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The Big Read: Benedict Cumberbatch, Hilda Swinton and Others Read Moby Dick

We’re a little late to the party on this one but it’s so fantastic we just had to share it with you. As part of the Big Read, Plymouth university took on Moby Dick and roped in some famous, and not so famous voices to take on a chapter each.




With 135 chapters, it was no mean feat, and the team managed to rope in a huge selection of celebrity readers. There are chapters read by Stephen Fry, Neil Tennant, Fiona Shaw, Will Self, Benedict Cumberbatch, China Miéville, Tony Kushner, John Waters, Simon Callow, Sir David Attenborough, even Prime Minister David Cameron. Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver finishes off the whole project, reading the Epilogue.

You can download the entire thing from iTunes, or just stream it on SoundCloud, we found a playlist incorporating all one hundred and thirty five chapters and chapter one is here, read by Tilda Swinton.

You an access the playlist, all 135 chapters and the epilogue here.



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