The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Thank goodness Collins has had the wisdom to reissue these tapes of the 'Chronicles of Narnia' and not to re-record. (All seven titles in the sequence are newly available.) Marisa Robles' atmospheric harp music which she plays herself sets up the magical background while Michael Hordern's fast reading with its emphasis on the drama and not the weighty overtones of the story leads the listener unre***sistingly from reality to Narnia. In Hordern's reading the child characters have suitably dated accents which makes the delivery of their old-fashioned sentiments -- lines about trying not to cry and the rest -- seem quaint but fitting.