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The three best-selling authors of all time are, in order, God, Shakespeare and Agatha Christie. Exact figures are hard to know, but the gulf between Christie and the second division is big enough to guarantee her place. She has sold over 2 billion books (and just to make that number easier to comprehend, that’s two thousand million). There are a handful of contenders for her greatest book overall, but The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - first serialised exactly 100 years ago in 1925 - is usually amongst them.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd tells the story of murderous happenings in the English country village of Kings Abbot, peaking with the mysterious death of local squire Roger Ackroyd. By happy circumstance, the famous detective Hercule Poirot has recently retired to the village. Already bored stiff by his attempts to grow marrows in his garden, he leaps at the chance of solving a crime, slowly revealing the hidden desires and secrets of his suspects before the grand reveal.
Sophie and Jonty turn detective too to work out why this relatively short book with its action never ranging far from a small village has proven so successful and influential. It has been adapted many times for radio, television and film with Charles Laughton, Orson Welles and (of course) David Suchet playing Poirot. Its influence on popular culture is much broader, inspiring everything from the board game Cluedo to films like Knives Out.
In this episode, Sophie and Jonty going to reveal the secrets behind Agatha Christie’s unique take on detective fiction, tell the origin story of her most famous creation Hercule Poirot, and show how the publication of the book was an inciting incident for her infamous disappearance a few months afterwards. Their investigations take them surfing with Agatha in Hawaii, into speculations about the origin of the Wagon Wheel biscuit and, of course, some truly dreadful impersonations of Hercule Poirot.
SPOILER ALERT! We reveal the identity of the murderer, but only in the final part of the episode and give clear warning before we do.
BOOKS/FILMS READ OR REFERRED TO:
The Life and Times of Hercule Poirot (199) by Anne Hart
Agatha Christie (2022) by Lucy Worsley
Who Killed Roger Ackroyd (1998) by Pierre Bayard
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd radio play (1939) by Orson Welles
One Thousand And One Nights
The Chalk Circle (14th century)
Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (18th century)
The Murder in the Rue Morgue (1841) by Edgar Allan Poe
Oliver Twist (1838) by Charles Dickens
Bleak House (1853) by Charles Dickens
The Woman in White (1860) by Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1921) by Agatha Christie
The Wasteland (1922) by TS Eliot
Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce
Cane (1923) by Jean Toomer
Mrs Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf
The Weary Blues (1926) by Langston Hughes
The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway
Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker
Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad
-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, wrote the Roman poet Juvenal two thousand years ago. And just in case your Latin isn’t up to scratch, we’ll translate it for you: Who watches the watchmen? That line provided inspiration to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen - arguably the first graphic novel to join the ranks of classic literature.
Published as a stand-alone comic in twelve issues between 1986 and 1987, and compiled later that year, Watchmen did for comics what Sergeant Pepper’s did for pop music, legitimising them as a serious artform in the eyes of many. Watchmen is influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Pynchon and Jorge Luis Borges as much as Superman and Batman.
It tells the story of a group of morally-dubious, has-been superheroes, who are being picked off one-by-one by a mysterious killer against the backdrop of nuclear threat. These are the ‘watchmen’ of the title, but - as the quote from Juvenal suggests - pity the society that is looked after by these guys. Sure, they fight crime, but they also commit a lot of it - and even they aren’t sure if the world is a better place for their existence.
While the book isn’t short on action, its characters also discuss philosophy, analyse the history of the comic as an art-form and engage in commercial ventures to capitalise on their own story.
Some time ago, when TIME Magazine listed the 100 most important books of the past century, Watchmen was on the list, wedged somewhere between Lolita and Things Fall Apart (in this case you really do have the watch the watchmen because one of the people responsible for the list and, in particular, for Watchmen’s inclusion, was Sophie’s husband Lev).
To discuss the book, Sophie and Jonty are joined by Andy Miller - writer, performer and one-half of the power duo behind the brilliant Backlisted podcast. In fact, when we asked Andy to come on the show and what book he wanted to do, Watchmen was the first thing he said.
