Hello, my name is Peter Southey.

I've been an English teacher all my working life. I've loved every aspect of it, and especially teaching prescribed literature. When I read aloud to my classes, whether it was a poem or passages from Macbeth or a novel, my aim was always to make the sense so utterly clear that no explanation was necessary.

I'll try to illustrate this in the first sample that follows.

Over the past twenty years, I've narrated about thirty titles for Tape Aids for the Blind, both non-fiction and fiction. The fiction has been set in England, or the United States, or elsewhere, and I like to think I have a good ear for a variety of English accents, but I'd be most interested to narrate South African fiction.

I have a background in phonetics. I pronounce African language names and words correctly. I am fluent in Afrikaans, and I am familiar with the different accents of South Africans speaking English as their first or second language.

I would try to give each of your characters the accent and personality that you have in mind.