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24/12/2025

Novel Approaches: ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens

Did Dickens ruin Christmas? He was certainly a pioneer in exploiting its commercial potential. A Christmas Carol sold 6,000 copies in five days when it was published on 19 December 1843, and Dickens went on to write four more lucrative Christmas books in the 1840s. But in many ways, this ‘ghost story of Christmas’ couldn’t be less Christmassy. The plot displays Dickens’s typical obsession with extracting maximum sentimentality from the pain and death of his characters, and the narrative voice veers unnervingly from preachy to creepy in its voyeuristic obsessions with physical excess. The book also offers a stiff social critique of the 1834 Poor Law and a satire on Malthusian ideas of population control. In this bonus episode from ‘Novel Approaches’, part of our Close Readings podcast, Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell join Tom to consider why Dickens’s dark tale has remained a Christmas staple. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠ AUDIO GIFTS Close Readings and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiogifts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
14/04/2023

Among the Ancients: Sophocles

In the fourth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom ask: what was it like to go to the theatre in Athens in 468 BC? And how far do modern ideas about tragedy, derived from Aristotle, apply to Sophocles’ plays? They then look in more detail at Oedipus Tyrannos and Antigone and what the plays have to say about agency and knowledge, and consider issues particular to Sophocles’ time, including civic responsibility and the role of immigrants in Athenian society. Non-subscribers can only hear extracts from most of the episodes in this series. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Further reading in the LRB: High Lloyd Jones: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n24/hugh-lloyd-jones/gods-and-heroes James Davidson: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v21/n19/james-davidson/an-easy-lay Emily Wilson is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and translator of the 'Odysse'y and the 'Iliad'. Thomas Jones is an editor at the London Review of Books and host of the LRB Podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Episodio 10

Stories by Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges was a librarian with rock star status, a stimulus for magical realism who was not a magical realist, and a wholly original writer who catalogued and defined his own precursors. It’s fitting that he was fascinated by paradoxes, and his most famous stories are fantasias on themes at the heart of this series: dreams, mirrors, recursion, labyrinths, language and creation. Marina and Chloe explore Borges’s fiction with particular focus on two stories: ‘The Circular Ruins’ and ‘The Aleph’. They discuss the many contradictions and puzzles in his life and work, and the ways in which he transformed the writing of his contemporaries, successors and distant ancestors. 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: Michael Wood on Borges’s collected fiction: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v21/n03/michael-wood/productive-mischief⁠ Colm Toíbìn on Borges’s life: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v28/n09/colm-toibin/don-t-abandon-me⁠ Marina Warner on enigmas and riddles: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n03/marina-warner/doubly-damned⁠ Daniel Wassbeim on Sur and Borges’s circle: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n05/daniel-waissbein/dying-for-madame-ocampo⁠ Next episode: Marina and Chloe discuss The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington.
29/11/2025

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 ‘Nature in Crisis’ with Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith ‘Narrative Poems’ with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford ‘London Revisited’ with Rosemary Hill and guests Bonus Series: 'The Man Behind the Curtain’ with Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones Episodes will appear on Monday every week, with a new episode from each series appearing every four weeks. Episodes from our bonus series, ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’, will come out every couple of months, either as extra episodes or live events: look out for announcements! If you're not already a subscriber, sign up for just £4.99/month or £49.99/year to listen to these series plus all our past series in full: Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/crintro2026apple⁠ Spotify and other podcast apps: ⁠https://lrb.me/crintro2026sc⁠ Here are the works covered in each series: ‘Who’s Afraid of Realism?’ with James Wood and guests Flaubert, 'Madame Bovary' Dostoevsky, 'Notes from Underground' Stories by Anton Chekhov Tolstoy, 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' Kafka, 'Metamorphosis' Woolf, 'Mrs Dalloway' Rhys, 'Voyage in the Dark' Bellow, 'Seize The Day' Nabokov, 'Pnin' Spark, 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' Sharma, 'Family Life' Stories by Lydia Davis Riley, 'My Phantoms' ‘Nature in Crisis’ with Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith Carson, 'Silent Spring' Schlanger, 'The Light Eaters' Czerski, 'The Blue Machine' Lovelock, 'Gaia' Macfarlane, 'Is a River Alive?' Kimmerer, 'Braiding Sweetgrass' Raboteau, 'Lessons for Survival' Moore and Roberts, 'The Rise of Ecofascism' Riofrancos, 'Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism' And more TBD ‘Narrative Poems’ with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford Marlowe, ‘Hero and Leander’ Shakespeare, ‘Venus and Adonis’ and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ Milton, Book 9 of ‘Paradise Lost’ Pope, ‘The Rape of the Lock’ Coleridge ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ Wordsworth, ‘The Ruined Cottage’ and ‘Michael’ Keats, ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ Browning, ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’ Clough, ‘Amours de Voyage’ Tennyson, ‘Enoch Arden’ H.D., ‘Helen in Egypt’ Seth, ‘The Golden Gate’ Carson, ‘Autobiography of Red and ‘Red Doc>’ ‘London Revisited’ with Rosemary Hill Each episode will cover a period of London’s history and begin with a piece of writing. The first episode, on Roman London, will start with an extract from Dio Cassius’s account of the Roman conquest from his Roman History. ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’ with Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones Cervantes, 'Don Quixote' Shelley, 'Frankenstein' Eliot, 'Middlemarch' Joyce, 'Ulysses' Ellison, 'Invisible Man' Pynchon, 'Gravity’s Rainbow'
Episodio 10

'Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions' by Jean-Paul Sartre

What is an emotion? In his 'Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions' (1939), Sartre picks up what William James, Martin Heidegger and others had written about this question to suggest what he believed to be a new thought on human emotion and its relation to consciousness. For Sartre, the emotions are not external forces acting upon consciousness but an action of consciousness as it tries to rearrange the world to suit itself, or as he puts it at the end of his book: a sudden fall of consciousness into magic. In this episode Jonathan and James discuss why Sartre’s rejection of the idea of the subconscious is not as much a departure from Freud’s theories as he thought they were, and the ways in which his attempt to establish a ‘phenomenological psychology’ manifested in other works, including Nausea, Being and Nothingness and The Words. Note: Readers should use the translation by Philip Mairet. The earlier one by Bernard Frechtman, as Jonathan explains in the episode, contains numerous (often amusing) errors. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to 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: Jonathan Rée on 'Being and Nothingness': ⁠https://lrb.me/cipsartre1⁠ Sissela Bok on Sartre's life: ⁠https://lrb.me/cipsartre2⁠ Edwards Said's encounter with Sartre: ⁠https://lrb.me/cipsartre3⁠ Audiobooks from the LRB Including Jonathan Rée's 'Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre': https://lrb.me/audiobookscip
27 may

Juliet Mitchell & Frances Morris: Psychoanalysis and Feminism

When Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism was published in 1974 Freudianism was seen by most feminists as ineradicably patriarchal and inimical to the women’s movement. Mitchell’s brilliant exegesis, drawing on Lacan and Laing as well as Freud himself, instead sees Freud's asymmetrical view of masculinity and femininity as reflecting the realities of patriarchal culture, and seeks to use his critique of femininity to critique patriarchy itself. To mark a new edition of her seminal work from Verso Mitchell revisits its arguments in conversation with curator, art historian and writer Frances Morris who was, from January 2016 to February 2023, director of the Tate Modern. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
06/02/2019

Notes to Self: Emilie Pine and Katherine Angel

First published by Irish independent Tramp Press, Emilie Pine’s Notes to Self became a phenomenal word-of-mouth bestseller. Now picked up on this side of the water by Hamish Hamilton, Pine’s debut collection of autobiographical essays is a poignant, radically honest and fiercely intelligent account of the pains and joys of living as a woman in the 21st Century. She was in conversation with Katherine Angel, author of Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
24/03/2010

Peter Campbell and Julian Bell

Julian Bell and Peter Campbell talked about things that painters can and can't do, in particular about the relationship painters have had to old art and the limits and opportunities that arise from society, its technology and its institutions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
16/01/2019

Simon Garfield and Andy Miller: In Miniature

Simon Garfield – 'The schoolteacher who made the time fly, a one-man Blue Peter team for intelligent adults, a great British explainer’, according to the Observer – is never less, and usually much more, than entertaining. He was at the shop to talk about his latest book In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate The World, published by Canongate, and was in conversation with Andy Miller, presenter of Backlisted podcast and author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
11/06/2019

