Read by Ian Holm, Richard Mitchley & David Shaw-Parker (Unabridged: 5hrs 39mins)

Featuring stories by MR James, Rudyard Kipling, DH Lawrence, Charles Dickens & others.

The top 10 short stories of all time written by  British male authors.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart.  A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme.  Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made.  If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

Here, in this volume are distilled the true merits of men and their words.  In literary terms the form takes many ways but crisply puts together and drives forward with narratives that reveal the width and depth of talents that justly remain household names to this day.

In this compilation -