Decline and Fall cover art

Decline and Fall

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
1 credit a month to buy any audiobook in our entire collection.
Access to thousands of additional audiobooks and Originals from the Plus Catalogue.
Member-only deals & discounts.
Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Decline and Fall

By: Evelyn Waugh
Narrated by: Michael Maloney
Try Premium Plus free

Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $21.99

Buy Now for $21.99

About this listen

Expelled 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, 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.

As the farce unfolds and the young run riot, no one is safe, least of all Paul. Taking its title from Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Evelyn Waugh's first, funniest novel immediately caught the ear of the public with his account of an ingénu abroad in the decadent confusion of 1920s high society.

©1928 Evelyn Waugh (P)2015 Hachette Audio Classics Literature & Fiction Satire Comedy
All stars
Most relevant  
My first Evelyn Waugh book but probably not my last. This edition was very entertaining and a humourous story with an amazing glimpse of the period.

Great story read with entertaining skill

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
not only laugh out loud but a very perceptive satire of the English class system and how the privileged look after each other .
the individual characters are remarkably well narrated . probably the best I've heard on Audible

a wonderfully entertaining story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very enjoyable and funny. The voices are brilliantly done. Glimpses into the meaning of life from unexpected characters.After Brideshead Revisited, read by Jeremy Irons, you'd want to read everything by Waugh. I do.

Michael Maloney, voice artist

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Hilarious piece of satire on class and education. Loved it. Michael Maloney brings each of the characters alive spectacularly.

Wonderful reading by Michael Maloney

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very, very funny. Fabulously narrated. Every single character is unique, flawed, fully formed and quite irresistible. A cracking tale very much of its time.

Utterly marvellous

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.


Was this recorded quite a while ago? I mean, decades ago? The audio/narration quality would seem to suggest as much.
He sort of slurs/stumbles his way through at a very rapid pace, and often makes outright mistakes, which I assume if this was a proper audiobook recording he would have gone back to correct. All his voices sound pretty much the same, and there are some odd choices in how he choose to do many characters. Overall, it just didn't sound very professional, or seem like Maloney really 'got' the book. In fact, I would guess he was probably bored by it. Sloppy. Sloppy is the word I'm looking for.

Curious

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.