Many thanks to kozikowski for bringing ACX plug-in to my attention.
Have persevered with it, and the quality of my recordings have improved, and now reach the ACX standard. It took a lot of trial and error. It’s not a “One Click Fix”, but more of a benchmark to aim at.
To those who use Audacity for the spoken work, and like me, were not aware of this plug-in, I would recommend downloading it and giving it a try.