Mother Ship: Francesca Segal and Olivia Laing

‘Every new baby is its own crisis.’ The ‘mother ship’ of Francesca Segal’s memoir is the neonatal intensive care unit where she was confined for fifty-six days after the premature birth of her twin girls. Mother Ship (Chatto and Windus) is at once a celebration of female friendship, a medical thriller and a love poem to Segal’s daughters, from the acclaimed author of The Innocents and The Awkward Age. Segal was in conversation with Olivia Laing, whose first novel, Crudo, was published last year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Close Readings is a multi-series podcast 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 2026 'Who's afraid of realism?' with James Wood and guests 'Nature in Crisis' with Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith 'Narrative Poems' with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford 'London Revisited' with Rosemary Hill and guests Bonus Series: 'The Man Behind the Curtain' with Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones ALSO INCLUDED IN THE CLOSE READINGS SUBSCRIPTION: '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 '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

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Literatura
Marina Warner, Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis traverse the great parallel tradition of the literature of astonishment and wonder, dread and hope, from the 1001 Nights to Ursula K. Le Guin. 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. Texts include: The Thousand and One Nights Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels The Travels of Marco Polo Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass The stories of Franz Kafka James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: Written by Himself Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita Mary Shelley, Frankenstein Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet and works by Angela Carter, J.G. Ballard and Ursula K. Le Guin

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Literatura
Close Readings is a new multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books exploring different periods of literature through selections of key works. A new episode will appear every month from each of our Close Readings series running this year. This feed is identical to the 'free' version of Close Readings, which contains free extracts for non-subscribers. Subscribers can listen to all the full episodes in both feeds: https://podcasts.apple.com/ug/podcast/close-readings/id1669485143 FOUR NEW SERIES STARTING IN 2026! To be announced soon... 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 YOUR 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

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Literatura
Jonathan Rée and James Wood challenge a hundred years of academic convention by reuniting the worlds of philosophy and literature, as they consider how style, narrative, and the expression of ideas play through philosophical writers including Kierkegaard, Mill, Nietzsche, Woolf, Beauvoir and Camus. James Wood teaches literature at Harvard University and is a staff writer for The New Yorker as well as a contributor to the London Review of Books. His books include How Fiction Works, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self. Jonathan Rée is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and a freelance writer and philosopher. His most recent book on philosophy is Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English. Non-subscribers will only hear extracts from these episodes. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrcip⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingscip⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Filosofía
From dragons and one-eyed giants to divine visions and friendly otters, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley roam the strange and wonderful literary landscape of the Middle Ages, from Beowulf to Sir John Mandeville, by way of Chaucer, Sir Gawain and plenty of far-fetched romance. Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley are both writers and historians, and regular contributors to the London Review of Books. Medieval Beginnings is part of the Close Readings podcasts collection from the London Review of Books. To unlock all the episodes in this series, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: In Apple Directly at the top of this podcast or here: https://apple.co/3XTS9H8 In Spotify and other apps Here: lrb.me/closereadings

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Literatura
Were the Middle Ages funny? To answer that question, Mary Wellesley and Irina Dumitrescu hunt through some of the rudest, silliest and surprising works in English literature in search of the Medieval sense of humour. Mary Wellesley and Irina Dumitrescu are both writers and historians, and regular contributors to the London Review of Books. Sign up to listen to this series ad free and all our subscriber series in full, including Mary and Irina's twelve-part series Medieval Beginnings: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/medlolapplesignup In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignup Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Literatura

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The London Review of Books is Europe's leading magazine of culture and ideas. On our channel you'll find weekly discussions with our writers, literary events recorded at our central-London bookshop, and our pioneering Close Readings podcast, which explores different periods of literature through selections of key works. Sign up to access the full Close Readings subscription podcast.

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Full access to all our Close Readings series

Novel Approaches: ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens

Among the Ancients: Sophocles

Stories by Jorge Luis Borges

Next Year on Close Readings: Realism, Nature, Narrative Poems and a history of London

'Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions' by Jean-Paul Sartre

Juliet Mitchell & Frances Morris: Psychoanalysis and Feminism

Notes to Self: Emilie Pine and Katherine Angel

Peter Campbell and Julian Bell

Simon Garfield and Andy Miller: In Miniature

Mother Ship: Francesca Segal and Olivia Laing

Full access to all our Close Readings series

Medieval LOLs: Fabliaux

The Man Behind the Curtain: ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley

London Revisited: Pepys, Plague and Fire

Who’s afraid of realism? ‘Mrs Dalloway’ by Virginia Woolf

Medieval Beginnings: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Among the Ancients II: Herodotus

Medieval Beginnings: The Ancrene Wisse

Nature in Crisis: ‘Blue Machine’ by Helen Czerski

Who's afraid of realism? 'Madame Bovary' by Gustave Flaubert (part two)

Nature in Crisis: ‘Is a River Alive?’ by Robert Macfarlane

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