Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) Audiobook

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), read as an unabridged audio book by star performer Nickolas Grace,  was intended to be a serious travel guide. It failed dismally in this respect, but succeeded in becoming an hilarious account of a boating holiday on the Thames, between Kingston and Oxford.

The three men were based on the author and two of his friends. The holiday was a typical boating holiday of its time carried out on what was known as a Thames Camping Skiff. The dog, Montmorency, however, was entirely fictional, but, as Jerome remarked, *had much of me in it.*

The book was denounced as “vulgar” by the literary establishment, but it was hugely popular amongst what were known as the clerking classes who yearned to be “free from that fretful haste, that vehement striving that is every day becoming more and more the bane of nineteenth century life”. It has coined one of the great quotes about the pressures of the modern working life – “I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”