-
Decline and Fall
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $14.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
“What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! How obscure and gross his prancing and chattering on his little stage of evolution! How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self-approval of his biological by-product! this half-formed, ill-conditioned body! this erratic, maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of the engine, and between them man, equally alien from the being of Nature and the doing of the machine, the vile becoming!”
Evelyn Waugh’s first novel, Decline and Fall, is the daring and hilarious tale of Paul Pennyfeather, a theology student expelled from Oxford and sent to teach at a private boys’ school in Wales. Previously a modest young man, Paul finds himself a bit out of place amongst the teachers of Llanabba, who are all misfits, fools, and derelicts themselves: Prendy (the anxious) and Captain Grimes (the drunk), just to name two. There are not only failed men and rowdy boys in this Welsh town to occupy his time, however; Margot Beste-Chetwynde, the mother of one of his students, quickly becomes the object of Paul’s affections. But Margot may not be all she appears to, and Paul’s world is turned upside down all over again.
With a title inspired both by Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, Waugh’s Decline and Fall is a brilliant farce and a biting satire of English morals and school life of the 1920s and, by extension, of the experience of generations of so many students and educators since.
Related to this topic
-
The Best Man's Ghostwriter
- By: Matthew Starr
- Narrated by: Glen Powell, Nicholas Braun, Ashley Park, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bad best man’s speech can ruin a wedding. Why do we plan every detail of a perfect day and then give the groom’s idiot best friend five minutes of total power? Enter Nate (Glen Powell), a speechwriter-for-hire who helps people write incredible best man speeches. To keep the best man from embarrassing himself (and the newlyweds), Nate uses his list of don’ts: Don’t mention the exes, don’t be rated R, and don’t bum everyone out. Nate’s system never fails. That is, until he meets Dan (Nicholas Braun).
-
-
SO GOOD
- By Csutty on 09-23-24
By: Matthew Starr
-
Born a Crime
- Stories from a South African Childhood
- By: Trevor Noah
- Narrated by: Trevor Noah
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this award-winning Audible Studios production, Trevor Noah tells his wild coming-of-age tale during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa. It’s a story that begins with his mother throwing him from a moving van to save him from a potentially fatal dispute with gangsters, then follows the budding comedian’s path to self-discovery through episodes both poignant and comical.
-
-
Great book and perfect narration
- By MarilynArms on 12-15-16
By: Trevor Noah
-
Slaughterhouse-Five
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: James Franco
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
-
-
Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
The Great Indoors
- By: Ginny Hogan
- Narrated by: Mae Whitman
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alice's journey begins as all good journeys do: hitting on the sales guy at REI. After a tumultuous breakup, a quick career transition, family upheaval, and a sobriety journey that didn't fix her life quite as much as she expected it to, Alice decides that the only way to solve all her problems is to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. But as she begins preparing for the months-long quest, she realizes the answers she's seeking might not be on top of a snow-covered mountain. Especially since she just learned there was snow in California.
-
-
Chuck full of laughs to lift anyone's spirits.
- By Laura Boogaert on 09-22-24
By: Ginny Hogan
-
I Can't Make This Up
- Life Lessons
- By: Neil Strauss - contributor, Kevin Hart
- Narrated by: Kevin Hart
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Superstar comedian and Hollywood box-office star Kevin Hart turns his immense talent to the written word by writing some words. Some of those words include: the, a, for, above, and even even. Put them together and you have the funniest, most heartfelt, and most inspirational memoir on survival, success, and the importance of believing in yourself since Old Yeller.
-
-
Best Audiobook I Ever Listened To
- By Sam Clear on 07-13-17
By: Neil Strauss - contributor, and others
-
American Psycho
- By: Bret Easton Ellis
- Narrated by: Pablo Schreiber
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
-
-
Fanntastic book but maybe not for everyone....
- By So Fain on 03-27-11
-
The Best Man's Ghostwriter
- By: Matthew Starr
- Narrated by: Glen Powell, Nicholas Braun, Ashley Park, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bad best man’s speech can ruin a wedding. Why do we plan every detail of a perfect day and then give the groom’s idiot best friend five minutes of total power? Enter Nate (Glen Powell), a speechwriter-for-hire who helps people write incredible best man speeches. To keep the best man from embarrassing himself (and the newlyweds), Nate uses his list of don’ts: Don’t mention the exes, don’t be rated R, and don’t bum everyone out. Nate’s system never fails. That is, until he meets Dan (Nicholas Braun).
