‘Never speak ill of Society. Society is perfectly capable of doing that for itself...’

View the world of Edwardian society through the jaundiced eye of Clovis Sangrail, Saki's deliciously louche anti-hero.

Richard Crowest brings these darkly witty stories to life in a series of free, professionally produced readings, available exclusively from Corvidae.

The series began in July 2007, and new stories are added regularly. You can download or listen to individual stories using the links below, or subscribe to the podcast feed.

"I usually listen to speaking books as I drop off to sleep in bed... I've had to stop that habit with the Clovis, though. I don't go to sleep because I keep startling myself awake by guffawing into the pillows. Top stuff!"  Alex Rieneck

1. Esmé – Clovis lends a grudging ear as the Baroness relates a hunting story with a difference.  
2. The Match-Maker – Clovis finds ultimate spiritual fulfilment in the unselfishness of an oyster, and announces his plans for his Mother's third marriage.  
3. Tobermory - If you can talk to the animals - and they can talk to you - it's time to reach for the strychnine.  
4. Mrs Packletide's Tiger – Envy, envy, burning bright...  
5. The Stampeding of Lady Bastable - Clovis finds a revolutionary way of avoiding an unpleasant stay at the Bastables' country seat.  
6. The Background - Beauty may be only skin deep, but what about art?  
7. Hermann the Irascible - A Story of the Great Weep - An alternative history of the Suffragette movement, where the cat-and-mouse act is replaced by the cat-and-cream act...  
8. The Unrest-Cure* - When Clovis overhears a railway passenger lamenting his humdrum life, he wates no time in devising a remedial program - or should that be pogrom?  
9. The Jesting of Arlington Stringham - The quest for domestic harmony is no joking matter...  
   
10. Sredni Vashtar - Saki's darkest tale, a stark warning to all domineering guardians not to go ferreting around where they're not wanted...  
11. Adrian - A Chapter in Acclimatization - ‘One can discourage too much history in one's family, but one cannot always prevent geography.’  
12. The Chaplet - If music be the food of hatred...  
13. The Quest - Clovis braves hysterical parents and Christian Scientists in his search for hollandaise.  
14. Wratislav - Baa baa black sheep - have you any conscience?  
15. The Easter Egg - A seemingly innocent story with a bleak and bitter twist in the tail - one with startling pre-echoes of an event that would lead ultimately to Saki's own death, along with millions upon millions of others. Perhaps its real tragedy, though, lies in the way it highlights how little has changed in the last century.  
16. Filboid Studge - The Story of a Mouse that Helped - Credit Crunch for breakfast, anyone?  
17. The Music on the Hill - Beware of horned beasts in autumn time.  

* A note about The Unrest-Cure

Some have suggested that the subject matter of The Unrest Cure indicates that Munro was anti-Semitic. I would strongly argue exactly the opposite. The whole point of the story is that Clovis's fictional pogrom is an affront to the moral values of any reasonable human being. It is Huddle's horrified reaction to "Prince Stanislaus"'s news that should guide our view of what Munro saw as the accepted order of the world. The fact that Huddle asks "Do you mean to tell me there's a general rising against them?" sadly shows that there was an undercurrent of anti-Semitism in British society at the time, but the plot of The Unrest Cure depends entirely on Huddle - and the reader - finding such an idea utterly reprehensible. It is a hideous irony that the twentieth century was later to be blotted in a way far more horrific than even Clovis could have imagined, but the gruesome idea at the heart of this tale does not mean that Munro, or those who continue to enjoy his stories, share any of the views of Clovis's monstrous imaginary bishop.