James McAvoy’s First Audiobook Is Up Against Simon Russell Beale’s Smiley. Here’s Every Voice on the Speakies Performance Shortlists
The British Audio Awards, better known as the Speakies, hand out their 2026 prizes at the Southbank Centre in London on Monday 23 November. Four of the awards go to a single performer or cast rather than a book, and between them they name more than 50 actors and narrators. James McAvoy’s first audiobook is in there, so is Simon Russell Beale’s George Smiley, and so are first-time narrators. Here’s every voice in the running.
VoiceEditSuiteNewYour breath. Your pace. Your edit.Learns from numbers, never your audio. Never used to train AI.See how it worksThe Speakies are run by The Bookseller and The Stage, and this is only their second year. They’ve grown fast: the 2026 awards drew 423 submissions, up from 300 the year before. The ceremony is at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, with the actor and comedian Sally Phillips back as host.
The headline name on the Narrator list is James McAvoy, nominated for Recall by JD Kirk, an Audible Original. The Speakies call it his “first foray into audiobook narration”. In an interview for Audible UK, he says the tricky part wasn’t the accents. It was finding a different voice for each of the many characters who all come from the same place.
Hear the voice: James McAvoy on voicing a whole town of characters in Recall. Video: Audible UK, on YouTube
There are four performance prizes. Best Performance covers a single role, solo or inside a cast. Narrator is for one person reading an unadapted audiobook, whether that’s an actor or an author reading their own work. Ensemble is for a whole cast, and New Voice is for performers who are new to audio drama or audiobooks.
Six narrators, one award
This is the Narrator shortlist as the Speakies publish it, with the book and its author.
- Adjoa Andoh, Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi
- Joe Eyre, Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
- Hanako Footman, The Rainshadow Orphans by Naomi Ishiguro
- Rory Kinnear, Jesus Christ Kinski by Benjamin Myers
- James McAvoy, Recall by JD Kirk
- Simon Russell Beale, the George Smiley novels by John le Carré
The notes behind each name are worth reading if you narrate for a living. Kinnear performed Jesus Christ Kinski “as a single dramatic monologue” and finished the recording in one day. Footman’s book has five distinct character viewpoints. Eyre, who the Speakies say has more than 45 Audible audiobooks behind him, built a voice for every character in Robin Hobb’s fantasy, from “the gruff stable master, Burrich” to a princess of the Mountain Kingdom.
The authors are fans, too. Saara El-Arifi says of Andoh, best known to many as Lady Danbury in Bridgerton: “Adjoa’s unique ability to draw a listener in is so compelling that there was no question she was our dream pick for the role.” Russell Beale first played Smiley in BBC Radio 4 dramatisations in 2009 and has now recorded six unabridged Smiley audiobooks.
Best Performance: one role, done brilliantly
- Mark Gatiss, High Cockalorum by Jeremy Dyson
- Erin Doherty, Becoming Meg Dashwood by Rebecca Humphries
- Mohamed Elsandel, The Courier by Eno Mfon and Darragh Mortell
- Clare Perkins, Gone with the Wind, after Margaret Mitchell
- Steve Toussaint, Double Exposure by Sol B River
- Jason Watkins, Don Quixote, after Miguel de Cervantes
Elsandel plays Mo, a Sudanese delivery rider in Cardiff who finds a dead body on a drop off, a performance the Telegraph called “a standout performance”. Gatiss plays two men in High Cockalorum, one of them the film star James Mason. Toussaint, a British actor, works in an American accent as Ernest Withers, the civil rights photographer who was also working for the FBI. Perkins narrates a version of Gone with the Wind that centres the story’s enslaved characters.
Two names show up twice across the performance lists. Elsandel and Watkins are both in Best Performance and again with their casts in Ensemble. And Erin Doherty has a second shot elsewhere: she narrates Bachelorettes with Georgie Sadler, on the Romance audiobook shortlist.
Sally Phillips hosting the Speakies in 2025. She's back on the 23rd. Image: David Monteith-Hodge for The Bookseller
Every actor in the Ensemble category
Audio drama lives on its cast, so here is every actor the Speakies name for each production.
