Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench review – a class act
Ripe language and impish humour abound as Barbara Flynn reads the actor’s entertaining recollections of seven decades on stage – and Dench herself recites excerpts from the Bard
The Fraud by Zadie Smith audiobook review – exuberant and funny
Narrated by the author, this story of a Victorian author and his housekeeper cousin, who is obsessed by the Tichborne claimant, explores the lies people tell themselves
Thunderclap by Laura Cumming audiobook review – the golden age of Dutch art
The Observer’s art critic combines the stories of the painter Carel Fabritius with that of her artist father, in a memoir of art and life cut suddenly short
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin audiobook review – from the civil rights frontline
Law & Order’s Jesse L Martin narrates two powerful essays examining the Black experience in the US, the first in a series marking the author’s centenary year
Tremor by Teju Cole audiobook review – colonialism’s long shadow
Atta Otigba and Yetide Badaki narrate a sprawling, multifaceted exploration of the entrenched hierarchies within the worlds of art, literature, history and pop culture