It's another day, another birthday here at Silksoundbooks ! It is our great pleasure to wish a big Happy Birthday to our wonderful audio book star June Whitfield who was born in Streatham, London on the 11th November 1925.

June's amazing career started when she was very young - her first stage appearance was at the age of three after her mother enrolled her at a dance school. She was later to attend The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and graduated in 1944.

The radio was to be June's first big break - she was given the lead role in the radio comedy Take It From Here and television followed, including appearances with Tony Hancock throughout his television career. In 1966, June played her first television sitcom role, in Beggar My Neighbour and her reputation as a great comedy actress was sealed. She starred in several of the Carry On movies.

The TV sitcom Terry and June, in which she starred with Terry Scott as a suburban middle-class married couple ran for an amazing 65 episodes until 1987. More recently, who could forget her role as Jennifer Saunders' mother in the hugely successful comedy series Absolutely Fabulous
June was appointed an OBE in 1985 and a CBE in 1998 and received the British Comedy Awards Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994.

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, read as an unabridged audiobook by June and her daughter Suzy Aitchison along with Ioen Meredith and Hywel Simons, is a wonderful tale. It is written in the form of a series of letters that the five members of Squire Bramble’s household send as they journey around Britain. Much of the humour comes from the differing descriptions given by the five characters of the same events and the wonderful range of accents that June and company bring to Tobias Smollett's rambling tale.

Happy Birthday June - from all of us here at Silksoundbooks.

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