Secret Life of Books

Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole
  • 4.9 (93)
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Every book has two stories: the one it tells, and the one it hides.The Secret Life of Books is a fascinating, addictive, often shocking, occasionally hilarious weekly podcast starring Sophie Gee, an English professor at Princeton University, and Jonty Claypole, formerly director of arts at the BBC. Every week these virtuoso critics and close friends take an iconic book and reveal the hidden story behind the story: who made it, their clandestine motives, the undeclared stakes, the scandalous backstory and above all the secret, mysterious meanings of books we thought we knew.-- 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: https://patreon.com/SecretLifeofBooks528?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shorts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  1. 2d ago • Subscribers Only

    Bleak House Book Club: Part 4

    At the top of Dickens’s 4th installment of Bleak House, Mr. Tulkinghorn waits nervously in the dark outside Nemo’s room while creepy Krook fetches another candle. But Nemo is dead! His death catalyzes another classic Dickensian sequence about the failings of the legal system when the coroner’s inquest gets underway, and fails to reveal Nemo’s true identity or the deeper cause of his death from an opium overdose. We meet the street-sweeper Jo, one of the novel’s most important sympathetic characters. In chapter 12, the Deadlocks return from a winter season at the Bristol in Paris (sounds pretty good) and host a large gathering at Chesney Wold: cue more Dickensian satire on the upper classes, corrupt electoral system and the House of Lords. But the real drumbeat involves Tulkinghorn’s secretive, lurking efforts to learn who Nemo was, and Lady Deadlock’s efforts to appear careless and indifferent about it. In the third part of the installment Esther’s narrative turns to solving the problem of Richard. We learn the origins of his irresolution and inability to form future plans, while Richard and Ada fall madly in love. To round out the chapter we learn (in a bravura piece of unreliable narration) that Esther has so far failed  to mention “a gentleman of a dark complexion: a young surgeon,” to whom she’s taken a fancy.

    Bleak House Book Club: Part 4

  2. 3d ago

    The Odyssey 3: Tennyson's Ulysses

    Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses” might just be the greatest Odyssey re-write of all time, even though it starts several years after Homer’s mighty epic ends.   “Ulysses” is a dramatic monologue in blank verse in which the aging Ulysses prepares to leave Ithaca for one last voyage into the unknown. Its famous last line - to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield - inspired Victorians - and continues to inspire us too. It wasn’t published until later in his writing life, but it was written early on after the unexpected death of his greatest friend, Arthur Hallam.   Part of the young Tennyson’s brilliance was the way he reinvented ancient myths and stories to encompass modern ideas as well as his own violently fluctuating mood state. Over the course of his life, he produced a long Arthurian epic, re-popularizing the legends of King Arthur. He also wrote several poems set in the Homeric world of The Odyssey. These include Tiresias - a friend of the show; The Lotus-Eaters and - the subject of this episode - Ulysses.    Here in the SLOB studios we were high-fiving and doing victory laps in celebration of Tennyson’s achievement before we even started recording. We might enjoy this version of the Odyssey more than we’re going to enjoy Matt Damon’s version, though obviously we can’t wait to see it. In short, SLOB stands with Prime Minister Robert Peel, who when he first heard the poem said that he recognized a ‘good speech’ when he heard one and awarded Tennyson a much-needed government pension on the spot.  Become a subscriber by signing up at Apple: http://apple.co/slob Or join our Patreon community here: https://www.patreon.com/c/secretlifeofbookspodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Odyssey 3: Tennyson's Ulysses

  3. Jul 7

    The Odyssey 2: How the Odyssey conquered the world

    We’re in another SLoB code red. Only months after Wuthering Heights smashed onto our screens, Christopher Nolan is here for the blockbuster event of the season, taking the one of the oldest and still greatest epics of all time - Homer’s Odyssey - and giving it what it always lacked. That is to say: Matt Damon.  And not just Matt Damon, but Zendaya, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Travis Scott, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o, Samantha Morton - and the list goes on. Basically, if you’re an actor and NOT in this film, it’s like discovering you’re the only one in class not invited to a party.  If you’re feeling daunted by the scale and import of both this film and the source material - don’t worry. SLoB is here to help you. We’ve donned our scrubs once again. We’ve got our critical defibrillators, suction devices and valve masks and we’re going to deliver you to the cinema ready to take on Homer and Nolan’s Odyssey.  We’ve republished the episode we did early in SloB on the Odyssey with Mary Beard. In this episode, we’re going to look at how the Odyssey shaped English literature in a portmanteau episode that will encompass everyone from Shakespeare to Keats, Toni Morrison to Margaret Atwood.  In coming episodes, we’re going to take deep dives into Tennyson’s Ulysses and review Nolan’s film. And then, as the dust settles, or the waters meet, we’re going to embark on arguably the greatest Odyssey re-write of all - James Joyce’s Ulysses - in a three part series that will take on each of the works in Joyce’s trilogy of Dubliners, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses itself.  Become a subscriber by signing up at Apple: http://apple.co/slob Or join our Patreon community here: https://www.patreon.com/c/secretlifeofbookspodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Odyssey 2: How the Odyssey conquered the world