In this episode, Andy, Sophie and Jonty discuss how Watchmen predicted the 21st Century, changed the shape of comics and literature, and why Alan Moore can’t stand the term
‘graphic novel’.
BOOKS REFERRED:
Watchmen (1986-7) by Alan Moore
Providence (2015-17) by Alan Moore
Jerusalem (2016) by Alan Moore
Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1991) by Art Spiegelman
The Dark Knight Returns (1986) by Frank Miller
American Psycho (1991) by Bret Easton Ellis
Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton
Tristram Shandy (1767) by Laurence Sterne
The Prisoner (TV series) (1967-8)
Revelations In the Wink of An Eye (2024) by Jeffrey Lewis
-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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From Macavity to Samuel Johnson’s Hodge, Buck to Rochester’s Pilot, what is classic literature without its pets?
One of the most affecting scenes in The Odyssey, that foundation stone of western literature, occurs when Argos, Odysseus’ aged dog, dies at the moment of reunion with his long lost owner. Not even the knowledge of his afterlife as a shopping catalogue can relieve the pathos of the moment.
In this episode, Sophie and Jonty make amends for slaughtering Boxer the carthorse in their episode on Animal Farm with a celebration of their favourite pets in literature. We make the case that the early 18th Century was the Golden Age for Pet Lit, that Dickens was so masterful at characterisation even the animals in his books are unforgettable, that Jane Austen was - on the basis of her books - no animal lover, while the Bronte sisters very much were.
Finally, Jonty accidentally uncovers Sophie’s deep, repressed love for Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books. Like a match to gunpowder, just mentioning the books sends Sophie into a long homily to Timmy the dog.
Note: No animals were harmed in the production of this episode.
BOOKS DISCUSSED
My Dog Tulip (1956) by JR Ackerley
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939) by TS Eliot
The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) by James Boswell
Rape of the Lock (1717) by Alexander Pope
Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat (1747) Thomas Gray
Jubilate Agno (1759-63) by Christopher Smart
The Nun’s Priest Tale (1390s) by Geoffrey Chaucer
Oliver Twist (1838) by Charles Dickens
David Copperfield (1850) by Charles Dickens
Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift
Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bronte
The Odyssey
Sense and Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park (1814) by Jane Austen
Five Go To Smuggler’s Top (1945) by Enid Blyton
Gilead (2004) by Marilynne Robinson
Rivals (1988) by Jilly Cooper
The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) by Truman Capote
-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org
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As Shakespeare almost wrote: Orwell That Ends Well. While our six-part series on George Orwell comes to a triumphant end, Orwell’s life - alas - did not. He died too young and deeply pessimistic about the future of the world.
In this last episode, Sophie and Jonty look at the bright side of life in Airstrip One, speculate what really lies within Room 101, and - REFORMATION ALERT - take a deep dive into the possible influence of 16th Century theological revolution on Winston Smith’s life (and betrayal).
Finally, we step away from 1984 to reflect on this Orwell series as a whole: how do we feel about Orwell now, knowing what we do about his life, his triumphs and failures, and the controversy surrounding his treatment of his wife and women in general?
Books referenced, quoted, or mentioned:
Orwell: The New Life (2023) by DJ Taylor
WIFEDOM (2023) by Anna Funder
The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 (2021) by Dorian Lynskey
Essays by George Orwell
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Newspeak, Big Brother, the Thought Police, Room 101, doublethink, sex crime, the Ministry of Truth. Few books have generated quite as many outlandish yet unforgettable concepts as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. So much so that Orwell’s name is now an adjective - Orwellian - which, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary means ‘relating to or suggestive of the dystopian reality depicted in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Published in 1949, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a nightmare from start to finish. It follows the demise of Winston Smith - a desk-worker in a totalitarian regime called Airstrip One - as he navigates his way through daily life in a version of London ravaged by nuclear war, makes the great error of falling in love and is finally tortured and brainwashed into a state of pathetic subservience and adoration of the fictional leader of Airstrip One: Big Brother.
