My Adventure on Dartmoor | A. J. Alan | A Bitesized Audiobook
Not so much the Hound of the Baskervilles, more a shaggy dog story related in Alan's typical humorous style, in which he recounts an evening spent in an isolated moorland cottage on a wild and stormy night. He's the only human being for miles around, or so he thinks, when he's disturbed by a sudden, insistent knocking at the door....
Narrated/performed by me, Simon Stanhope, aka Bitesized Audio. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me:
Monthly support on Patreon: / bitesizedaudio
Occasional/one-off support via Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/bitesize...
Visit my Bandcamp page to hear more of my performances of classic stories, and you can purchase and download high quality audio files to listen offline: https://bitesizedaudio.bandcamp.com/
00:00:00 Introduction and biographical notes, written and read by Simon Stanhope
00:04:07 The Story begins
00:31:46 Credits and thanks
About the author: A. J. Alan was the pseudonym of the multi-talented Leslie Harrison Lambert (1883–1941), an English civil servant and intelligence officer whose readings of his own short stories on the fledgling BBC radio service in the early 1920s were incredibly popular with contemporary audiences. Born in Nottingham, he went to school at Rugby and initially trained as a surveyor. At some point he also trained as a magician and was accepted into the Magic Circle. He developed an interest in amateur radio in the years before the First World War which proved pivotal to his life and career: on the outbreak of war in August 1914 he volunteered to work at a coastguard station intercepting German wireless communications, and by the end of that year was working for the British Admiralty in Naval Intelligence Room 40, which was later to become part of what is now known as GCHQ. Lambert remained in the Intelligence service for the rest of his career. He still held a senior role at the outbreak of the Second World War, and transferred to Bletchley Park where he worked in Hut 8 (alongside Alan Turing amongst many others). However by this stage his health was declining, and he died in December 1941 at the age of 58.
Shortly after the foundation of the BBC in 1922, Lambert contacted the Corporation offering to read his own short stories as radio broadcasts, and he began doing so in January 1924. These readings were given under the pseudonym A. J. Alan, and his real identity was kept a closely-guarded secret, although apparently his voice was once recognised by an old school friend. Lambert/Alan's stories were distinctive in tone, with a highly conversational, off-the-cuff style which belied the intense preparation which went into every episode. The broadcasts were hugely popular with contemporary audiences and made "A. J. Alan" into a household name. The stories themselves are typically a blend of humour and suspense, often with a twist. The majority of them were subsequently published in contemporary newspaper or periodicals, as well as published in book form ('Good Evening, Everyone!' in 1928 and 'A. J. Alan's Second Book' in 1933).
If you'd like to hear the voice of the man himself, a couple of his stories are available on the 'Stars of the Wireless' website, from gramophone recordings produced in the 1930s:
https://rfwilmut.net/wireless/alan.html
This recording © Bitesized Audio 2022.