- 400 Strangers: Andrea Lowe, Dorothy Atkinson, Nina Wadia, Aisling Loftus, Mohamed Elsandel, Rohan Singh and Jacob Partali
- Don Quixote: Jason Watkins, Mackenzie Crook, Khalid Laith, Sofia Oxenham, John Sackville, Will Howard, Lucy Speed, Jason Forbes and Tyler Pringle
- Faith Healer: Aidan Gillen, Michelle Fairley and Daniel Mays
- Hope Bourne: Eileen Atkins and Alex Jennings
- Shirley’s Party: Rachel Davies, Philip Jackson, Alan Williams, Ralph Ineson, Christine Bottomley, Eden Ottman and Faye Weerasinghe
- Transcription: Phoebe Pryce, Cecilia Appiah, Hasan Dixon, Eiry Thomas, Fenella Woolgar, Rufus Wright and Toby Jones
A couple of casting details stand out. The actors in 400 Strangers, a drama about 400 asylum-seeking men housed in two East Midlands hotels, were cast from the region itself. Transcription, Kate Atkinson’s spy thriller, was recorded in the BBC’s Studio 60a with an 11-strong cast, built, the production team says, to “understand the period idiom without overworking it.”
On stage at the 2025 Speakies. Image: David Monteith-Hodge for The Bookseller
New Voice: the first-timers
- The young cast of the Golden Trio, Audible’s Harry Potter Full-Cast Editions
- Eoin Lynch, The Moon Seeker by Dee Barragry, and The Wisdom of Farmers
- Imogen Mackie Walker, Send Flowers by Emily Buchanan
- Izuka Hoyle, Love at First Latte by Sarah Saville
- Lorne MacFadyen, John of John by Douglas Stuart
- Sachin K. Sharma, Who Will Remain by Kasim Ali
The authors’ lines here are lovely. Douglas Stuart on casting his Booker-longlisted novel: “I had one idea, and that one idea was Lorne.” Emily Buchanan on Mackie Walker: “Imogen has brought such dimension to Send Flowers. It’s like experiencing the story for the first time.” Sharma’s debut had him voicing a cast of South Asian Birmingham characters, though he isn’t from the city himself, and listeners praised the accents.
The audience at the 2025 Speakies. Image: David Monteith-Hodge for The Bookseller
What working narrators can take from the list
First, you don’t need anyone’s permission to enter next year. The Speakies’ own rules say: “Performers, including actors, narrators and authors, may submit themselves”. Publishers, agents and producers can enter you too, but only with your permission.
Second, look at what got praised. It isn’t fame. It’s a voice for every character (Eyre, Mackie Walker), accents done with care (Sharma, the 400 Strangers cast) and restraint: the Speakies pass on listeners’ praise for how Hoyle “avoided vocal clichés” in Love at First Latte, using subtle shifts rather than big inflections. Third, the genre lists are full of working narrators as well as stars. On the science fiction and fantasy shortlist alone, Imogen Church is named twice, alongside Kristin Atherton, Mark Elstob, Rebecca Calder and others.
Before the big night
If you can’t wait until the 23rd, the Speakies have a podcast. Chapters, hosted by the broadcaster Hannah MacInnes, records each episode in an independent bookshop, one guest a week, with the last episode out on ceremony day. MacInnes calls it “a dream of a podcast to be part of”, according to PodcastingToday. Richard Armitage and Juliet Stevenson are both on the run, each shortlisted for a narration.
Voice Over Herald will report every winner in the performance categories once they’re named. Until then, congratulations to every actor and narrator on these lists. Getting on one at all, out of 423 entries, is a very good year.
Sources: The Bookseller, British Audio Awards shortlists for Best Performance, Best Performance: Narrator, Best Performance: Ensemble and Best Performance: New Voice (2026); PodcastingToday, “Chapters podcast returns with four Speakies-shortlisted guests” (2 November 2026); Locus, “2026 British Audio Awards Shortlists”; BBC Radio 4 cast credits for Gone with the Wind; Audible UK on YouTube. Photos: David Monteith-Hodge for The Bookseller, from the 2025 Speakies.
Lee este artículo en español: El primer audiolibro de James McAvoy compite con el Smiley de Simon Russell Beale. Estas son todas las voces nominadas a interpretación en los Speakies
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