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Robert Valentine has adapted Dianne Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle for audio.

The one hour play, produced by Bafflegab, will be broadcast on Radio 4 on Sunday December 12 at 3 p.m. Robert Bathurst, Julia McKenzie, Iwan Rheon, Angus Imrie, Dan Starkey, Gwyneth Keyworth, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Dakota Blue-Richards and Gerran Howell star, with sound design by Richard Fox music by Evelyn Sykes. The play is directed by Simon Barnard.

In the land of Ingary, Sophie Hatter is resigning herself to an uninteresting life working in a hat shop, when a castle appears above the town of Market Chipping and refuses to stay still.

Visiting the shop one day, the dreaded Witch of the Waste transforms Sophie into an old crone. Setting off into the countryside to seek her fortune, Sophie soon runs into the sinister moving castle. But the castle belongs to the dreaded Wizard Howl whose appetite, they say, is satisfied only by the souls of young girls.

First published in 1986, Howl’s Moving Castle’s reputation has grown over time to become recognised as a fantasy classic and, in 2004, it was adapted as an Oscar-nominated animated film by Studio Ghibli.

Adaptor Valentine told Sci-Fi Bulletin, “It’s been a huge amount of fun, not to mention quite an honour, to adapt Diana Wynne Jones’s magical novel, Howl’s Moving Castle, as a Bafflegab Production for BBC Radio 4. With the nights getting long and cold now, and Christmas just around the corner, I think that the tale of Sophie Hatter and her secret bargain with a hearth-bound fire demon is going to be perfect festive fireside listening.”