Which Christmas Carol recording should you buy?
Nineteen editions, and the worst-labelled listing we have found on Audible UK. The complete text runs about three hours. There are editions here at 37 minutes, 55 minutes, 1 hour 11 and 1 hour 18 -- and they are not all marked abridged.
Short answer
Miriam Margolyes or Steve King. The complete text of A Christmas Carol runs around three hours, so the recordings between 2h44 and 3h25 are the book and the rest are not, whatever the label says. Two things to watch here that do not occur on any other page of this site. First, the Bernard Miles edition is marked Unabridged and runs 37 minutes: at roughly a fifth of the length of the complete readings it cannot be the whole text, and we cannot tell you whether the runtime or the label is the error. Second, the Glenn Schadt edition is also marked Unabridged but describes itself as "Adapted for Modern Readers" -- adapted and unabridged cannot both be true of the same recording. Treat runtime as the only reliable signal on this page.
Every recording, compared
| Narrator | Length | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Miriam Margolyes Our pick | 3 hrs 15 mins | Unabridged | A BBC radio reading, complete and solo, and among the longest here -- which on this page is the evidence that nothing has been cut. |
| Steve King | 3 hrs 25 mins | Unabridged | The longest straight reading listed. Complete. |
| Simon Prebble | 3 hrs 9 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Jeffrey Ito | 3 hrs 2 mins | Unabridged | Complete, and specifically the original 1843 text. |
| Tom Baker | 3 hrs | Unabridged | A BBC radio reading. Complete. |
| Hugh Grant | 2 hrs 44 mins | Unabridged | Complete. The best-known name on the page, and unusually for this site that is not a warning -- it really is the whole text. |
| Simon Vance | 2 hrs 54 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| AI Voice Arthur Lane | 2 hrs 59 mins | AI narration (Virtual Voice) | The complete text read by a synthetic voice. |
| Glenn Schadt | 2 hrs 26 mins | Unabridged, but described as adapted | Marked Unabridged while the listing says "Adapted for Modern Readers". Those two claims contradict each other; we have not established which is right. |
| Patrick Stewart | 1 hr 47 mins | Abridged | ABRIDGED, to roughly half. A celebrated performance -- Stewart toured a one-man version for years -- but it is not the full text. |
| David Jason | 1 hr 18 mins | Unabridged | Marked Unabridged at 1h18, against a complete-text cluster of about three hours. The label and the runtime disagree. |
| Roy Macready | 1 hr 11 mins | Abridged | ABRIDGED, to about a third. |
| Jonathan Winters and Mimi Kennedy | 55 mins | Abridged | ABRIDGED, to under a third. |
| Bernard Miles | 37 mins | Unabridged | Marked Unabridged and runs 37 minutes -- about a fifth of the complete readings. It cannot be the whole text at that length. We do not know whether the runtime or the label is wrong, and we would not spend a credit to find out. |
| Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Cranham, Miriam Margolyes and a full cast | 3 hrs 31 mins | Full-cast dramatisation | An audio drama rather than a reading, and the longest thing on the page. |