Close Readings

London Review of Books
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Close Readings
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Close Readings is a new multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books. Two contributors explore areas of literature through a selection of key works, providing an introductory grounding like no other. Listen to some episodes for free here, and extracts from our ongoing subscriber-only series. How To Subscribe In Apple Podcasts, click 'subscribe' at the top of this podcast feed to unlock the full episodes. Or for other podcast apps, sign up here: https://lrb.me/closereadings RUNNING IN 2025: 'Conversations in Philosophy' with Jonathan Rée and James Wood 'Fiction and the Fantastic' with Marina Warner, Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis 'Love and Death' with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford 'Novel Approaches' with Clare Bucknell, Thomas Jones and other guests ALSO INCLUDED IN THE CLOSE READINGS SUBSCRIPTION: 'Among the Ancients' with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones 'Medieval Beginnings' with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley 'The Long and Short' with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry 'Modern-ish Poets: Series 1' with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry 'Among the Ancients II' with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones 'On Satire' with Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell 'Human Conditions' with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards 'Political Poems' with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry 'Medieval LOLs' with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 3 HR AGO

    Love and Death: Elegies for Poets by Berryman, Lowell and Bishop

    The confessional poets of the mid-20th century considered themselves a ‘doomed’ generation, with a cohesive identity and destiny. Their intertwining personal lives were laid bare in their work, and Robert Lowell, John Berryman and Elizabeth Bishop returned repeatedly to the elegy to commemorate old friends and settle old scores.In this episode, Mark and Seamus turn to elegies for poets by poets, tracing the intricate connections between them. Lowell, Berryman and Bishop’s work was offset by a deep commitment to the literary tradition, and Mark and Seamus identify their shared influences and anxieties. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrld In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsld Find further reading in the LRB: Mark Ford: No One Else Can Take a Bath for You https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n07/mark-ford/no-one-else-can-take-a-bath-for-you Karl Miller: Some Names for Robert Lowell https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n09/karl-miller/some-names-for-robert-lowell Nicholas Everett: Two Americas and a Scotland https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n18/nicholas-everett/two-americas-and-a-scotland Helen Vendler: The Numinous Moose https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n05/helen-vendler/the-numinous-moose Get the books: https://lrb.me/crbooklist Next episode: Self-elegies by Hardy, Larkin and Plath. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    12 min

  2. 7 APR

    Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Alice in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll

    Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are strange books, a testament to their author’s defiant unconventionality. Through them, Lewis Carroll transformed popular culture, our everyday idioms and our ideas of childhood and the fantastic, and they remain enormously popular. Anna Della Subin joins Marina Warner to explore the many puzzles of the Alice books. They discuss the way Carroll illuminates other questions raised in this series: of dream states, the nature of consciousness, the transformative power of language and the arbitrariness of authority. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrff In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsff Further reading in the LRB: Marina Warner: You Must Not Ask https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v18/n01/marina-warner/you-must-not-ask Dinah Birch: Never Seen A Violet https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n17/dinah-birch/never-seen-a-violet Marina Warner: Doubly Damned https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n03/marina-warner/doubly-damned Get the books: https://lrb.me/crbooklist Next episode: The stories of Franz Kafka, with Adam Thirlwell. Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB. Anna Della Subin’s study of men who unwittingly became deities, Accidental Gods, was published in 2022. She has been writing for the LRB since 2014. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    16 min

