The Scholar's Armchair

Dr. John Burton
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Great minds on the greatest ideas: Conversations with scholars on their area of expertise for a general audience. Less like a lecture, more a conversation with an expert. Check us out on YouTube!

  1. 2d ago

    A History of England in 25 Poems

    Can poetry act as a time machine into the past? What can a poem reveal about history that archaeology, chronicles and official records cannot?In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, Dr John Burton talks to Professor Catherine Clarke about her fascinating book A History of England in 25 Poems, which tells more than 1,300 years of English history through poetry.Beginning with Cædmon’s Hymn and travelling through medieval England, Chaucer, Thomas Wyatt, the Great Fire of London, Victorian Britain, the World Wars and into the present day, Catherine explores poetry as something more than a literary record. A poem can preserve traces of another person’s thoughts, emotions and imagination, allowing us to enter something of the psychological world of people who lived centuries before us. Her book describes poems as portals into the past, connecting us with the experiences and imaginations of those who lived through history. We discuss whether poetry can really be used as historical evidence, how poets have helped to create and challenge ideas of England and Englishness, who gets to tell a nation’s story, and what voices from the margins can reveal that conventional histories sometimes leave behind.We also explore some of the remarkable poems Catherine has chosen, from Cædmon and The Battle of Maldon to Chaucer, Wyatt, Tennyson, Edward Thomas, W. H. Auden, Geoffrey Hill and Grace Nichols.Catherine Clarke is Professor at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and Director of the Victoria County History of England. LINKS📖 Catherine Clarke, A History of England in 25 PoemsPublisher: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/461263/a-history-of-england-in-25-poems-by-clarke-catherine/9781802069624Buy me a coffee! ☕️ http://buymeacoffee.com/drjohnburtonIf you enjoy conversations about literature, history and the ideas that have shaped our culture, subscribe to The Scholar’s Armchair for more interviews with leading writers and scholars.#CatherineClarke #EnglishHistory #Poetry #EnglishLiterature #History #CaedmonsHymn #Chaucer #LiteraryHistory #TheScholarsArmchair

  2. Sep 27

    Eight Women Who Rewrote Their Lives | Prof Anne Fernald

    How much freedom do we really have to write the story of our own lives?In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, I speak with Anne E. Fernald about her new book, Her Own Voice: Eight Women Who Rewrote Life and Art.With Virginia Woolf and 'A Room of One’s Own' as a guiding presence, Anne tells the stories of eight remarkable twentieth-century women: Margaret Wise Brown, Eileen Chang, Vera Brittain, Muriel Rukeyser, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Una Marson, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Dorothy Arzner.We talk about what it means to find your own voice, why the stories we inherit can shape the lives we believe are possible, and what gives someone the courage to cross the threshold into a different kind of life. We also discuss wandering and uncertainty as creative forces, the freedom to change your mind, the relationship between art and political commitment, and the obstacles that remain even for women determined to make lives and careers on their own terms.Underlying our conversation is a question that reaches beyond these eight women: how far can any of us become the authors of our own lives, and how can we make possibilities available to those who come after us?LINKSHer Own Voice: Eight Women Who Rewrote Life and Art — Beacon Press:https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/816935/her-own-voice-by-anne-e-fernald/Anne Fernald:https://annefernald.com/If you've enjoyed this video you can buy me a coffee at: https://buymeacoffee.com/drjohnburton

  3. Sep 20

    Charles DICKENS and Victorian Psychology

    Was Charles Dickens not only one of the great novelists, but also one of the great psychologists of the Victorian age? In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, Dr John talks to Tyson Stolte, Associate Professor of English at New Mexico State University and author of Dickens and Victorian Psychology: Introspection, First-Person Narration, and the Mind. We explore a side of Dickens that is often overlooked: his fascination with consciousness and the workings of the human mind. How much can we really know about ourselves? What happens when the person experiencing a life becomes the person who later tells its story? How does memory shape our sense of identity? And what can novels such as David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations and The Mystery of Edwin Drood tell us about the Victorian struggle to understand the relationship between mind and body? We also discuss Dickens’s religious beliefs and the increasingly materialist science of the nineteenth century. For Dickens, questions about consciousness were ultimately bound up with a much larger question: if the mind is simply a product of the physical brain, what happens to the possibility of the immortal soul? It’s a conversation about Dickens, psychology, memory, introspection, religion and one of the most enduring questions of all: can we ever truly know ourselves? LINKS ☕️ Buy me a coffee! https://buymeacoffee.com/DrJohnBurton 👨‍🏫Tyson Stolte — New Mexico State University: https://english.nmsu.edu/people/tyson_stolte.html 📖 Dickens and Victorian Psychology: Introspection, First-Person Narration, and the Mind — Oxford University Press: https://academic.oup.com/book/44026

