The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories

Sean Barrett’s reading goes beyond narration into performance in The Man Who Would Be King, a novella in Conradian vein. He begins gently enough as the Indian civil servant who recounts his first meeting with Peachey Carnehan and Daniel Dravot, “gentlemen at large”, who are planning to carve out a kingdom for themselves in a remote corner of Afghanistan. Barrett then creates the colourful personalities of the conniving Peachey and the bombastic, red-bearded Daniel before they disappear up country. Four years later Peachey reappears, a “rag-wrapped, whining cripple”, and tells the story of their meteoric rise and even faster fall. Kipling’s storytelling and Barrett’s reading is so immediate that you feel he’s actually in the fanatically idolatrous mountain kingdom, living the perils of the protagonists. Other macabre stories in the collection include The Phantom Rickshaw,The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes and The Mark of the Beast.

Christina Hardyment, The Times