Books at Bedtime By Calming Anxiety - The Devoted Friend - By Oscar Wilde

The Devoted Friend by Oscar Wilde — A Calming Bedtime Story for Sleep & Insomnia | Books at Bedtime

A gentle bedtime story to help you drift off tonight: Oscar Wilde's sharply funny fable The Devoted Friend, read slowly and unhurried for sleep and insomnia relief. This continues the Books at Bedtime strand — also known as Coffee Break for the Soul — from the Calming Anxiety podcast, a series of classic story readings designed as a calming audiobook for restless nights.

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Narrated softly by Martin Hewlett, clinical hypnotherapist and former paramedic, this reading follows kind-hearted little Hans and the rich miller who calls himself Hans's most devoted friend while quietly taking advantage of his generosity. Framed as a story-within-a-story, told by a linnet to a rather pompous water rat beside a pond, it's classic Wilde — witty, satirical, and gently moralising, ideal as an unhurried listen for falling asleep or quieting an anxious mind before bed.

First published in 1888 in the collection The Happy Prince and Other Tales, Oscar Wilde's The Devoted Friend is in the public domain worldwide (Wilde died in 1900); this reading is Calming Anxiety's own narration of the classic public-domain text.

This episode continues the Books at Bedtime strand, alongside The Selfish Giant, The Happy Prince, The Sphinx Without a Secret, The Nightingale and the Rose, and The Model Millionaire (also by Oscar Wilde), and classic short fiction from Katherine Mansfield, Kate Chopin, and Arthur Conan Doyle — currently working through The Hound of the Baskervilles — with new instalments added regularly to the main Calming Anxiety feed.

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