  4. Sep 13

    The Curious Relationship Between Modernism and Religion | Prof Annarose Steinke

    What happens to religion in poetry when belief itself becomes uncertain? In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, I speak with Professor Annarose Steinke about her book Religious Culture in Modernist Verse: Form, Belief, and Twentieth-Century Poetics. Steinke explores the fascinating and often unexpected ways that twentieth-century poets continued to draw upon Christian imagery, ritual and liturgy, even as traditional religious belief was being questioned and transformed. Our conversation takes us from Mina Loy and Gertrude Stein to T. S. Eliot, Basil Bunting and Thom Gunn. We discuss saints and sacred images, prayer and distraction, grief and memorial, and the curious relationship between poetic and religious forms. Why did these poets continue to return to the language and practices of religion? Can poetry make the invisible present? And can a poem, in some sense, do the work of a prayer? Annarose F. Steinke is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, where her research focuses particularly on modernist literature and poetry. Links: 👩🏻‍🏫Professor Steinke's university profile: https://www.unk.edu/academics/english/facultystaff/index.php 📖Religious Culture in Modernist Verse: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/religious-culture-in-modernist-verse-9781978771369/ ☕️If you enjoyed this video you can buy me a coffee!: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/DrJohnBurton Thanks! 🫶

  5. Sep 6

    When healthcare became a profession | Dr Karen Bloom Gevirtz

    How did medicine become something we buy? And what happened to the women who had provided much of our everyday healthcare for centuries? In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, I speak with Karen Bloom Gevirtz about her fascinating book The Apothecary’s Wife: The Hidden History of Medicine and How It Became a Commodity. We tend to think of the history of modern medicine as a straightforward story of progress: science replaced superstition, and trained medical professionals replaced unreliable folk remedies. But Gevirtz tells a much more complicated story. For centuries, women were responsible for much of the everyday medical care within households and communities. They grew and gathered ingredients, prepared medicines, kept recipe books and shared remedies with one another. During the Scientific Revolution, however, medicine increasingly moved out of the home and into the hands of predominantly male professionals. At the same time, something that had largely been shared within families and communities became something that people were expected to buy. We discuss how and why this transformation happened, the relationship between the Scientific Revolution and the commercialisation of medicine, the disappearance of women’s medical authority, and the rise of the prescription system. And we ask what this history can tell us about medicine today. What happens when medical knowledge becomes a commodity? How have assumptions about gender shaped medical research and treatment? And can we celebrate the extraordinary achievements of modern medicine while also asking what may have been lost along the way? Karen Bloom Gevirtz is an independent scholar specialising in early British literature and the history of science and medicine. LINKS 📖 The Apothecary’s Wife — University of California Press: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/the-apothecarys-wife/hardcover 🌐 Karen Bloom Gevirtz: https://www.karenbloomgevirtz.com/ 📸 Follow The Scholar’s Armchair on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thescholarsarmchair/ ☕ Support The Scholar’s Armchair on Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/DrJohnBurton If you enjoy thoughtful conversations about literature, history, philosophy and the ideas that shape our world, please like, subscribe and share the video. It helps more people discover The Scholar’s Armchair. The Scholar’s Armchair: great minds on the greatest ideas. #HistoryOfMedicine #KarenBloomGevirtz #TheApothecarysWife #WomensHistory #HistoryOfScience #MedicalHistory #ScientificRevolution #TheScholarsArmchair

