Podcast Episodes
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Who’s afraid of realism? Three stories by Anton Chekhov
Season 17 Episode 4
‘Instead of sheets – dirty tablecloths.’ The notebooks of Anton Chekhov are full of enigmatic observations such as this, the unexplained details that…
1 month, 3 weeks ago
London Revisited: The Medieval Capital
Season 20 Episode 3
When the Angles, Saxons and Jutes began settling across England in the wake of the Roman retreat in the early fifth century, the city they found on t…
2 months ago
Narrative Poems: ‘Paradise Lost’ (Book 9) by John Milton
Season 19 Episode 3
When Milton came to describe Eve’s tasting of the forbidden fruit, he knew he couldn’t rely on suspense to grip the reader. Instead, he used multiple…
2 months, 1 week ago
Nature in Crisis: ‘Blue Machine’ by Helen Czerski
Season 18 Episode 3
In Blue Machine (2024), Helen Czerski refigures the ocean as an enormous planetary engine, converting light and heat into motion. Her book invites us…
2 months, 2 weeks ago
Who’s afraid of realism? ‘Notes from Underground’ by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Season 17 Episode 3
Dostoevsky’s 1864 novella doesn’t contain the descriptive detail, impersonal narration or many other features of 19th-century realism established by …
2 months, 3 weeks ago
London Revisited: Mosaics, Archers and a Walled Garden
Season 20 Episode 2
After Roman London was hit by a catastrophic fire in about 125 AD, perhaps the result of another local revolt, it entered a new period of sophisticat…
3 months ago
Narrative Poems: 'Venus and Adonis' and 'The Rape of Lucrece' by William Shakespeare
Season 19 Episode 2
Like Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare made good use of his time off when the theatres were shut for plague in 1593. 'Venus and Adonis' appear…
3 months, 1 week ago
Nature in Crisis: ‘The Light Eaters’ by Zoë Schlanger
Season 18 Episode 2
In The Light Eaters (2024), Zoë Schlanger reports from the frontiers of botany, where researchers are discovering forms of sensing, signalling and re…
3 months, 2 weeks ago
Who’s afraid of realism? ‘Madame Bovary’ by Gustave Flaubert (part two)
Season 17 Episode 2
‘He opened him up and found nothing.’ These are the doctor’s findings at Charles Bovary’s autopsy near the end of 'Madame Bovary'. Taken on its own, …
3 months, 3 weeks ago
London Revisited: Roman Beginnings
Season 20 Episode 1
The year London was founded will always be disputed, but the most recent archaeological evidence suggests the Romans had created the first settlement…
4 months ago