I’ve been listening to the BBC Radio Play version if Lord of the Rings and it’s quite brilliant. For Tolkien purists it follows the book closely and you understand pretty quickly why in transfer to silver screen the narrative was heavily modified. The voice acting is superb and the cast impressive, with Ian Holm as Frodo, Michael Hordern as Gandalf, Peter Woodthorpe's brilliantly plays the slimy, creepy Gollum and the late John Le Mesurier as Bilbo to name but a few. Even with a running time of thirteen hours some stuff still had to go,and diehards will start whinging by the dropping of 'minor' characters such as Tom Bombadil, who incidently didn't make it into the film either but it must be remembered that to dramatise the entire book 'uncut' would have been totally impractical. The only downer is the price, at about £50 it will be too steep for some but why not do what my mates did…borrow it.