The Three of Shoes by Frank Cottrell-Boyce

Frank Cottrell-Boyce reimagines the story of the Elves and the Shoemaker in a world of AI agents. Read by the author.

Linzi runs a shoe repair shop which suddenly gets a reputation for making the finest shoes. Orders for calf skin and dainite keep appearing in the evening, and beautifully crafted shoes materialise in the morning. How can this be happening?

It’s all the fault of that bloke with a look of Bill Nighy, spreading the word. Or is it? Either way, Linzi is exhausted and her partner Paddy is running out of theories. But it seems that everything happens in threes.

Frank has won many awards for his work as a children’s novelist, including the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian’s Fiction Prize. He is a highly successful screenwriter, writer of the 2012 Olympics Ceremony with Danny Boyle and the current Children’s Laureate.

This series of modern fairy tales reimagined by leading writers has been specially commissioned to celebrate a major new exhibition at The British Library dedicated to fairy tales, as well as the National Year of Reading.

Producer, Mary Ward-Lowery