Miriam Margolyes was not wrong – however intrepid she may have been – to remark to Her late Majesty the Queen that she was the finest spoken-word actor in the world. Well, certainly one of them: she has recorded the whole of Oliver Twist, the whole of Bleak House and she has brought her power to bring alive a world of voices to that extraordinary work Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie the film of which won Maggie Smith an Oscar for the title role in 1969.