  4. Jul 6

    The Odyssey 1: Mary Beard on Homer’s masterpiece

    To kick-start our series on the Odyssey, we're republishing a hit episode from early SLOB: a conversation with Dame Mary Beard, the world's favorite classicist. The Odyssey - where stories began. Probably written down around 7th century BC - give or take a few centuries either way - by somebody or somebodies who may or may not have been called Homer. Leaving aside these mysteries, what is the Odyssey really about, why is it so violent and why is Odysseus himself - the lord of the lies - such an unlikeable hero?  Who better to navigate this intellectual Scylla and historical Charybdis than Mary Beard? Sophie and Jonty listen in admiration as Mary describes discovering The Odyssey aged 14 - a self-proclaimed swot with aspirations to be scruffy and cool (or, in Sophie’s parlance, a ‘dag’). How it - or at least the several incidents in which Odysseus’ wife Penelope is told to shut up and go to her room by her own son - inspired Mary’s best-selling book Women and Power. And how the whole poem, which begins with the word ἄνδρα (man), is a riff on toxic masculinity millennia before Andrew Tate was even in a twinkle in Zeus’ eye.  And listen, pithy mortals, to Jonty as he repeatedly mangles Ancient Greek names, particularly the ‘Laestrygonians’, to Sophie as she - not for the first time in this podcast - tries and fails to make a convincing link to The Reformation, and to all of us as we advocate the benefits of an oil rubdown every evening. Further Reading: Emily Wilson, trans, The Odyssey Mary Beard books: Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard (Profile Books, 2019) Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations by Mary Beard (Profile Books, 2013)  The Parthenon by Mary Beard (Harvard University Press, 2002) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Odyssey 1: Mary Beard on Homer’s masterpiece

  5. Jul 2 • Subscribers Only

    Bleak House Book Club: Part 3

    Dickens published this third section of Bleak House, chapters 8-10, in May 1851. Day breaks on Esther's first morning at Bleak House. Our heroine wakes to her new life with Mr. Jarndyce, Ada and Richard, and watches out of her window as the darkness and mists lift to reveal the surrounding countryside. Sophie and Jonty indulge in a spirited discussion about what fog and mists mean, and how Dickens is using the allegory to explore his characters' developing sense of their hidden identities. Over breakfast the child-like Mr. Skimpole gives a cute shout-out to the political philosophy of Bernard Mandeville in his 18th century classic, The Fable of the Bees. We meet Jarndyce's old schoolfriend, Lawrence Boythorn, a massive, noisy man, devoted to a tiny yellow canary. Dickens' second chronic do-gooder of the novel, Mrs. Pardiggle, appears with her wretchedly put-upon children. In a heart-rending scene at a brickmaker's cottage we see the vast disconnect between Mrs. P's judgy interference in the lives of the poor and the complex realities of their lives and emotional experiences. In chapter 10, the story shifts gear to London, and we're back in the world of Chancery and the turbulence of the legal profession. Mr. Tulkinghorn shows up at a Law Stationer's office to learn the identity of the mysterious man whose handwriting caused Lady Deadlock to faint. This section ends on one of Dickens's hallmark cliffhangers - get ready for big drama!

