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David Tennant to narrate Pratchett’s ‘The Carpet People’ for 50th anniversary

David Tennant, of Doctor Who and Good Omens fame, has narrated an audio book version of Terry Pratchett’s The Carpet People for its 50th anniversary.

“Terry would have loved knowing that David was going to do it,” said Pratchett’s former assistant and now manager of the Pratchett estate, Rob Wilkins.

“David was a Doctor Who that really mattered in the Pratchett household, so he would have been so thrilled.”

The Carpet People illustration

Terry Pratchett created The Carpet People as a teenager and still studying at school. In an old interview his friend recalls how he was “absolutely fascinated by a small, flat world” that he imagined, and Terry had been “writing early versions of The Carpet People in short stories when he was at school”.

“In the beginning … there was nothing but endless flatness. Then came the Carpet, which covered the flatness. It was young in those days,” he wrote. “Then came the dust, which fell upon the Carpet, drifting among the hairs, taking root in the deep shadows … From the dust the Carpet wove us all. First came the little crawling creatures that make their dwellings in burrows and high in the hairs. Then came the soraths, and the weft borers, tromps, goats, gromepipers and the snargs.”

Pratchett managed to find a job at Bucks Free Press where he wrote short stories for children and ended up leaving school halfway through his A levels. After mentioning his manuscript of The Carpet People to a local publisher during an interview, he soon gained an agent and got his first book published.

“This was written by a 17-year-old, and seemed to me to be showing great promise of a brilliant, if not yet genius, mind – a kid at 17 who was writing so well must logically get better as he improved with experience,” said his agent. “His imagination was second to none.”

The book is now 50 years old and will be celebrated with a special edition as well as the audio book narrated by Pratchett’s favourite Doctor, David Tennant, in his natural, and rather lovely, Scottish accent.

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