes to crime writing with an unfair advantage: a priest who spent twelve years behind a Radio 4 microphone knows exactly how a sentence should sound. His mysteries in our catalogue, Murder Before Evensong and A Death in the Parish, mine the world he knows better than most – the rituals, rivalries and quiet resentments of English parish life.

For UK listeners this is home territory: crime in the classic domestic tradition, unhurried and unmistakably English, with the dry wit you would expect from a Have I Got News for You regular. If you like your murders served with village politics and a well-observed congregation, start here.