  3. 31 MAR

    Conversations in Philosophy: 'Autobiography' by John Stuart Mill

    Mill’s 'Autobiography' was considered too shocking to publish while he was alive. Behind his musings on many of the philosophical and political preoccupations of his time lie the confessions of a deeply repressed man who knows that he’s deeply repressed, coming to terms with the uncompromising educational experiment his father subjected him to as a child – described by Isaiah Berlin as ‘an appalling success’. In this episode Jonathan and James discuss Mill’s startlingly honest account of this experience and the breakdown that ensued in his 20s, and the boldness of his life and thought from his views on socialism and the rights of women to his unwavering devotion to his wife, Harriet Taylor, the co-author of 'On Liberty' and other works. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcip In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscip Further reading in the LRB: Sissela Bok on Mill's 'Autobiography': https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n06/sissela-bok/his-father-s-children Alasdair MacIntyre: Mill's Forgotten Victory https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n20/alasdair-macintyre/john-stuart-mill-s-forgotten-victory Panbkaj Mishra: Bland Fanatics https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n23/pankaj-mishra/bland-fanatics Next Episode F.H. Bradley's 'My Station and Its Duties' can be found online here: https://archive.org/details/ethicalstudies0000brad/page/160/mode/2up Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    14 min

  4. 24 MAR

    Novel Approaches: ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë

    When Wuthering Heights was published in December 1847, many readers didn’t know what to make of it: one reviewer called it ‘a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors’. In this episode of ‘Novel Approaches’, Patricia Lockwood and David Trotter join Thomas Jones to explore Emily Brontë’s ‘completely amoral’ novel. As well as questions of Heathcliff’s mysterious origins and ‘obscene’ wealth, of Cathy’s ghost, bad weather, gnarled trees, even gnarlier characters and savage dogs, they discuss the book’s intricate structure, Brontë’s inventive use of language and the extraordinary hold that her story continues to exert over the imaginations of readers and non-readers alike. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrna In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsna Read more in the LRB: David Trotter: Heathcliff Redounding https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n09/david-trotter/heathcliff-redounding John Bayley: Kitchen Devil https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n24/john-bayley/kitchen-devil Alice Spawls: If It Weren’t for Charlotte https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n22/alice-spawls/if-it-weren-t-for-charlotte Patricia Lockwood: What a Bear Wants https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n16/patricia-lockwood/pull-off-my-head Get the books: https://lrb.me/crbooklist Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    27 min

  5. 17 MAR

    Love and Death: ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ by Thomas Gray

    Situated on the cusp of the Romantic era, Thomas Gray’s work is a mixture of impersonal Augustan abstraction and intense subjectivity. ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ is one of the most famous poems in the English language, and continues to exert its influence on contemporary poetry. Mark and Seamus explore three of Gray’s elegiac poems and their peculiar emotional power. They discuss Gray’s ambiguous sexuality, his procrastination and class anxieties, and where his humour shines through – as in his elegy for Horace Walpole’s cat. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrld In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsld Further reading in the LRB: John Mullan: Unpranked Lyre https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n24/john-mullan/unpranked-lyre Tony Harrison: ‘V.’ https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v07/n01/tony-harrison/v Get the books: https://lrb.me/crbooklist Read the texts online: https://www.thomasgray.org/texts/poems/sorw https://www.thomasgray.org/texts/poems/elcc https://www.thomasgray.org/texts/poems/odfc Next episode: Mid-20th century elegies: Berryman, Lowell, Bishop Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    15 min

  6. 10 MAR

    Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Invisible Cities’ by Italo Calvino

    Italo Calvino’s novella Invisible Cities is a hypnagogic reimagining of Marco Polo’s time in the court of Kublai Khan. Polo describes 55 impossible places – cities made of plumbing, free-floating, overwhelmed by rubbish, buried underground – that reveal something true about every city. Marina and Anna Della read Invisible Cities alongside the Travels of Marco Polo, and explore how both blur the lines between reality and fantasy, storyteller and audience. They discuss the connections between Calvino’s love of fairytales and his anti-fascist politics, and why he saw the fantastic as a mode of truth-telling. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrff In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsff Further reading in the LRB: Salman Rushdie: Calvino https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v03/n17/salman-rushdie/calvino James Butler: Infinite Artichoke https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n12/james-butler/infinite-artichoke Jonathan Coe: Calvinoism https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n06/jonathan-coe/calvinoism Next episode: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB. Anna Della Subin’s study of men who unwittingly became deities, Accidental Gods, was published in 2022. She has been writing for the LRB since 2014. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    16 min

