"I was a king in Babylon and you were a christian slave ..." A young bank clerk named Charlie Mears, who longs to be a writer, tells about sea voyages and adventures of a Viking and a Greek galley slave. Gradually it becomes evident that Charlie is remembering past lives. The finest Story has to be written in time because the threads from the past may be broken... "The Finest Story in the World" shows a lesser known facet of the great narrator Kipling: his interest in the supernatural and thus his affinity to the fantasy and science fiction genre. At the same time it is also a wise and sensitive description of human vanity and imperfection. The original text of the first English author to receive the Nobel prize - read with great versatility by Shaun Lawton.