Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling audiobook review – an all-star outing

Cush Jumbo, Hugh Laurie and Matthew Macfadyen bring extra twinkle to Rowling’s magical tale It has become tradition for Audible to bring out the big guns in the run-up to Christmas and deliver star-studded adaptations of well-known novels; the last few years have brought terrific productions of Dickens’s Oliver Twist, Bleak House and David Copperfield. Now attention has turned to younger listeners with a new, full-cast recording of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first of the Potter books in which the orphaned Harry, consigned to sleep in a cupboard in his aunt and uncle’s house, learns he is a wizard and is to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The Good Wife’s Cush Jumbo is our narrator, steering the story alongside a cast including Hugh Laurie as venerable wizard-in-chief Albus Dumbledore; Michelle Gomez as Professor McGonagall; Riz Ahmed as Professor Snape; Mark Addy as Hagrid; Matthew Macfadyen as Lord Voldemort; and newcomers Frankie Treadaway, Max Lester and Arabella Stanton as young wizards Harry, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.