Sunday, December 4, 2011

Jonathan Cecil

I just found out that Jonathan Cecil, actor and narrator of more than forty PG Wodehouse audio books, died in September.

Cecil was a fantastic narrator, probably my favorite ever. A lot of Wodehouse's humour, particular in the Jeeves books, comes from his unnecessarily complicated sentences. It takes a lot of skill to articulate these sentences so that the humour comes out and Cecil was brilliant at it. He was also able to do voices for idiotic characters without making any of them annoying, which is really rare for a narrator.

I first listened to a Jeeves book narrated by Jonathan Cecil in Grade Six, and I'm sure it was partly due to his brilliant narration that I became a Wodehouse fan. Cecil's voice is synonymous with the Jeeves and Bertie books for me. When I read them I will always hear his voice.