Which Peter Pan recording should you buy?
The complete readings of Peter Pan that we list run 4 hrs 48 mins to 6 hrs 27 mins. Beside them are cast productions of very different kinds: an Audible Original drama, a BBC children's dramatisation, and a Penguin listing with famous names that Audible marks unabridged at a fraction of the length of the complete readings.
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Short answer
Lily Collins: complete and solo. Christopher Cazenove, Donal Donnelly, Judy Dick and the other complete readings in the table run 4 hrs 48 mins to 6 hrs 27 mins; choose on voice. The cast listings are where the confusion is. The Audible Original with Adeel Akhtar and Rupert Everett is a drama. The BBC Children's Classics edition with Toyah Wilcox is a radio dramatisation. And the Penguin listing with Kit Harington, David Walliams and Joanna Lumley is marked unabridged, but it runs a fraction of the length of the complete readings; we have not read its description, so we cannot say how it was cut or adapted. David Rintoul and Vivien Heilbron's recording is labelled abridged.
The recordings, compared
| Narrator | Length | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lily Collins Our pick | 4 hrs 48 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Christopher Cazenove | 5 hrs 1 min | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Donal Donnelly | 6 hrs 27 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Judy Dick | 5 hrs 56 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Paul Albertson | 5 hrs 26 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Lucy Paterson | 5 hrs 16 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Joe Arden | 4 hrs 48 mins | Unabridged | Complete and solo. |
| Adeel Akhtar, Rupert Everett, Gerran Howell, Eleanor Worthington-Cox and a full cast | 3 hrs 17 mins | Audible Original, full cast | An Audible Original Drama with a cast. Not the novel read aloud. |
| Toyah Wilcox and a full cast | 2 hrs 3 mins | BBC full-cast dramatisation | A BBC Children's Classics dramatisation with a full cast, although the listing says unabridged. |
| Kit Harington, David Walliams, Joanna Lumley and others | 2 hrs 12 mins | Abridged by Martin Jarvis, ten readers | Marked unabridged, but its own description says it was abridged by Martin Jarvis, and it is read by ten actors in turn. At 46% of the shortest complete reading here. |
| David Rintoul and Vivien Heilbron | 2 hrs 56 mins | Abridged | Abridged, with two readers. |