The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Part I (Classic Non Fiction) (Pt. 1)
Sticklers for the unadorned historical facts absent from Hughes's first chapters need look no further than this mighty six-volume work of scholarship published between 1776 and 1788. It's a slog - unabridged it would be 100 hours - but both Gibbon's prose and Madoc's reading are rich, dense, magisterial and satisfying. Like Christmas pudding. --Sue Arnold, The Guardian