Quick Take
- Narration: Martin Clunes narrating his own book is exactly as warm and self-aware as you would hope, the Doc Martin cadence translating naturally into this material.
- Themes: Human-animal bonds across history, service and assistance animals, animals as witnesses to human experience
- Mood: Warm, curious, and occasionally humbling
- Verdict: A generous, well-researched audiobook best heard in Clunes’s own voice, which gives the animal histories an intimacy a third-party narrator could not deliver.
I listened to most of Meetings With Remarkable Animals during a long weekend at home, specifically the kind of weekend where you want something that is engaging without being demanding. Martin Clunes narrating his own book is a slightly different proposition than most celebrity-authored audiobooks. He is genuinely a committed writer about animals, not a famous person who lent their name to someone else’s research, and the difference comes through clearly in how he handles the material.
The book has a specific origin story that gives it a useful anchor. Clunes adopted a retired guide dog named Laura after hearing her owner Jaina speak on the radio about what happens to guide dogs when they retire. That adoption led him into the world of assistance animals, and that curiosity in turn expanded into a broader historical investigation: what have animals done for humans across the centuries, in ways we have largely forgotten or taken for granted? The scope of the answer is wider than you might expect.
Our Take on Meetings With Remarkable Animals
The historical range here is one of the book’s genuine strengths. Clunes moves from the horses of the Light Brigade to a Gambian Pouched Rat named Courage that was trained to detect landmines, from carrier pigeons bearing life-saving messages in wartime to a wild dolphin named Jock who befriended a traumatized young woman in Australia. These are not random selections. They share a common thread, animals whose intelligence and loyalty became legible to humans in moments of extremity, war, disaster, illness, loneliness, and the ordinary extremity of needing guidance to cross a street.
Reviewer Gigi, writing from the UK, noted that the chapters on dogs and horses were particular standouts and expressed hope for more books to come. The dogs and horses chapters occupy a significant portion of the book for good reason: these are the animals whose relationship with humans is oldest and most varied, and Clunes brings personal experience to them in ways that keep the history from feeling academic. His own life with animals, accumulated across decades on a farm and through various encounters worldwide, surfaces in ways that ground the broader narrative.
Why Listen to Meetings With Remarkable Animals
Clunes’s narration is the primary reason to choose the audiobook over the print edition. His voice carries exactly the kind of warmth and slightly underplayed emotion that this material benefits from. He does not overwork the affecting passages. When the story of Jock the dolphin arrives, or when he describes Laura’s adjustment to retirement on his farm, the restraint in his delivery is what makes the moments land. Reviewer M. E. Davis was ready for more immediately on finishing it and was specifically glad Clunes read it himself.
At just over eight hours, the runtime is comfortable for the breadth of material covered. This is not a brief, anecdotal collection. Each animal story receives enough context to be genuinely informative about the historical circumstances surrounding it, and Clunes has researched carefully rather than relying on familiar or sentimental anecdotes.
What to Watch For in Meetings With Remarkable Animals
The book sits at an interesting generic crossroads between popular history, nature writing, and memoir, and listeners who come expecting any single one of those exclusively may find the blend slightly unexpected. It is not a comprehensive history of human-animal relations. It is curated around remarkable individual animals and the specific relationships they formed with humans, which means some categories of animal and some historical periods receive less attention than others.
The tone is consistently warm and celebratory, which is the right register for this material but does mean the book does not engage seriously with the more troubling aspects of human-animal relationships. Factory farming, habitat destruction, and the ways humans have exploited animals are not subjects Clunes takes up here. That is a tonal choice rather than an oversight, but readers who want a more critical perspective on the human-animal relationship will need to supplement.
Who Should Listen to Meetings With Remarkable Animals
This audiobook is for anyone who loves animals and wants to feel better about the relationship between humans and the other creatures we share the planet with. It is especially good for listeners who grew up watching Doc Martin and have an existing affection for Clunes that makes his voice instantly companionable. It is also an excellent choice for listeners who want to know the stories behind assistance and service animals, mine-detection animals, and wartime animals that rarely appear in popular histories.
It is not for listeners looking for a critical or ecological perspective on human-animal relationships, or for those seeking rigorous academic history. This is a book written from genuine love and intended to be received in the same spirit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need to know who Martin Clunes is to enjoy this audiobook?
No, though it helps. Clunes is best known internationally as the lead in the British series Doc Martin, and listeners familiar with his onscreen warmth and dry humor will feel immediately at home with his narration. The book works on its own terms for listeners who come to it fresh.
What kinds of animals are covered in Meetings With Remarkable Animals?
The book covers guide and assistance dogs, horses including those at the Battle of the Light Brigade, carrier pigeons, a mine-detecting Gambian Pouched Rat named Courage, a wild dolphin named Jock, and various other animals whose lives intersected with human history in significant ways. Dogs and horses receive the most substantial treatment.
What is the story behind the guide dog Laura that opens the book?
Clunes heard guide dog owner Jaina speak on the radio about the future of her retired guide dog Laura. He contacted her and adopted Laura when she retired. That adoption prompted his broader investigation into the history of assistance animals and how animals have supported humans across centuries.
Is this book primarily memoir or popular history?
It blends both. Personal anecdotes from Clunes’s own life with animals are woven through historical accounts of remarkable animals from various periods and contexts. The tone is consistently warm and the framing is personal throughout, but the historical research is genuine rather than incidental.