  7. 3 MAR

    Conversations in Philosophy: 'Circles' and other essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Circular reasoning is normally condemned by philosophers, but in his 1841 essay ‘Circles’, Emerson proposes that not getting anywhere is precisely what we need to do to find out where we already are. In this episode, Jonathan and James consider Emerson’s use of the circle to demonstrate an idealistic philosophy rooted in the natural world, in which individuals are bounded by self-created horizons, and the extent to which this fits with Transcendentalist notions of progress and independence. They also discuss what his other essays, including ‘Self-Reliance’, ‘Art’ and ‘Nature’, have to say about the importance of thinking one’s own thoughts, and why Emerson had such a powerful influence on writers as varied as Nietzsche, Saul Bellow and Louisa May Alcott. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrcip In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingscip Read 'Circles' here: https://emersoncentral.com/texts/essays-first-series/circles/ Read more in the LRB: Tony Tanner on the life of Emerson: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n10/tony-tanner/arctic-habits Colin Burrow on the American canon: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n22/colin-burrow/the-magic-bloomschtick Next episode: John Stuart Mill's Autobiography Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    15 min

  8. 24 FEB

    Novel Approaches: 'Crotchet Castle' by Thomas Love Peacock

    Thomas Love Peacock didn’t want to write novels, at least not in the form they had taken in the first half of the 19th century. In Crotchet Castle he rejects the expectation that novelists should reveal the interiority of their characters, instead favouring the testing of opinions and ideas. His ‘novel of talk’, published in 1831, appears largely like a playscript in which disparate characters assemble for a house party next to the Thames before heading up the river to Wales. Their debates cover, among other things, the Captain Swing riots of 1830, the mass dissemination of knowledge, the emerging philosophy of utilitarianism and the relative merits of medieval and contemporary values. In this episode Clare is joined by Freya Johnston and Thomas Keymer to discuss where the book came from and its use of ‘sociable argument’ to offer up-to-date commentary on the economic and political turmoil of its time. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrna In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsna Read more in the LRB: Thomas Keymer on Peacock https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n03/thomas-keymer/bring-some-madeira Paul Foot: The not-so-great Reform Act https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v26/n09/paul-foot/shoy-hoys Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    36 min
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    Close Readings is a new multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books. Two contributors explore areas of literature through a selection of key works, providing an introductory grounding like no other. Listen to some episodes for free here, and extracts from our ongoing subscriber-only series. How To Subscribe In Apple Podcasts, click 'subscribe' at the top of this podcast feed to unlock the full episodes. Or for other podcast apps, sign up here: https://lrb.me/closereadings RUNNING IN 2025: 'Conversations in Philosophy' with Jonathan Rée and James Wood 'Fiction and the Fantastic' with Marina Warner, Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis 'Love and Death' with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford 'Novel Approaches' with Clare Bucknell, Thomas Jones and other guests ALSO INCLUDED IN THE CLOSE READINGS SUBSCRIPTION: 'Among the Ancients' with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones 'Medieval Beginnings' with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley 'The Long and Short' with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry 'Modern-ish Poets: Series 1' with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry 'Among the Ancients II' with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones 'On Satire' with Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell 'Human Conditions' with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards 'Political Poems' with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry 'Medieval LOLs' with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Information

    • Channel
      London Review of Books
    • Creator
      London Review of Books
    • Years Active
      2023 - 2025
    • Episodes
      143
    • Rating
      Clean
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      © London Review of Books
    • Show Website
      Close Readings
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      LRB Limited has identified itself as a trader for this podcast and confirmed that this product or service complies with European Union law. Address 28-30 Little Russell Street London WC1A 2HN United Kingdom Phone Number +44 7938602505 Email podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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