Time ran away with me today so I’m coming late (strictly speaking, as it’s after midnight, I didn’t make it on Tuesday at all but phhhtt) to the fifth day, where we are sent to hear T S Eliot reading The Journey of the Magi.

This is why authors shouldn’t read their own work. While it’s fascinating to hear him, the man himself, his reading doesn’t stand up well. His delivery is leaden, his voice has those tortured pre-war vowels that make you think of brown, cabbage-smelling corridors and men with pipes.

Serendipitously, YouTube offered me this reading of the same poem, by Edward Petherbridge, always and ever my Peter Wimsey. Now *that’s* the way to do it.

• Novelty: new reading, old poem
• Content: meh
• Performance: just, no
• Soul: shrivelled and hard