    Bleak House Book Club: Part 3

  6. Jun 30

    The Declaration of Independence at 250

    It’s been called most influential document ever signed. And it’s been called tokenistic and compromising, a piece of writing written by a committee. The great political economist Jeremy Bentham called it “a "hodge-podge of confusion and absurdity in which the thing to be proved is all along taken for granted.”  The Declaration of Independence was drafted by the lawyer, philosopher and statesman Thomas Jefferson, and it made the United States of America an independent nation in 1776, throwing off British colonial rule. Its signing triggered waves of similar declarations around the world. By 1826 more than 20 similar declarations had issued forth from Europe, the Caribbean and Spanish America and hundreds of others would follow. It was not the first declaration of its kind at all, but it would become the most famous. This July, American independence turns 250, and it is under scrutiny all over the world as possibly the most complicated and contradictory exercise in nation-building in human history. Join Sophie and Jonty for a deep dive into this landmark political document, which also became an instant literary classic. Become a subscriber by signing up at Apple: http://apple.co/slob Or join our Patreon community here: https://www.patreon.com/c/secretlifeofbookspodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Declaration of Independence at 250

  7. Jun 23

    TS Eliot 2: The Waste Land

    After the triumph of Prufrock and other Observations, TS Eliot almost steered the car into the ditch, poetically and personally. Under the influence of his friend, the fascist poet Ezra Pound - a man who later achieved notoriety for his enthusiastic support of Hitler during the Second World War - Eliot’s second collection of poems reveled in antisemitism, misogyny and willful obscurity. He even wrote poems in French. Pretentious, moi?   In this episode, we show how just in the time - with the beret almost on his head - Eliot managed to cast it aside, regain control of the wheel, and steer the vehicle away from the boulevards of Paris into the waste land. As ever, our question is: how?    In the hyperbolic spirit of a Discovery channel documentary, we think it’s fair to say that The Waste Land, published in two magazines in1922, then by Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth press in 1923, changed the world FOREVER.   For readers at the time, Eliot captured the spiritual malaise of Europe after the first World War. Nobody could definitively explain the poem - although many had their theories - but it captured more than any realist novel the spirit of the age. It influenced many of the greatest books of the 20th Century, including The Great Gatsby, Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust, Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye and many books of poetry. We ourselves are guilty of having written utter bollocks about this poem during our undergraduate years. In consequence of which, we tremble before our microphones for this week’s episode. Become a subscriber by signing up at Apple: http://apple.co/slob Or join our Patreon community here: https://www.patreon.com/c/secretlifeofbookspodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    TS Eliot 2: The Waste Land

  8. Jun 18 • Subscribers Only

    Bleak House Book Club: Part 2

    Chapters 4-7 of Bleak House was the second serialized installment from Dickens’s novel. Esther wakes after a difficult night Chez Jellyby, and looks out a window so encrusted with grime that it would make a midsummer’s day seem dark. Caddy, thoroughly disgusted with herself and her family, suggests that they head out into the streets of London to avoid the hungover servants, smoking fires, mess from last night’s dinner and total absence of breakfast in the Jellybys' household. Walking near Chancery, Esther, Ada, Richard and Caddy re-meet the curious Miss Flyte, who lives in a grim tenement with Krook, a rag and bottle merchant, and an unseen scrivener referred to as Nemo (no, he's not a clownfish). We’re introduced to the hidden domestic conditions of the London poor, one of the abiding preoccupations of this novel. In Chapter 5, at last, we arrive at Bleak House, lights ablaze on a dark night. We meet Mr. Jarndyce, Esther’s mysterious benefactor. We have a first encounter with Mr. Skimpole, Jarndyce’s childlike, fey, maddening schoolfriend and the debt collector Coavinses, both of whom come straight out of the Dickens Central Casting pipeline. In Chapter 7 the action returns to the omniscient narrator. We learn why the terrace outside the Deadlock’s house in Chesney Wold is called “The Ghost Walk,” and why the story unfolding in Bleak House is connected to centuries of English political and social unrest, stretching back to the Civil War and the Peasants’ Revolt.

    Bleak House Book Club: Part 2
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4.9
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About

Every book has two stories: the one it tells, and the one it hides.The Secret Life of Books is a fascinating, addictive, often shocking, occasionally hilarious weekly podcast starring Sophie Gee, an English professor at Princeton University, and Jonty Claypole, formerly director of arts at the BBC. Every week these virtuoso critics and close friends take an iconic book and reveal the hidden story behind the story: who made it, their clandestine motives, the undeclared stakes, the scandalous backstory and above all the secret, mysterious meanings of books we thought we knew.-- 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: https://patreon.com/SecretLifeofBooks528?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shorts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    174
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Secret Life of Books
  • Show Website
    Secret Life of Books
  • Provider
    Sophie Gee

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