Part of the enduring impact of Nineteen Eighty-Four is the way Orwell successfully, but regretfully, identified emerging trends in our culture. And although Britain did not become Airstrip One - other countries in the world did, including North Korea and Turkmenistan, arguably did. Reading Orwell’s novel is still one of the best ways of understanding life in such regimes.
In this episode, Sophie and Jonty discuss the way that Nineteen Eighty-Four both compels and repels us as readers and chart the long road to the book’s creation at the end of another long road - the track leading to Barnhill house in the Scottish island of Jura, where Orwell spent much of his last years.
For anyone concerned this might be too heavy as an episode, we lean into the unacknowledged strain of comedy that runs through the book, as well as the hope implicit in the so-called Appendix Theory (the idea that the book is narrated by somebody after the fall of the regime).
Anyone interested in numerology will note that this is episode 49 of Secret Life of Books and that 1949 was the year Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. We did not plan this, but just as fate draws Winston Smith to O’Brien and Room 101, so we are drawn into Orwell’s dystopian vision…
Books referenced, quoted, or mentioned:
Orwell: The New Life (2023) by DJ Taylor
WIFEDOM (2023) by Anna Funder
The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 (2021) by Dorian Lynskey
Essays by George Orwell
Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood
The Sleeper Awakes (1899) by HG Wells
The Iron Heel (1908) by Jack London
We (1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Anthem (1938) by Ayn Rand
Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Rings (1955) by JRR Tolkien
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George Orwell is one of the most famous names in classic literature, thanks to his novels Animal Farm and 1984, both dystopian fables of worlds gone mad, ruled over by autocratic pigs and authoritarian governments who monitor their citizens– or barnyard companions – every move.
And yet for all his commitment to political and social justice, or at least the calling out of injustice and repression, Orwell’s private relationships were troubled and difficult, particularly his relationship with his wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy.
In 2023, the internationally celebrated historian and novelist Anna Funder published Wifedom to instant acclaim. It’s a beautifully crafted biography of Eileen, re-assessment of Orwell, and polemical memoir of Anna’s own life as a writer, mother and wife. The book has had a huge impact on wives and women all over the world and has changed the way we think about Orwell.
Anna’s home turf as a writer is the challenge of staying human under repressive regimes. She is the author of the brilliant Stasiland a documentary history of life in East Germany under the Stasi secret police in the aftermath of world war 2, and All That I Am, an historical novel about Nazi Germany and Hitler’s atrocities. Anna joins Sophie and Jonty in the studio to talk about Eileen, Eric Blair, early 20thC British history, and the experience of publishing Wifedom.
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Animal Farm is George Orwell’s micro masterpiece, an animal fable that offers a devastating critique of Stalinist Russia and the rise of totalitarianism. Orwell described it to a friend as a “little squib,” but it’s much more than that: a tiny atom bomb that lands a structurally perfect hit on mid-20th century political authoritarianism and communism’s failure to protect the people it purported to serve.
Written over the winter 1943/1944, Animal Farm is the closest Orwell came to a piece of collaborative writing, as Orwell and Eileen revised the book together, huddled in bed to stay warm in chronically cold houses.
Animal Farm was rejected by 4 publishers (including TS Eliot at Faber & Faber) before it was snapped up by Secker and Warburg and published in 1945 and became an instant hit, hugely popular ever since.
As Sophie and Jonty tell the history of the novella, they also retrace the early years of Orwell’s marriage to Eileen O’Shaugnessey when they lived together on a smallholding farm in Wallingford Hertfordhsire, complete with a farm-shop; Orwell’s flirtation with violent revolution during the years of the Second World War; and, less dramatically, his time as a producer at the BBC.
Sophie and Jonty also sing Beasts of England in its entirety (to the tune of Darling Clementine), discuss how to make the perfect cup of tea, and Jonty’s bad experiences at a prestigious London restaurant, and why - in many ways - Animal Farm really is just about the animals.
