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London Review of Books
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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

  1. HACE 19 H • SÓLO PARA PERSONAS CON SUSCRIPCIÓN

    London Revisited: The Protestant Capital

    At the start of the 16th century London was still recognisably medieval, crowded within its walls, dominated by churches and monasteries and deeply tied to Catholic Europe. By the end of Henry VIII’s reign, much of that world had vanished. The Reformation not only changed the religious practices of its inhabitants, it brought a widespread transfer of property that reshaped the character and activity of the city and turned it into a theatre of power, punishment and debate. Rosemary is joined by Vanessa Harding, emerita professor of London history at Birkbeck, University of London, to look at the events that transformed London into a commercially expanding and ideological contested Protestant capital under the Tudors, from the arrival of Caxton’s printing press in Westminster and the beginnings of an aristocratic West End, to Mary I’s brutal attempt to restore Catholic England. Read more in the LRB: Hilary Mantel on England under Mary I: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep504⁠ Lucy Wooding on Henry VIII and the merchants: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep502⁠ Patrick Collinson on Henry VIII's Reformation: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep503

    1 h 12 min

  2. HACE 2 DÍAS

    What do you think of Close Readings?

    Have you got four minutes to share your feedback on Close Readings? It will help shape how we develop the podcast over the coming year. We’ve set up a short survey here: https://lrb.me/survey Thanks for your time, and for listening to our podcasts.

    27 s

  3. 10 MAY • SÓLO PARA PERSONAS CON SUSCRIPCIÓN

    Narrative Poems: ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ by Robert Burns and ‘Peter Grimes’ by George Crabbe

    ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ first appeared as a lengthy footnote in Francis Grose's Antiquities of Scotland (1791) after Robert Burns convinced Grose to include the ruined Alloway Kirk in his volume, and its supernatural associations (invented by Burns). Its story of the drunken Tam's encounter with witches in the stormy Ayrshire landscape has served as both a celebration and chastisement of Scottish masculinity ever since its publication, but the attitude of its narrator remains elusive throughout. In this episode, Seamus and Mark discuss the poem’s moral and stylistic turns, its influence on Wordsworth and Coleridge, and what it owes to the Augustan perfectionism of Pope. They then turn to a much darker example of Romantic narrative poetry, George Crabbe’s ‘Peter Grimes’ (published in his collection The Borough in 1810), and explore the bracing realism and psychological insight in the story of a cruel Suffolk fisherman who destroys the apprentices placed in his care. This episode also features a bonus conversation with Andrew O’Hagan, who reads extracts from 'Tam o’ Shanter' and explains why the poem’s reliably contradictory narrative voice is so useful for anyone learning to write stories. Read more in the LRB: Karl Miller: Peeping Tam: https://lrb.me/npep501 Neal Ascherson on Burns's life: https://lrb.me/npep502

    1 h 26 min

  4. 3 MAY • SÓLO PARA PERSONAS CON SUSCRIPCIÓN

    Nature in Crisis: 'Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth' by James Lovelock

    In ‘Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth’ (1979), James Lovelock proposed that the Earth is something like a single living organism, capable of manipulating its circumstances and the environment to suit its needs. While many scientists reject the fullest formulation of this idea, it has nonetheless had a profound influence on our understanding of the ways in which animal and plant life interact with the non-living parts of the environment, to the extent that observations in biological and earth systems science are often assessed for which version of Gaia they might support. In this episode, Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith look at the origins of the Gaia hypothesis in the radical work of Lynn Margulis and the contributions of Lovelock’s academic collaborator Dian Hitchcock, and in the science of cybernetics. They then consider the degree to which any formulation of Gaia can explain certain processes, from the impact of the ecological competition between daisies on the reflection of solar radiation to the carbon-silicate cycle and its control of carbon dioxide levels, and consider some of Lovelock’s wilder theories, including his suggestion that humans should merge their minds with those of whales. Read more in the LRB: Meehan Crist on ‘Novocene’: https://lrb.me/natureep501 Peter Godfrey-Smith on Lovelock: https://lrb.me/natureep502

    1 h 18 min

  5. 26 ABR • SÓLO PARA PERSONAS CON SUSCRIPCIÓN

    Who’s afraid of realism? ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ by Leo Tolstoy