  6. Aug 30

    How American was Renaissance England? | Dr Lauren Working

    How American was Shakespeare’s England? We tend to imagine the English Renaissance as the world of Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, Walter Raleigh and the great voyages of discovery. But what happens when we reverse the direction of travel and ask not simply what England did to the Americas, but what the Americas did to England? In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, I talk to historian Dr Lauren Working about her new book A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Renaissance England. We discuss the extraordinary objects and materials that connected Tudor and Stuart England with the Americas, from pearls, feathers and emeralds to tobacco and beaver fur. We explore the Indigenous knowledge, craftsmanship and labour behind these objects, the violence and exploitation that could accompany their journeys, and the surprising ways in which the Americas became part of the art, fashion and literature of Shakespeare’s England. And we ask a larger question: once we recognise these connections, do we need to rethink what we mean by the English Renaissance itself? LINKS: 📚 A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Renaissance England Publisher: Faber & Faber https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571393831-a-golden-world/ 🎓 Dr Lauren Working, University of York https://www.york.ac.uk/english/people/laurenworking/ The Scholar’s Armchair Great minds on the greatest ideas.

  7. Aug 23

    When WW2 writing becomes treason | Prof Marius Hentea

    Can words be treason? Can a writer be held responsible not simply for what they do, but for what they write? In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, I speak with Marius Hentea, Professor of Modern Anglophone Literature at the University of Poitiers, about his new book Literary Treason: Authors on Trial in the Wake of the Second World War. In the aftermath of the Second World War, writers and intellectuals found themselves investigated, prosecuted and publicly condemned for words they had written or broadcast. We discuss some of the extraordinary cases at the heart of Marius’s book, including Ezra Pound, P. G. Wodehouse, William Joyce and Knut Hamsun, and ask what happened when literature collided with propaganda, politics and the law. How much responsibility do writers bear for the consequences of their words? Does broadcasting for an enemy regime make the words themselves treasonous? Can we separate literary greatness from political betrayal? And when democracies punish dangerous speech, where should they draw the line between defending themselves and undermining freedom of expression? Literary Treason draws on extensive archival research and previously unseen trial material to explore these questions across Britain, the United States, France, Ireland, Norway and Romania. LINKS: 📚 Literary Treason — Bloomsbury Academic: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/literary-treason-9781350406919/ 🎓 Marius Hentea — University of Poitiers / FoReLLIS profile: https://forellis.labo.univ-poitiers.fr/membres/hentea-marius/ Literary Treason is also available as an open-access ebook, so it can be read online free of charge via Bloomsbury Collections. #LiteraryTreason #Literature #WWII #EzraPound #PGWodehouse #FreeSpeech #LiteraryHistory #TheScholarsArmchair

  8. Aug 16

    Can MYSTICISM Free us from Ourselves? | Prof Simon Critchley

    What does mysticism have to offer us in a secular age? Have we lost not only religious faith, but our capacity for wonder, ecstasy and experiences that take us beyond ourselves? In this episode of The Scholar’s Armchair, I speak with philosopher Simon Critchley about his book On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy. Mysticism, Critchley argues, need not mean supernatural visions or religious belief. It can instead be understood as a way of breaking out of our habitual ways of thinking and experiencing the world, opening ourselves to something larger than the isolated self. Our conversation ranges from Hamlet and the melancholy of modern life to Julian of Norwich, T. S. Eliot, music, love and the strange possibility of ecstasy. We ask why philosophy has so often been suspicious of mysticism, what literature can tell us that philosophy cannot, and whether art and music might provide forms of mystical experience even for those who don’t believe in God. Above all, we explore a question at the heart of Critchley’s book: can mysticism help us live more intensely, attentively and openly in the world? Links 📖 On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy | US edition: https://www.nyrb.com/products/mysticism UK edition: https://profilebooks.com/work/on-mysticism/ 🎓 Simon Critchley — Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at The New School for Social Research: https://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/simon-critchley/ 📷 Follow The Scholar’s Armchair on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thescholarsarmchair The Scholar’s Armchair: great minds on the greatest ideas. #SimonCritchley #Mysticism #Philosophy #Literature #TSeliot #JulianOfNorwich #Hamlet #Books #TheScholarsArmchair

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Great minds on the greatest ideas: Conversations with scholars on their area of expertise for a general audience. Less like a lecture, more a conversation with an expert. Check us out on YouTube!

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  • Creator
    Dr. John Burton
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    34
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Dr. John Burton
  • Show Website
    The Scholar's Armchair

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