David Suchet, the British actor best known for his portrayal of Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, has recorded an audiobook of the entire Bible from Genesis to the Book of Revelation.

It took him over 200 hours in the recording studio to deliver the 752,702 words, the very first full-length audio version of the Bible spoken by a single British actor.

Suchet became a Christian after reading a hotel room Bible in 1986, his moment of epiphany came upon reading St Paul’s epistle to the Romans, in which he proclaims: “if God be for us, who can be against us?”. Suchet says of his own faith: “I am a Christian by faith. I like to think it sees me through a great deal of my life.”

In 1989 Suchet was one of a band of leading British actors who recorded parts of the Bible for an earlier Hodder & Stoughton project: Suchet reading the Gospel of St John. Now, close to 30 years on and in between filming the final episodes of Poirot, Suchet has produced an 80-hour recording available to buy from this Easter and already in the audiobook charts on Amazon.