The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Narrator Peter Wickham fully captures the pompousness and arrogance of the fictional Baron Munchausen as created in Raspe’s classic 1785 work, loosely based on outrageous tall tales told by the real Baron Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen. Describing the Baron’s daring escapes after being swallowed by a whale, being thrown through the Earth’s core by the enraged and jealous god Vulcan, and fighting a 40-foot crocodile in the Nile, Wickham infuses each detailed firsthand account with a stiff upper lip and a credible, properly pompous attitude. There is a quality of braggadocio in his performance that makes every ridiculous episode as comedic today as when the novel first appeared over 235 years ago. The control and high level of energy in Wickham’s voice for the Baron—whether riding on a cannonball into battle, flying to the moon in a hot air balloon, or declining a marriage proposal from a queen—never lose a beat. Listeners should be prepared for some racist content, however, as the stories are presented in their entirety as originally written for 18th-century audiences.