Books referenced, quoted, or mentioned:
Orwell: The New Life (2023) by DJ Taylor
WIFEDOM (2023) by Anna Funder
Orwell’s Roses (2021) by Rebecca Solnit
Darkness at Noon (1940) by Arthur Koestler
Essays by George Orwell
Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Leviathan (1651) by Thomas Hobbes
The Social Contract (1762) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
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Together, Siegfried Sassoon’s The Old Huntsman (1917) and Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918) are among the greatest examples of protest art in British history. Sassoon was a decorated war hero, who took a stand - when few others dared - on the moral emptiness, institutional corruption and brutality of the First World War.
Alongside his poetry, Sassoon took the shocking measure of writing an open letter, which was read out in parliament, in which he accused the British government and military of deception, of deliberately prolonging an ‘evil and unjust’ war, and the complacency of the British public for not holding the government to account.
As a consequence, he faced a court-martial and certain imprisonment, but his friend - the fellow poet Robert Graves - intervened and persuaded the authorities that Sassoon was mentally ill. Instead, Sassoon was sent to Craiglockhart Hospital, under the care of pioneering psychoanalyst WHR Rivers, where he wrote many of his finest poems, before returning to the frontline for the final months of the war.
In this episode, Sophie and Jonty are joined by historian and Sassoon biography Max Egremont, who explains the extraordinary circumstances that led to Sassoon - an officer so brave that his men nicknamed him Mad Jack - turning against the war and embracing the tiny, fringe movement that was pacifism in the 1910s. We’ll find out about his friendships with fellow poet Wilfred Owen and psychologist WHR Rivers at Craiglockhart Military Hospital, which inspired Pat Barker’s best-selling Regeneration trilogy. Finally, the question is asked - can poetry ever change the world?
Siegfried Sassoon: A Biography (2005) by Max Egremont.
Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker (1991-1995)
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War is boring; revolution is boring; politics is boring. That’s the message of George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. But, somehow, Homage to Catalonia itself is NOT boring. Published in 1938, it charts Orwell’s experience on, behind and beyond the front line of the fight against Fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
Through the course of his narrative, written in the weeks immediately following his return to England, adrenalin still pumping in his veins, Orwell takes us through the complexity of internecine factionalism in Republican Barcelona, derring-do raids on General Franco’s trenches, his own experience of being shot in the throat by a fascist sniper, and the narrow escape by himself and his wife Eileen when they became political targets of the Soviet Union with a warrant out for their arrest.
Homage to Catalonia was a massive flop - think Betamax video, New Coke, or Michael Jackson’s Invincible album - selling less than a thousand copies, but it has become recognised as a masterpiece of reportage. Most importantly, it contains the political awakening and many of the ideas leading directly to Animal Farm and 1984. In these pages, we see Orwell’s horror of totalitarianism, his fear of rats, the betrayal of workers by their supposedly revolutionary leaders, of newspaper censorship rewriting the past with alternative facts. And, in anarchist Barcelona, we even see a glimpse of Airstrip One - a crumbling post-revolutionary city with blue-overall wearing citizens, gradually succumbing to Stalinist mind-control.
This is the second episode in our four-part series on George Orwell. The first, following Orwell’s early life was about the impact of the First World War, the moral abyss of the British Empire and the Great Depression on his first book Down and Out in Paris and London. In this, Sophie and Jonty look at the rise of fascism in Europe through Orwell’s front row seat of the Spanish Civil War, taking us up to brink of the Second World War.
