Roy Dotrice

Narrator

Roy Dotrice OBE was a legendary British actor and the Guinness World Record holder for the most characters voiced in an audiobook — 224 distinct voices in his narration of George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones. Born in Guernsey in 1923, he survived a prisoner-of-war camp during World War II before training as an actor and building one... of the most enduring careers in British theatre and entertainment. Dotrice was a founding member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and performed on stage for over six decades. He won a Tony Award for Best Actor for A Moon for the Misbegotten on Broadway and appeared in numerous television series and films, including Amadeus, The Cutting Edge, and Beauty and the Beast. His audiobook narration career was extraordinary. He narrated the first four books of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, creating hundreds of distinct character voices across thousands of pages. His narration became so closely associated with the series that many readers consider his voice inseparable from Martin's world. Dotrice's ability to create and maintain an enormous cast of distinct characters across multiple books — a feat of memory, vocal technique, and creative imagination — set a standard for fantasy audiobook narration that remains unmatched. Roy Dotrice passed away in 2017 at the age of 94, but his audiobook narrations endure as remarkable achievements. For listeners of epic fantasy, his recordings of A Song of Ice and Fire remain essential listening — a masterclass in what a single narrator can achieve. Read more Show less