Arogundade

The creativity of author, designer, broadcaster Ben Arogundade

AUDIOBOOK STORIES

On The Origin Of Species, by Charles Darwin. Narrated by Ben Arogundade

MY FIRST EVER AUDIOBOOK recording was to voice Charles Darwin’s controversial 1859 text, ‘On The Origin of Species’, as part of publisher Penguin Classics audio series, alongside some of the UK’s best-known actors and writers, including Andrew Scott, David Harewood, Emilia Fox and Jeanette Winterson. The assignment was challenging — the 428-page tome took 40 hours to record, is written in nineteenth-century English and is full of specialised words such as ‘ichneumonidae’ (a variety of wasp). To this day, it remains the toughest audiobook recording I have ever done.

Many regard Darwin’s visionary theories as opposite to the creationist’s view that God created all life on Earth, but within the text Darwin actually references ‘the Creator’ several times, seemingly comfortable with the idea that God was the catalyst for his theories of natural selection and sexual selection. Darwin was also a complex figure whom, despite his forward-thinking approach to life, was a man of his era — in his book he refers to non-whites as ‘savages’. What would he say now that, 160 years after publication, one of these so-called savages was reading his work for digital release?

Ben Arogundade is represented by Sue Terry Voices.