Weren’t there any English actors available?

I’m a fan of Neville’s novels and was looking forward to these short stories. I assume they are well written tales, but I’ll never know because the performance on this audiobook is SO BAD that I couldn’t finish any of them.

Rather than employ an English actor, they chose an American who tries and fails – miserably – to do a variety of regional accents. They sound somewhere between Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins and a bad Ringo Starr impression. Simply awful.