-
-
SO GOOD
- By Csutty on 09-23-24
By: Matthew Starr
-
Born a Crime
- Stories from a South African Childhood
- By: Trevor Noah
- Narrated by: Trevor Noah
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this award-winning Audible Studios production, Trevor Noah tells his wild coming-of-age tale during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa. It’s a story that begins with his mother throwing him from a moving van to save him from a potentially fatal dispute with gangsters, then follows the budding comedian’s path to self-discovery through episodes both poignant and comical.
-
-
Great book and perfect narration
- By MarilynArms on 12-15-16
By: Trevor Noah
-
Slaughterhouse-Five
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: James Franco
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
-
-
Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
The Great Indoors
- By: Ginny Hogan
- Narrated by: Mae Whitman
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alice's journey begins as all good journeys do: hitting on the sales guy at REI. After a tumultuous breakup, a quick career transition, family upheaval, and a sobriety journey that didn't fix her life quite as much as she expected it to, Alice decides that the only way to solve all her problems is to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. But as she begins preparing for the months-long quest, she realizes the answers she's seeking might not be on top of a snow-covered mountain. Especially since she just learned there was snow in California.
-
-
Chuck full of laughs to lift anyone's spirits.
- By Laura Boogaert on 09-22-24
By: Ginny Hogan
-
I Can't Make This Up
- Life Lessons
- By: Neil Strauss - contributor, Kevin Hart
- Narrated by: Kevin Hart
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Superstar comedian and Hollywood box-office star Kevin Hart turns his immense talent to the written word by writing some words. Some of those words include: the, a, for, above, and even even. Put them together and you have the funniest, most heartfelt, and most inspirational memoir on survival, success, and the importance of believing in yourself since Old Yeller.
-
-
Best Audiobook I Ever Listened To
- By Sam Clear on 07-13-17
By: Neil Strauss - contributor, and others
-
American Psycho
- By: Bret Easton Ellis
- Narrated by: Pablo Schreiber
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
-
-
Fanntastic book but maybe not for everyone....
- By So Fain on 03-27-11
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
A Handful of Dust
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Andrew Sachs
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Evelyn Waugh's 1934 novel is a bitingly funny vision of aristocratic decadence in England between the wars. It tells the story of Tony Last, who, to the irritation of his wife, is inordinately obsessed with his Victorian Gothic country house and life. When Lady Brenda Last embarks on an affair with the worthless John Beaver out of boredom with her husband, she sets in motion a sequence of tragicomic disasters that reveal Waugh at his most scathing.
-
-
Slow Start then Subtle
- By Michael on 05-16-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Sword of Honor
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 24 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This trilogy about World War II, largely based on his own experiences as an army officer, is the crowning achievement of Evelyn Waugh's career. Its central character is Guy Crouchback, head of an ancient but decayed Catholic family, who at first discovers new purpose in the challenge to defend Christian values against Nazi barbarism, but then gradually finds the complexities and cruelties of war too much for him.
-
-
At least one chapter missing
- By Sviatoslav on 08-17-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Decline and Fall
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sent down from Oxford after a wild, drunken party, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly surprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at a boys' private school in Wales. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, rascals and fools, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze.
-
-
Black Humor, Satire, and the Absurd
- By Gypsi on 06-09-18
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Decline and Fall
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sent down from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly unsurprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, rascals, and fools, including Prendy and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze. As the farce unfolds and the young run riot, no one is safe, least of all Paul.
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
The Loved One
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 3 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday - and Dennis gets drawn into a bizarre love triangle with Aimée Thanatogenos, a naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr. Joyboy, a master of the embalmer's art.
-
-
Satire? Or just mean spirited?
- By 🔥 Phx17 🔥 on 02-08-23
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Scoop
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Cadell
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Scoop, surreptitiously dubbed "a newspaper adventure", Waugh flays Fleet Street and the social pastimes of its war correspondants as he tells how William Boot became the star of British super-journalism and how, leaving part of his shirt in the claws of the lovely Katchen, he returned from Ishmaelia to London as the "Daily's Beast's" more accoladed overseas reporter.
-
-
Well Written & Funny but Lacking
- By Michael on 07-19-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
A Handful of Dust
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Andrew Sachs
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Evelyn Waugh's 1934 novel is a bitingly funny vision of aristocratic decadence in England between the wars. It tells the story of Tony Last, who, to the irritation of his wife, is inordinately obsessed with his Victorian Gothic country house and life. When Lady Brenda Last embarks on an affair with the worthless John Beaver out of boredom with her husband, she sets in motion a sequence of tragicomic disasters that reveal Waugh at his most scathing.
