Audiobooks

Sense and Sensibility read by Sarah Badel Stepping Stones read by Seamus Heaney

Dreading the prospect of Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant flaunting it in the Hollywood Sense and Sensibility? Draw the curtains, poke the fire and settle back to hear the novel read unabridged by Sarah Badel in an accent as crisp as a pearl-handled butter-knife (Cover-to-Cover, 10hrs 30mins, pounds 24.99).

''We are lucky to live in Seamus Heaney's writing lifetime,'' John Carey wrote recently. We are luckier to be able to hear him presenting and reading his own poems in the first of what promises to be an excellent series of modern poets on tape. Stepping Stones (Faber Penguin, 72 mins, pounds 7.99) comes right up to date with poems from Heaney's forthcoming The Spirit Level.

Christina Hardyment