Superb work, which I’ve now heard all the way through several times. An unabridged reading, with full-cast voices done by an outstanding verbal mimic and actor, expertly melded with the movie’s music and sound FX from the movies and public-domain sources. Can one man do all the voices? Yes, he’s a natural prodigy and he does so with the greatest of ease — imagine ‘Mike Yarwood, trained by the RSC’. With a little help from the examples of the movie voicework, all the voices and accents are also just as you’d expect them to be. Even Bombadil and Gollum.

I can’t link to it here, but if you know what you’re doing with .torrent files and torrent software like qBittorent, search: dragash “2013-2014” 192kbps limetorrents Hint: the Yandex search engine doesn’t censor torrent results like the others. Or if you use Tribler, try just “Dragash”. This search should land you somewhere near the last available version, the one in which Phil had gone back and tidied up some errors of delivery in the early chapters and given us the full uncompressed edition. “Uncompressed” means that 3.9Gb is the size you want.

Bear in mind that you’ll need to own the extended-cut DVD movie trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, the book itself, and the official soundtrack album, to legally download this outstanding free non-profit fan-work. If you also want all the Appendices read aloud then you’ll also need to buy the official unabridged audiobook reading, when you’ve finished with Phil’s full-cast reading.

Phil’s recording is slightly too sibilant (‘sibilance’) on high-response headphones, so you may want Impulse Media Player which offers a graphic equaliser for reducing treble and boosting bass, as well as a slider to slightly slow down the speed of reading — so you can better savour the text and dialogue. This is one of the great audioworks of our time, as well as running for 48 hours, and so you want to be sure you’re listening to it properly.

Update, 2019: I now recommend AIMP as it’s Windows desktop freeware which does all that Impulse Media Player can, but also has simple and editable bookmarks.

Update 2020: since Summer 2020 Phil Dragash’s marvellous version of The Lord of The Rings is now also on Archive.org, with torrents and in its final 2013-14 version…

* The Fellowship of the Ring. (“A Journey in the Dark” has a small encoding ‘skip’, as does the LimeTorrents version, which cuts a few minutes recounting the discovery of the doors of Moria and the unpacking of Bill the Pony).

* The Two Towers. (There is slight but unfortunate elision in the chapter “The Road to Isengard”. Nothing is missing, but the lack of a 10 second gap and a music-change between “…vanished between the mountain’s arms. // Away south upon the Hornburg…” can be confusing to the listener. Since the same group of beings is being described, but their activities are in different and far-separated places at different times).

* The Return of the King.

Update, 2022: No Hobbit from Dragash, but there is an unofficial unabridged “The Hobbit (Audiobook) – J.R.R Tolkien | Soundscape by Bluefax” at Archive.org since November 2020, inspired by Dragash’s work. With music and FX. Young British narrator, with a facility for acting but not Dragash’s world-class talent as a superb mimic. Like the above Dragash LoTR, to legally download this you will need to already own the official book, audiobook and the movie soundtrack album.

Below is the best AIMP graphic-equaliser setting I can get for good headphones, with speed at 97% and Bass at +33%.