<P> Because of the story's occasional macabre and potentially frightening content, it has become a regular target of the censors . The actors Jeremy Irons, Andrew Sachs, and Julian Rhind - Tutt provide the English language audiobook recordings . </P> <P> Four - year - old James Henry Trotter lives with his loving parents in a beautiful cottage by the sea in the south of England, until his parents are killed by an escaped rhinoceros during a shopping trip in London . </P> <P> As a result, James is forced to live with his two cruel aunts, Spiker and Sponge, in a run - down house on a high, desolate hill near the White Cliffs of Dover . For four years, James is treated as a drudge, forced to do hard labor, beaten for hardly any reason, improperly fed, and forced to sleep on bare floorboards in the attic . One summer afternoon, after a particularly upsetting altercation with his aunts, James stumbles across a mysterious stranger, who gives him magic green "crocodile tongues" which, when drunk with water, will bring him happiness and great adventures . On the way to the house, James spills the crocodile tongues onto a barren peach tree, which then produces a single peach that quickly grows to nearly the size of a house . The next day, the aunts sell tickets to neighbors and tourists to see the giant peach while James watches from the window of his room in which he is locked up, to prevent him from getting in the way of his aunts' business . </P> <P> When night comes, the aunts release James and send him to collect rubbish discarded by the crowd . James went taking a closer look at the giant peach, but he discovers a tunnel, which leads to secret room inside the peach's seed, inhabited by a rag - tag band of human - sized, talking invertebrates (an old green grasshopper, centipede, earthworm, spider, ladybug, silkworm, and a glowworm), also transformed by the magic of the crocodile tongues given him earlier . These bugs then become James' companions in his adventure, and the companionship is prompted by a common hatred of the aunts . Upon James' arrival, the Centipede bites through the stem of the peach, whereupon it rolls down the hill early next morning, crushing and killing Spiker and Sponge on the way . Everyone inside the peach feels it rolling over the aunts and bursts out cheering . It rolls through villages, houses, and a famous chocolate factory before falling off the cliffs of Dover into the sea . James and the bugs emerge to find themselves floating in the sea but manage to sustain themselves on the delicious flesh of the peach . Hours later, near the Azores, the peach is surrounded by sharks . Using the Earthworm as bait, James and the others of the peach lure five hundred seagulls to the peach from the nearby islands, which they tie to the broken stem as a source of flight . </P>

Where did james and the giant peach take place