I guess I was somewhat familiar with the actor Derek Jacobi, but it took listening to the audio version of “Gates of Fire” (Steven Pressfield’s riveting story of life among the Spartans), for me to recognize the supreme awesomeness of his abilities. Since I liked “The Islands of Unwisdom” so much, the time is right to finally partake of the 1976 mini-series I, Claudius, which brings Graves and Sir Derek together.
• “Derek Jacobi is brilliant—his soldiers are terrifyingly gruff, and his breathless account of the fighting is so vivid that one can almost smell blood. With a lesser reader, the novel’s structure might have been confusing, but Jacobi’s ability to subtly alter the timbre of his voice and the style of his delivery to differentiate narrators makes it perfectly clear.”
—AudioFile