What’s the one book that cracks a reader open (and up), and never quite lets them go? For novelist and reviewer Philip Hensher, that book is Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, a sprawling, fog-bound masterpiece that first reached readers not as a single volume but as a serial, unspooling across 20 monthly instalments from March 1852 to September 1853. In this episode of The Lit Path, Hensher sits down with Jack Aldane to explain why Bleak House has earned a permanent place in his personal canon of life-changing literature. It’s a conversation that moves from the mechanics of Dickens’s serialised storytelling to the bigger question of what makes a novel truly interesting. The timing couldn’t be better. Hensher’s own A History of the Novel in Britain is out on 3 September, and with 2026 designated the UK’s National Year of Reading, Hensher has turned his erudite eye to the question of which novels really do belong in the country’s Top 100 lists of all time. Philip does not believe in male brains or female brains, but he does believe that male readers, as they’ve grown up to exist today, are badly sold on the novel. Novels are not a splash of colour or fuzziness in an otherwise cold, mechanical world, he argues. Rather, they provide the inquisitive, dismantling and problem-solving imagination (attributes for which young boys are often given ‘How-To’ books) with a means of deep exploration and education. And no-one does this better than Dickens! Whether you’re a Dickens devotee, a lit list-sceptic, or interested in the shortcomings of modern publishing, this one’s for you. The Lit Path's mission is to engage with the crisis of masculinity head-on by looking to the transformative power of the novel for wisdom. Each episode will feature a guest — they could be an athlete, a musician, a writer, broadcaster, comedian, entrepreneur or public servant - reflecting on the novel that has resolutely altered their perspective and made them wiser as a result. Whether an episode involves a man telling his story, or someone telling that of someone they know, love or admire, the show will uncover how fiction not self-help manuals, not productivity guides, not scientific explanations of phenomena) can change the depth and texture of a man's inner and outer world. Against the broader backdrop of men's mental health challenges, The Lit Path addresses two main concerns: That male literacy, including pleasure in reading, lags significantly behind that of women and girls, andThat many male readers demonstrate a marked bias toward non-fiction titles that trade on facts, systems thinking, and broadly rational solutions to life's myriad challenges. While such books have their value, The Lit Path asks instead: What happens when men turn away from the quantifiable world and towards the psychological, moral, and emotional vistas opened up by great works of fiction? Follow The Lit Path and Subscribe to our Substack X: @thelitpathpod BlueSky: @thelitpath Instagram: @thelitpathpod TikTok: @litpathpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