    In the late 1870s, shortly after the publication of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy experienced what might be described today as a midlife crisis. In his short autobiographical book ‘A Confession’, finished in 1880, he questioned what meaning there is in life that is not annihilated by the inevitability of death. His answer was to live according to God’s law, a realisation that shaped that rest of his life and writing, and guides the story of his late masterpiece, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ (1886). To discuss ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich‘ and its place both in Tolstoy’s work and the development of realism, James is joined by the novelist Elif Batuman. They consider the way Tolstoy takes up Flaubert’s contempt for bourgeois life and strips it down to a spare fable of delusion and awakening, and why the unique authority of his style has proved so resistant to the critiques of realism in the 20th century. Read more in the LRB: Michael Wood on War and Peace: ⁠https://lrb.me/realismep501⁠ James Meek on the death of Tolstoy: ⁠https://lrb.me/realismep502⁠ John Bayley on Tolstoy's diaries: ⁠https://lrb.me/realismep503⁠

    1 h 20 min

  6. 23 ABR • SÓLO PARA PERSONAS CON SUSCRIPCIÓN

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

    Mary Shelley signed off her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein by bidding her ‘hideous progeny go forth and prosper’. In this episode of The Man Behind the Curtain, Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones look at the machinery that Shelley used to assemble her immortal creature and bring it to life. As well as its origins and afterlives, they consider the many systems that the novel draws on, challenges, reproduces and mutates – the laws of nature, philosophy, science, the human body, the traditional family – and ask whether the real horror at the heart of Frankenstein is not the creature so much as incest. The Man Behind the Curtain is a bonus Close Readings series running this year. The next episode will be on ‘Middlemarch’, released in a couple of months. Read more in the LRB: Anne Barton on Mary Shelley: ⁠https://lrb.me/frankensteincr01⁠ Caroline Gonda on the original Frankenstein: ⁠https://lrb.me/frankensteincr02

    1 h 20 min

  7. 19 ABR • SÓLO PARA PERSONAS CON SUSCRIPCIÓN

    London Revisited: Plague, Rebellion and Guilds

    If historians of medieval London had a patron saint, it might well be Edward I. While many English monarchs chose to leave London to its own devices, Edward decided from the start of his reign in 1272 to put pressure on the city to justify its liberties. The result was a profusion of bureaucracy, most notably in the Letter Books, that describe the life of London and its people in vivid detail, from disputes, petitions and regulations to the names of all the city’s apprentices. This record-keeping was good for the city too, reinforcing a powerful system of guilds supporting hundreds of trades and a flourishing merchant and consumer culture. But when the Black Death arrived in England in 1348, London’s population was devastated, and its social and economic life transformed. In this episode, Rosemary is joined again by Matthew Davies, professor of urban history at Birkbeck, to continue the story of England’s capital through its rapid rise in the first half of the 14th century and a long period turmoil thereafter, including the Hundred Years’ War, the revolts of Wat Tyler and Jack Cade, and the Wars of the Roses. Read more in the LRB: Tom Johnson: No More Baubles: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrep401⁠

    1 h 44 min

  8. 12 ABR • SÓLO PARA PERSONAS CON SUSCRIPCIÓN

    Narrative Poems: ‘The Rape of the Lock’ by Alexander Pope

    Sometime in 1711, a twenty-year-old aristocrat, Lord Petre, snipped a lock of hair, without permission, from the head of Arabella Fermor, a celebrated beauty. The incident caused an irreconcilable rift between the two families, who were both Catholic. Shortly afterwards, the young poet Alexander Pope, also Catholic, was approached by a friend who suggested he turn the incident into a comic poem. The result was one of the bestselling poems of the age, ‘The Rape of the Lock’ (1712), a mock-epic that fused the grand styles of Homer, Virgil and Milton with an acerbic social satire, in which the gods are reimagined as airy sylphs guarding the honour of the heroine, Belinda. William Hazlitt wrote of the poem that ‘you hardly know whether to laugh or weep’, and in this episode Seamus and Mark discuss why Pope's masterpiece is at once the funniest poem in the English language and an essay on the seriousness of trivial things. Read more in the LRB: Claude Rawson on 'The Rape of the Lock': https://lrb.me/nppope01 Colin Burrow on Pope: https://lrb.me/nppope02

    1 h 3 min
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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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