Content warning: mild bad language
Books referenced, quoted, or mentioned:
Orwell: The New Life (2023) by DJ Taylor
WIFEDOM (2023) by Anna Funder
Essays by George Orwell
The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) by George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell
People of the Abyss (1904) by Jack London
Tropic of Cancer (1934) by Henry Miller
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) by Siegfried Sassoon
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway
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Elizabeth Bishop is one of those poets who’s often referred to as a writer’s writer, but this doesn’t mean her poems are hard to read. On the contrary: as one of the most loved and admired twentieth-century poets, Bishop has the rare ability to do high-low. She’s enjoyable and accessible and also intensely artful and complex, not to mention very funny. In this special episode, Sophie and Jonty chat to American writer and critic Rachel Cohen about her decades-long admiration for Bishop and deep appreciation for her art.
Bishop was born in New England and spent a significant amount of her childhood in Nova Scotia, Canada. Her writing is infused with the austerity and beauty of Northeast America. But Bishop has another side too, a flamboyance and lushness of texture that came from living in Key West Florida and Brazil. She struggled with alcoholism and depression and had intense lifelong friendships with several of the most important writers of her generation, including the great poets Robert Lowell and Marianne Moore.
We talk about the paradoxes and contradictions of Bishop and her last published collection, Geography III, with the brilliant Rachel Cohen, whose books, essays and occasional observations are, like Bishop’s poems, beautiful, meticulous, and expansive all at once. Rachel has written about Bishop in her fabulous book A Chance Meeting.
Further Reading:
Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III
Rachel Cohen, A Chance Meeting
-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org
-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast
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In the winter of 1927, George Orwell dropped his aitches, pulled on his distressed tailored trousers, and took the first of many trips to the underbelly of London society. Over the following years, he spent long stints amongst the homeless and starving people of both Paris and London. He collected these experiences into his first book Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), conveniently leaving out the weekends and kitchen sups with mater and pater.
Orwell’s intention was partly to draw attention to the appalling social inequality of France and England after the First World War, but also simply to allow his imagination to wallow in scenes of surreal vividness and black humour.
In this - the first in a four-part series about Orwell’s life, work and times - Sophie and Jonty look at the circumstances that lead to his first, and still one of his best-loved, books. They focus on two of his most famous essays that provide unique insights into his early years.
In Such, Such Were the Joys, Orwell wrote about his experience of English boarding school, where he developed an ineradicable sense of himself as intrinsically doomed and disgusting, of a world where bullies will always triumph and where the underdog can never win. In Shooting an Elephant, Orwell recounts his years working for the Indian Police in the 1920s and his realisation that the British Empire was a corrupt, murderous regime.
Finally, Sophie and Jonty follow Orwell into the mean streets of Paris’ 5th arrondissement and London’s Whitechapel, the scenes of brutality that follow and a truly bizarre encounter with another Old Etonian in a slum lodging-house.
-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org
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Content warning: mild bad language
Books mentioned:
Orwell: The New Life (2023) by DJ Taylor
WIFEDOM (2023) by Anna Funder
Essays by George Orwell
The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) by George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell
David Copperfield (1850) by Charles Dickens
New Grub Street (1891) by George Gissing
Nadja by (1928) Andre Breton
Paris Peasant by (1926) Louis Aragon
Tom Jones (1749) - as ever - by Henry Fielding
Gulliver’s Travels (1726) - as ever - by Jonathan Swift
Tales of Mean Streets (1894) by Arthur Morrison
People of the Abyss (1904) by Jack London
Tropic of Cancer (1934) by Henry Miller
Kitchen Confidential (2000) by Anthony Bourdain
The Tramp Ward (1904) by Mary Higgs
Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908) by WH Davies
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Legendary bestseller Jodi Picoult is also a graduate of the Princeton English Department, and this week she came back to teach class! Sophie recorded a live episode at the Princeton Public Library in front of a packed house of Jodi fans who were delighted to hear why she believes that when it comes to Shakespeare's best plays, a women was holding the quill!
Jodi's newest novel "By Any Other Name," tells an intense, gripping story about a real-life woman who might just have written many of Shakespeare's most famous works, including Hamlet, Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet, leaving the Bard himself to run his theatre, make money, and have extra-marital affairs.
