2 hours 25 minutes In Yorkshire, Lizzie Dripping used to be the nickname for a girl who was both dreamy and daring. Helen Cresswell’s classic stories about such a child (really called Penelope Arbuckle), are deserved favourites with primary-aged girls. This reading, by Tina Heath, could well widen that audience to boys of similar age: Ms Heath’s telling is so spirited, so inventive and so spot-on in its use of accent and characterisation that even a scornful male listener can be caught by Cresswell’s kindly humour.

Like many children, Lizzie does not easily distinguish between her own imagination and what “really” happens. Is it a real witch in the knitting in the graveyard? Does the witch wheel her baby brother away while Lizzie picks blackberries? And when Lizzie runs away, do her parents really love her? We can be sure that the answer is “Yes”, and that Lizzie, through all her scrapes and adventures, is slowly growing up to be a really nice person: “A good girl, our Lizzie Dripping.”