Picture a man so precise, so utterly ruled by the clock, that his servants can set their watches by his breakfast.

Then, one evening at his London club, Phileas Fogg makes an outrageous claim: a person could travel right around the world in eighty days.

His friends laugh. So he bets them twenty thousand pounds that he can do it — and walks out that very night with a carpet bag, a wad of banknotes, and a brand-new French manservant called Passepartout.

Trains, steamers, and anything else that moves. Missed connections, wild weather, and a detective who's convinced Fogg isn't a gentleman on a wager at all, but a thief on the run.

Eighty days. Not a minute more.

Can he possibly make it?

This is *Around the World in Eighty Days* by Jules Verne.

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I'm Roger Braveheart, and it's lovely to have you along on the *TWIG 74* podcast — think of it as a free audiobook, just a much shorter one.

Here's the deal. I take big, much-loved classic novels and retell them, start to finish, in about an hour. Same story, same twists, same characters — just without the long way round. The full book would keep you going for many hours, so consider this the express train version. How long each episode runs depends a bit on how long and how tangled the original is, but sixty minutes is usually about right.

I did try squeezing them into half an hour, but honestly? Too many good bits ended up on the cutting room floor. Nobody wants that.

One thing worth mentioning: everything you'll hear comes straight from Verne's actual novel — not the films, not the TV shows, not the little cut-down school editions. A lot of those move things about, smooth over the awkward parts, or change the ending altogether. Not us. This is the real thing, just trimmed.

New episode every week, at least, and I aim to get them out on a Sunday so you've got something ready for the week ahead.

And if you fancy dropping me a line, the email's **twig74@mailo.com**. I genuinely love hearing from you — tell me what you thought, or better still, tell me which classic I should tackle next. Some of the best suggestions have come from listeners.

Right then. Make yourself comfortable, imagine a station clock ticking away somewhere in the distance, and off we go.