A Word in Your Ear: The Aeneid; Rory and Ita

Virgil's famous epic of how refugees from the sack of Troy journeyed to Italy and founded Rome is more honoured than read these days. But the issue of The Aeneid (Naxos, c. 5 hrs, tapes £11.99, CDs £16.99), narrated by none other than Paul Scofield, with a supporting cast that includes Jill Balcon and Toby Stephens, brings new life to the legendary wooden horse, Dido and Aeneas, the golden bough, wrathful goddesses and terrifying harpies. Virgil's ritualistic, adjective-studded way of writing takes some getting used to, but C Day-Lewis's translation, commissioned to be broadcast for the BBC in 1952, makes the antique language gracefully modern, sometimes startlingly succinct ("that mad bitch Scylla"), sometimes hauntingly poetic, as when Aeneas tries to hug his father's ghost and feels it slip away like "a wisp of the wind or the wings of a dream".

Roddy Doyle's Rory and Ita (Random House, 3hrs 30 mins, £9.99) is in its own way an epic, a homage to his mother and father derived from their words in the interviews he had with them to write the book. No child abuse, no skeletons in the cupboard: this is the audio equivalent of Steve Wright's Sunday Love Songs, but absorbing just because of its deep affection and appreciation of two ordinary people. It's the perfect book for two voices, and John Kavanagh and Kate Binchy, both of course Irish, read it with matchless warmth.