A complex plot of love and inheritance is set against the English legal system of the mid-19th century, with all its tortuous avenues and disguised resolutions. Here is the firm, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, the young orphan and ward of court Ester Summerson (who tells much of the story). As always, it is the skilled pen of Dickens himself that creates the momentum with his acute eye for both individual characters and their traits, and the backdrop of Victorian London.

Read by: Sean Barrett, Teresa Gallagher