Emilia Bassano, Jodi's heroine, is a brilliant but under-appreciated writer in the precarious world of the Renaissance court. In real life, Emilia Bassano was a self-made author, lover, mother, and an all-round Elizabethan bad-ass. She published the first collection of poems by a woman in England, and in this live conversation we get a fascinating glimpse of an extraordinary women in an extraordinary time. Jodi takes us through the evidence of of Emilia's "fingerprints" in Shakespeare's plays, and she explains her own original discovery of a sizzling connection between Emilia and the hottest man at court, the Earl of Southampton!
"Bardolatry" was a term George Bernard Shaw came up with to describe people who love Shakespeare too much, and Jodi is leading a new vanguard of Bardoloclasts — skeptics who are breaking the myth of Shakespeare to reveal hidden histories behind the legend.
Special thanks to Janie Hermann, Becky Bowers and the Princeton Public Library for their support.
-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org
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Producer: Boyd Britton
Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo
Designer: Peita Jackson
Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.
Content warning: moderate swearing and sexual content
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By many reckonings, this is the most famous novel in English. It’s also the book Jane Austen described as her own “Darling Child.” As we head to the milestone of Jane’s 250th Birthday in December (get ready for the minced chicken and negus party) Sophie and Jonty dig into one of the most joyful, funny, sexy stories ever told.
In this episode we ask why this small novel of village life exploded into a global cultural icon, inspiring retelling upon retelling, and catapulting Mr. Darcy and Lizzie Bennet’s romance into a modern myth.
You’ll hear about some lesser-known experiences from Jane Austen’s life that informed the writing, and why it took her so long (aspiring writers, take heart). Sophie tries to shoehorn four historical secrets at the start of the episode, but Jonty only lets her share two of them on air. And he dings her for being too interested in legal history.
Instead, the duo argue about why mismatched attraction, or mistaking steamy passion for implacable dislike, is such an evergreen literary trope, and how much Elizabeth’s love of Darcy depends on seeing his enormous house.
Both hosts give favorite jokes another outing – listeners can decide if repetition make them more funny. Not as funny as Austen, that’s for sure. Tune in for a tune-up about the original Meet the Parents, a tale of colliding families, ghastly mothers in law, and male bonding activities.
-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org
-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast
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Books Mentioned or Used as Sources:
Rachel Cohen, Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels, 2020.
Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite, 30 Great Myths About Jane Austen, 2020.
Sandra MacPherson, “Rent to Own, or, What’s Entailed in Pride and Prejudice,” Representations, 2003.
Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life, 1999.
Fay Weldon, Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen, 1985.
Hilary Davidson "Reconstructing Jane Austen's Silk Pelisse," Costume, vol 49, no. 22, 2015.
Producer: Boyd Britton
Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo
Designer: Peita Jackson
Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.
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In Part 2 of David Copperfield, we pick up David where we left him, sobbing at the door of Betsey Trotwood’s house in Dover. From this low, David’s life changes - he is no longer a victim, but embarks on a (very long) journey towards self-reliance, re-encountering old friends like Micawbers and Steerforth, but also new characters like Uriah Heep and the simpering Dora.
To make sense of this long, rambling journey of redemption, Sophie and Jonty reveal the influence of the emerging self-help movement on Dickens’ world-view and how his side-hustle as the director of a Home for Homeless Women inspired him to send many of the characters in David Copperfield off to Australia at the end of the book - and the inevitable happy ending this suggests.
BOOKS MENTIONED OR USED AS SOURCES:
Charles Dickens: A Life (2011) by Claire Tomalin
Self-Reliance (1841) by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-Help (1859) by Samuel Smiles
1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals (1944) by Lewis Namier
Demon Copperhead (2022) by Barbara Kingsolver
Rivals (1988) by Jilly Cooper
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David Copperfield is the name of an American illusionist, whose feats included levitating over the Grand Canyon, walking through the Great Wall of China and making an airplane disappear. It’s also the name of novel by Charles Dickens.
