Claudius the God, by Robert Graves, read by Derek Jacobi (5hrs abridged, CSA Word, £16.63)
There are unabridged versions of Graves's fictional two-part autobiography of the fourth Roman emperor, but they are not read by Derek Jacobi, who starred in the famous 1970s BBC television adaptation. His drooling, stammering, limping Claudius, dismissed by fellow members of the murderous Julio-Claudian dynasty as a harmless idiot, was such a tour de force, it's difficult to imagine anyone else reading it, even without the stammer, the dribble and the limp. Part one, I, Claudius, covers the years between his birth in 10BC and his becoming emperor in AD41. In this second book we hear how, for 13 turbulent years, far from feeble-minded, he survived numerous assassination plots by political rivals including his adored wife Messalina, before finally being poisoned by her successor Agrippina. Although Claudius, according to Suetonius, Graves's chief historical source, really did write an eight-volume autobiography, it disappeared, leaving Graves a free hand to tweak and embroider the details of history at will. The plots, intrigues and executions are all fact, but what about the trimmings? After his predecessor Caligula was assassinated, did Claudius really demote Caligula's horse (who, if you remember your Roman history, was made consul) from a stable with fresco-covered walls and an ivory drinking trough to a plain whitewashed stall with a wooden bucket? It doesn't matter – it's a terrific book.
The Lady Elizabeth, by Alison Weir, read by Emma Fielding (6hrs abridged, Random House, £16.99)
Fifteen hundred years on, following Anne Boleyn's execution in 1536, the Tudor dynasty is embroiled in equally murderous machinations. Weir's latest historical novel concentrates on the perilous 20 or so years before Elizabeth's accession, when her royal title of princess was removed in favour of "the Lady Elizabeth" and she spent much of her life effectively under house arrest in a series of palaces. Princess Mary, once her confidante, is now her arch-enemy. But why, with so much real-life drama to play with, has Weir, a respected historian, over-egged the pudding by introducing a preposterous subplot about Elizabeth being seduced by her stepfather, Thomas Seymour, who married Henry VIII's sixth wife, Catherine Parr? And once I stop believing the story, I'm less comfortable with sentences that begin: "Mary lay in bed watching the summer moonlight streaming through the casement as beside her, her Philip, her darling, her joy was breathing evenly . . ." Emma Fielding's calm, musical reading elevates it from chick-lit to – well, superior chick-lit. But I still could have done without the Earl of Dudley's endlessly rogueish grins.
Bertie Ahern: The Autobiography, read by the author (5hrs abridged, Random House, £16.99)
Fast-forward another 460 years and listen to the only Irish taoiseach apart from De Valera to win three elections on the trot tell you how he and his good friends Tony and Bill finally turned the hard men of the IRA, brought off the Good Friday Agreement and solved the centuries-old Northern Ireland problem. Fair enough, it's worth crowing about, but unless you're Irish it's less the politician than the personality that makes this worth reading. Ahern is like Mr Bounderby in Hard Times. He glories in his common-as-muck origins, his success from sheer hard graft, his scorn of inessentials such as bank accounts. Ahern unleashed the Celtic tiger that took the Irish economy from bust to boom; he presented his other good friend, "Dr No", aka Ian Paisley, with a bowl carved from an oak growing where the battle of the Boyne was fought; and his daughter Cecilia wrote the bestseller PS, I Love You. Whatever you think of his relentless Jack the Lad persona, you have to allow that Ahern is an interesting man.
