Why, why, why would you abridge this story? It's disconcerting, even when you know the whole story and can fill in the bits left out. The only saving grace is Tony Robinson's narration. I love his Lady Sybil. Unfortunately, his reading sometimes becomes too quiet to hear ... especially on a cheap car stereo at high speeds on a highway or at low speeds on a corduroy road. If only they'd done some compression on the recording to fix the levels. This might be okay if you aren't familiar (or as familiar as I am) with the story and don't have the time to listen for 9 hours, or whatever the unabridged version is. Nigel Planer is also brilliant, but tends to be careless about who's actually talking.