The Westminster Alice: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Westminster Alice, credited to Saki (H. H. Munro), is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Westminster Alice, by Saki (1870 - 1916). Read by Ruth Golding. Published five years before John Kendrick Bangs had the same idea with Alice in Blunderland, Saki, in his 1902 series of satirical articles, takes an Alice in Wonderland view of British politics, which Alice finds even stranger than events in Wonderland. In all honesty, owing to its extremely topical nature this political satire hasn't worn well, which explains why it has virtually sunk without trace. To appreciate it at all, it's really rather necessary to understand the topical references. I am no historian, least of all a political historian, but I have researched it as well as I can, and made some notes in an attempt to put the events and characters into their political context for the listener. My notes may be found on the Internet Archive in audio form or in text form. I hope that this may still appeal to the political sceptic of today. With some basic understanding of the situation, I found the satire bitingly keen at points, and was left with the feeling that some aspects of British politics have changed little in more than a century, although current political satire sadly lacks Saki's wit. As the Red Queen says: "I don't know what business you have here, if you don't belong to the Cabinet; of course... there are so many of them, and they're mostly so unimportant that one can't be expected to remember all their faces." (Introduction by Ruth Golding)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Westminster Alice
• Author credits: Saki (H. H. Munro)
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 12
• Listed recording duration: 55:23

Catalogue topics

• political
• satire
• H. H. Munro
• Boer War
• South African War
• Balfour
• government
• Edwardian

Track guide

1. 00 Introduction — 1:26
2. 01 Alice in Downing Street — 6:53
3. 02 Alice in Pall Mall — 6:31
4. 03 Alice at Lambeth — 4:21
5. 04 Alice and the Liberal Party — 5:44
6. 05 Alice Anywhere BUT in Downing Street — 5:13
7. 06 Alice in Difficulties — 3:25
8. 07 Alice at St. Stephen's — 3:50
9. 08 Alice Lunches at Westminster — 2:56
10. 09 Alice in a Fog — 4:34
11. 10 Alice Has Tea at the Hotel Cecil — 5:21
12. 11 Alice Goes to Chesterfield, The Aged Man, Spades in Wonderland — 5:14

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.