Published in serial form between 1849 and 1850, David Copperfield charts the degradation and eventual success of its narrator - a figure based closely on the author himself. So much so that Dickens later referred to the book as a ‘favourite child’, which considering his self-proclaimed habit of ‘slaughtering’ his child characters is fortunate for Copperfield.
David Copperfield is very much A Tale of Two Stories - a literary pun which Jonty is very pleased with. The first story is that of David’s neglect as a child, the second of his adult life as he aspires to a state of self-reliance.
In this episode, Sophie and Jonty look at the mid-life crisis that precipitated the writing of Copperfield as Dickens suffered a minor breakdown, excavated memories from his unhappy childhood and distributed increasingly silly names to his many children.
We discover the literary innovations that resulted from Dickens choosing to adopt first person narrative for his child star, how he ripped off Charlotte Bronte without acknowledging it, and the vast cast of unforgettable characters like the Micawbers, Betsey Trotwood, and Uriah Heep that carry his story along.
Finally, we leave listeners on a cliff-hanger as poor David, homeless and destitute, walks from London to Dover and flings himself at the mercy of his long-lost aunt. What will happen to David? Will he rise to success and levitate across the Grand Canyon? Listen to part 2 to find out.
-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org
-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast
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Producer: Boyd Britton
Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo
Designer: Peita Jackson
Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.
Content warning: moderate swearing and sexual content
BOOKS MENTIONED OR USED AS SOURCES:
Charles Dickens: A Life (2011) by Claire Tomalin
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
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In part 2 of SLoB's Valentine's special, more heroes and heroines from the world of classic books get the brutal Tinder treatment as Sophie and Jonty assess the romantic moves of your literary faves. They are in full agreement concerning the lead characters of Sense & Sensibility and Go Tell It On The Mountain, but the conversation turns fractious as they lock horns over whether Frankenstein or his monster is the greatest lover in Mary Shelley's famous novel. Fortunately, Dracula - that great peacemaker - is on hand to elicit full agreement that he, the Prince of Darkness, is the ideal date.
-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org
-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast
-- Follow us on our socials:
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shorts
insta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/
bluesky: @slobpodcast.bsky.social
Producer: Boyd Britton
Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo
Designer: Peita Jackson
Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.
Content warning: moderate swearing and sexual content
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It's Black History Month and Sophie and Jonty are bringing their analytical chops once again to the giant of 20th-century literature, James Baldwin.
In his debut novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain, Baldwin had captured the experience of growing up in 1930s Harlem. In his second novel, Giovanni’s Room, published in 1956, he focused instead on his experiences as a gay man, living in Paris. But, unlike Baldwin, the narrator of this novel is white.
The hero David is torn between two desires - his burgeoning love for an Italian barman called Giovanni, and the imperative to marry his girlfriend Hella. He struggles to choose, but the casualty is Giovanni rather than David. Baldwin wrote Giovanni’s Room while wrestling with his own homosexuality - and his fears about the life of loneliness it condemned him too - and developing new theories about white and black experience in America. Sophie and Jonty talk about the unique experiences behind the writing of this novel, the powerful expression of homosexual desire, and why Paris isn’t all it’s meant to be.
Content warning: mild sexual content
-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org
-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast
-- Follow us on our socials:
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shorts
insta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/
bluesky: @slobpodcast.bsky.social
Producer: Boyd Britton
Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo
Designer: Peita Jackson
Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.
Further Reading
Notes On A Native Son (1956) by James Baldwin
James Baldwin: Living in Fire (Pluto Books, 2019) by Bill V Mullen
The Ambassadors by Henry James (1903)
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It's Valentine's Day and love is quite literally in the air as the Secret Life of Books beams, via a complex network of satellites and data banks, to your ears. In this Bonus Episode, Sophie and Jonty reflect on what they've learnt about love from the classics, and rank the leading men and ladies of the books covered so far as lovers. St Valentine first appears in English literature in Geoffrey Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls and weaves his way via Jane Austen and Charles Dickens through to the present day.
