Simon Vance

Simon Vance (born December 16, 1955) is an English audiobook narrator and actor who performs contemporary literary works as well as classics, children's books, and nonfiction. He has won 16 Audie Awards since 2002. Specializing in single-voice narration, he was named the American Library Association's Booklist Magazine Voice of Choice in 2008, and has earned AudioFile Magazines Earphones Award for more than 60 performances since 1998. He has also narrated audiobooks under the names of Richard Matthews and Robert Whitfield. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Early career

Simon Vance was born in Brighton, England, on December 16, 1955, to John Hazlett Vance and Rosemary Elizabeth Catherine Vance (née Higgs). In a 2008 interview with AudioFile Magazine, In 1975, he performed his first radio broadcast, over BBC Radio Brighton. He joined BBC Radio 4 in 1983 where he remained until 1992. During this same decade-long period, he also recorded audiobooks for the UK's Royal National Institute of Blind People. The American Library Association's review journal, Booklist Magazine has given him a number of starred reviews, including those for his narrations of Mick Wall's When Giants Walked the Earth: A biography of Led Zeppelin (Blackstone, 2010) and Lyndsay Faye's The Whole Art of Detection: The lost mysteries of Sherlock Holmes (HighBridge, 2017). In 2008, librarian and readers' advisory developer Joyce Saricks wrote in Booklist that Vance brings several strengths to his narration work: his ability to capture the author's tone, his capacity to inhabit characters in his storytelling, and his facility with accents and knowledge of languages. The visit provided the opportunity for Vance to receive correct pronunciations Moore had bestowed on some characters in the novel, as well as to accompany the author around his neighborhood, with specific places in it that Moore had included within his fiction.

Vance's catalog of performances numbers about 1000 titles. He has been nominated for more than forty Audie Awards, and has won for the following: Dracula 2012 Distinguished achievement in production (shared)Best multi-voiced performance (shared) Audible, Inc. Bring Up the Bodies 2012 Best narration of literary fiction Macmillan Audio The Tao of Pooh 2012 Best narration of a personal development work Tantor Media The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild 2013 Best narration of biography/memoir Tantor Media The Complete Sherlock Holmes: The Heirloom Edition 2013 Best narration of a classic Brilliance Audio Euphoria: A Novel 2014 Best narration of literary fiction (shared) Blackstone Audio, Inc. Jerusalem 2016 Best male narrator Recorded Books The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye 2017 Best narration of a mystery Random House Audio

He has earned Earphone Award notices among reviews there, including one for his performance of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows and Charles Nicholl's literary biography The Lodger Shakespeare (Tantor Audio).

Select acting credits Onscreen + Year Title Role Notes 1997-2001 Nash Bridges Concierge/Selwyn Webb/English Henchman/Neville Peck 4 episodes 2006 The Evidence Andrew Lasky Episode: "Wine and Die" 2013 Criminal Minds Gil Patterson Episode: "Bully" 2015 Next Connext Ad Announcer Web-series, 5 episodes 2015 Masters of Sex Mr. Mosher Episode: "Party of Four"

Voiceover + Year Title Role Notes 2020-2022 The Sandman Lucien Audio drama 2025–present DC High Volume: Batman Alfred Pennyworth Scripted podcast