-
-
Slow Start then Subtle
- By Michael on 05-16-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Sword of Honor
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 24 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This trilogy about World War II, largely based on his own experiences as an army officer, is the crowning achievement of Evelyn Waugh's career. Its central character is Guy Crouchback, head of an ancient but decayed Catholic family, who at first discovers new purpose in the challenge to defend Christian values against Nazi barbarism, but then gradually finds the complexities and cruelties of war too much for him.
-
-
At least one chapter missing
- By Sviatoslav on 08-17-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Decline and Fall
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sent down from Oxford after a wild, drunken party, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly surprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at a boys' private school in Wales. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, rascals and fools, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze.
-
-
Black Humor, Satire, and the Absurd
- By Gypsi on 06-09-18
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Decline and Fall
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sent down from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly unsurprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, rascals, and fools, including Prendy and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze. As the farce unfolds and the young run riot, no one is safe, least of all Paul.
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
The Loved One
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 3 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday - and Dennis gets drawn into a bizarre love triangle with Aimée Thanatogenos, a naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr. Joyboy, a master of the embalmer's art.
-
-
Satire? Or just mean spirited?
- By 🔥 Phx17 🔥 on 02-08-23
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Scoop
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Cadell
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Scoop, surreptitiously dubbed "a newspaper adventure", Waugh flays Fleet Street and the social pastimes of its war correspondants as he tells how William Boot became the star of British super-journalism and how, leaving part of his shirt in the claws of the lovely Katchen, he returned from Ishmaelia to London as the "Daily's Beast's" more accoladed overseas reporter.
-
-
Well Written & Funny but Lacking
- By Michael on 07-19-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Men at Arms
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Christian Rodska
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Guy Crouchback, determined to get into the war, takes a commission in the Royal Corps of Halberdiers. His spirits high, he sees all the trimmings but none of the action. And his first campaign, an abortive affair on the West African coastline, ends with an escapade that seriously blots his Halberdier copybook. Men at Arms is the first novel in Waugh's brilliant Sword of Honor trilogy recording the tumultuous wartime adventures of Guy Crouchback.
-
-
Supposedly Humorous
- By Kindle Customer on 11-13-18
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Decline and Fall
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Sandra Cullum
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paul Pennyfeather is a quiet and unassuming student at Scone College, Oxford. One evening, on his return to his rooms, he is set upon by a member of the notorious Bollinger Club resulting in the loss of his trousers. He is expelled from the college for indecent behavior.
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gilbert Pinfold is a reclusive Catholic novelist suffering from acute inertia. In an attempt to keep insomnia at bay he has been imbibing an unappetizing cocktail of bromide, chloral, and creme de menthe. He books a passage on the SS Caliban, and as it cruises towards Ceylon, he slips into madness. Almost as soon as the gangplank lifts, Pinfold hears sounds coming out of the ceiling of his cabin: wild jazz bands, barking dogs, and loud revival meetings. He is convinced that an erratic public-address system is letting him hear everything that goes on aboard ship....until instead of just sounds, he hears voices.
-
-
A wonderful depiction of the nastiness of hallucinations
- By Korbin Gardner on 06-25-22
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Brideshead Revisited: Booktrack Edition
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece - an audiobook that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire. Through the story of Charles Ryder's entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Evelyn Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities.
-
-
Annoying music damages a great novel
- By Toro200 on 10-08-21
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Brideshead Revisited
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Evelyn Waugh's most celebrated work is a memory drama about the intense entanglement of the narrator, Charles Ryder, with a great Anglo-Catholic family. Written during World War II, the story mourns the passing of the aristocratic world Waugh knew in his youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities; in so doing it also provides a profound study of the conflict between the demands of religion and the desires of the flesh.
-
-
Extraordinary
- By Vieux Carré Blonde on 12-12-12
By: Evelyn Waugh
-
Black Mischief
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Black Mischief, Waugh's third novel, helped to establish his reputation as a master satirist. Set on the fictional African island of Azania, the novel chronicles the efforts of Emperor Seth, assisted by the Englishman Basil Seal, to modernize his kingdom. Profound hilarity ensues from the issuance of homemade currency, the staging of a "Birth Control Gala", the rightful ruler's demise at his own rather long and tiring coronation ceremonies, and a good deal more mischief.
-
-
Raucous, Not Racist
- By John on 10-01-16
By: Evelyn Waugh