[6] In 2001 he began reading the Shipping Forecast, a weather report for the seas around the British Isles, which is broadcast four times a day on BBC Radio 4.

[10] Author Francesca Simon, creator of Horrid Henry, featured Soanes as the newsreader in The Lost Gods, her 2013 book for older children.

His voice was described, by the paper's radio critic Paul Donovan, as smoother than that of the favourite female Jane Garvey and as "evoking an earlier, more formal BBC".

[11][12] In 2016 Soanes played Derek Nimmo in the radio drama All Mouth and Trousers, by Mark Burgess, the story behind the making of the television comedy series All Gas and Gaiters.

In 2019 the church commissioned him to rewrite the libretto for Vaughan Williams' 1958 nativity pageant, The First Nowell, presented as a charity gala casting BBC colleagues Dame Jenni Murray as God and Evan Davis as a Wise Man.

"[24] In March 2017 Soanes appeared, alongside Carole Boyd, in a new recording of Façade by William Walton and Edith Sitwell, produced by Andrew Keener.

[25] Andrew Baker praised Soanes for his performance': "My father regarded Façade as the pinnacle of the narrator's art, a hugely enjoyable challenge, and a celebration of clarity, breathing, projection and timing.

"[26] Soanes is patron of a number of charities; Awards for Young Musicians,[27] the British Association of Performing Arts Medicine,[28] The Mammal Society and the Thaxted Festival.

On 6 October 2023, he hosted a gala fundraiser for the statue, at London's Wigmore Hall, with star performers including Dame Janet Baker, Sir Thomas Allen, Tasmin Little and Alistair McGowan, which raised £20,000.

[44] Dove and Soanes collaborated again on Gaspard's Christmas which was premiered at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on Friday 23 December 2022.