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Conversations in Philosophy: 'To the Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolf
Season 12 Episode 14
In 1908, Virginia Woolf wrote that she hoped to revolutionise the novel and ‘capture multitudes of things at present fugitive’. ‘To the Lighthouse’ (…
5 months, 2 weeks ago
Novel Approaches: ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ by Thomas Hardy
Season 15 Episode 13
After drunkenly selling his wife and child at auction, a young Michael Henchard resolves to live differently – and does so, skyrocketing from impover…
5 months, 3 weeks ago
Next Year on Close Readings: Realism, Nature, Narrative Poems and a history of London
We’re pleased to announce our four new Close Readings series starting in January next year:
‘Who’s Afraid of Realism?’ with James Wood and guests
‘N…
5 months, 4 weeks ago
Love and Death: Thom Gunn and Paul Muldoon
Season 14 Episode 13
Thom Gunn’s career as an elegist was tied closely to the onset of the Aids epidemic in the 1980s, during which he saw many of his friends die. Despit…
6 months ago
Fiction and the Fantastic: Two Novels by Ursula K. Le Guin
Season 13 Episode 13
When the polymorphous writer Ursula K. Le Guin died in 2018, she left behind novels, short stories, poetry, essays, manifestos and French and Chinese…
6 months, 1 week ago
Conversations in Philosophy: 'The Sovereignty of Good' by Iris Murdoch
Season 12 Episode 13
Imagine a woman setting herself the task of liking her son’s choice of wife. At first she finds her daughter-in-law unbearable, but through the effor…
6 months, 2 weeks ago
Novel Approaches: ‘Kidnapped’ by Robert Louis Stevenson
Season 15 Episode 12
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped began life serialised in a children’s magazine, but its sophistication and depth won the lifelong admiration of He…
6 months, 3 weeks ago
Love and Death: Elegies for Poets by Auden, Arnold and Schuyler
Season 14 Episode 12
When poets elegise other poets, the results are often more about self-scrutiny and analysis of the nature of poetry than about grief. Matthew Arnold …
7 months ago
Love and Death: Elegies for Poets by Auden, Arnold and Schuyler
When poets elegise other poets, the results are often more about self-scrutiny and analysis of the nature of poetry than about grief. Matthew Arnold …
7 months ago
Fiction and the Fantastic: J.G. Ballard and Angela Carter
Season 13 Episode 12
J.G. Ballard and Angela Carter were friends and co-conspirators in their witness to the postwar world and the liberation movements of the 1960s. Both…
7 months, 1 week ago