Following last year’s starry adaptation of Oliver Twist, Audible has pushed the seasonal boat out again with a beguiling version of David Copperfield, executive-produced by Sam Mendes and featuring an all-star cast. It opens at The Rookery, where newly widowed Clara (Ebony Feare) gives birth to a boy she names David, after his late father. Here we also meet the donkey-intolerant Betsey Trotwood (a formidable Helena Bonham Carter), who, having been abandoned by her husband as a young woman, dislikes men and is aggrieved to find herself with a nephew rather than a niece.
Fast-forward seven years and Clara reveals she is marrying the tyrannical Mr Murdstone (Richard Armitage), who packs his stepson off to housekeeper Peggotty’s relatives in Great Yarmouth, and then on to boarding school where he befriends the charismatic James Steerforth (Theo James). Thus begins a series of upheavals that punctuate the life of our young protagonist as he leaves boyhood behind.