In this first part of 2, Sophie and Jonty revisit Picnic at Hanging Rock, which begins with a Valentine's Day picnic gone wrong, and spend far too much time talking about Jane Eyre's Rochester, who somehow - despite driving one woman mad, giving another false teeth as a gift, and getting himself up in drag to woo Jane - is one of literature's great sex symbols. Gullver - of 'Travels' fame - gets a look in, as do Lockwood, Cathy, Hareton and the rest of the kids from Wuthering Heights.
Part 2 of this conversation is available on Patreon and will join the main feed on Friday February 21, 2025.
Content warning: moderate sexual content and bad language.
-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org
-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast
-- Follow us on our socials:
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shorts
insta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/
bluesky: @slobpodcast.bsky.social
Producer: Boyd Britton
Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo
Designer: Peita Jackson
Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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“Now, gods, stand up for bastards!”
King Lear is the Mount Everest of Theatre - a sprawling masterpiece of political turmoil, personal betrayal, horrifying gore and great poetry. It makes ‘Succession’ look like The Midsomer Murders. Lear is the pagan king who decides to divides his kingdom between two daughters (and banishing a third), only to find himself outcast, succumbing to madness, adrift in a world collapsing into civil war. Who better to tackle this cautionary tale of domestic and political crisis than Rory Stewart, host of The Rest is Politics, who has watched the downfall of several rulers, in one way or another.
For Rory, King Lear is ‘THE’ play. He fell in love with it at school and becomes only more seduced by Lear, as a character, the older he gets.
While Sophie and Jonty, in predictable style, try to tie the play to the Reformation and Shakespeare’s personal life respectively, Rory shames them by making the case that some works of art can’t be explained purely by the world around them; that something magic, and beyond Shakespeare’s own control, took place when he booted up his Quill 2.0 and started writing.
Rory also admits that, during his political career, he sometimes felt like Goneril to Boris Johnson’s King Lear; and rather yearns to be Lear himself, raging and shouting in the rain.
Content warning: the f-word is used thrice.
-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org
-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast
-- Follow us on our socials:
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shorts
insta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/
bluesky: @slobpodcast.bsky.social
Producer: Boyd Britton
Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo
Designer: Peita Jackson
Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.
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One ring to rule them all
One ring to…
Yes, SLoB finally turns its Sauron-like eye on what is thought to be the second best-selling novel of all time (after Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities): Lord of the Rings. And who better to share this experience than Dominic Sandbrook, historian of the 20th Century, co-host of the Rest is History podcast, and Tolkien devotee.
In this Fellowship of Literary Analysis, Dominic, Sophie and Jonty are united in believing that Lord of the Rings - a novel which, superficially, appears to be about orcs and wizards in a fantasy realm - is in fact one of the greatest novels about the 20th Century. Together, they plunder Tolkien’s work and life to show how seismic events - two world wars, the rise of fascism, industrialisation, environmental disaster - found expression in his sprawling masterpiece.
Jonty and Dominic clash, like marauding armies on the plains of Mordor, over whether the many poems and songs in Lord of the Rings are of a quality that the reader deserves. While Sophie embarks on the inevitable digression into the Dead Marshes of the Protestant Reformation.
Dominic gives the shock announcement that Tolkien almost called Frodo ‘Bingo’, which would have made for a great episode of Bluey but not for a terrifying novel about good versus evil. Even less so if Tolkien had also followed his original intention to call Aragorn ‘Trotter’ and the Elves ‘Gnomes’. After all, it’s hard to imagine Cate Blanchett signing up for the role of Galadriel, the ethereal gnome
Further reading:
The Great British Dream Factory: The Strange History of Our National Imagination by Dominic Sandbrook (London: Allen Lane. 2015)
JRR Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter (Harper Collins, 1998)
-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org
-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast
-- Follow us on our socials:
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shorts
insta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/
bluesky: @slobpodcast.bsky.social
Producer: Boyd Britton
Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo
Designer: Peita Jackson
Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Visa fler
