Book In
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- 13. Nov. 2026
Über den Podcast
Brothers Rupert and Charlie Fordham discuss all things English Literature. From Chaucer to the present day, covering drama, novels and poetry, they cover all the classics and much more, from the UK, Ireland, the US, Europe and the rest of the world. Informative but lighthearted, Book In is suitable for all readers, and will be helpful for students from school to degree level.
Both Rupert and Charlie have been keen readers all their lives and both studied English at university. For many years Charlie taught English at GCSE and A-level.
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Re-Release - Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Next week - Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. While we finish our reading for next week's episode, we hope you'll enjoy revisiting our February recording on Dickens' classic, Great …
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Next week - Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.
While we finish our reading for next week's episode, we hope you'll enjoy revisiting our February recording on Dickens' classic, Great Expectations.
Join us next week for Demon Copperhead, we'd love to hear any thoughts or questions you have on the novel in the meantime.
Contemporary Female Authors: Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell
Maggie O'Farrell's novel Hamnet was a massive international bestseller and a critical triumph. Published during Covid in 2020, its account of the tragic death of Wiliam Shakespeare's son Hamnet …
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Maggie O'Farrell's novel Hamnet was a massive international bestseller and a critical triumph. Published during Covid in 2020, its account of the tragic death of Wiliam Shakespeare's son Hamnet at the age of 11 is profoundly moving. O'Farrell was very clear that it is a work of fiction. In the book, Hamnet's twin sister Judith is perilously ill with the plague, but Hamnet finds himself able to swap places with her, and die so that she might live. Shakespeare and his wife Agnes live more or less separate lives - he in London and she in Stratford. In O'Farrell's version, she has a semi spiritual connection with nature and the forest, and understands how to use herbs and plants for medicinal purposes. Shakespeare's father John is a damaged and violent man. And in the novel, Shakespeare writes Hamlet partially as an act of atonement for his guilt at being absent as a father and a husband. How much of this is true? Does it matter if it's not? Is O'Farrell's writing uniquely brilliant and descriptive, or is it the product of too many creative writing courses? And what on earth is rue? Join us on Book In as we look at this hugely popular book. Georgie Fordham is the reader.
Contemporary Female Authors: The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood's famous novel The Handmaid's Tale was published in 1984, a year laden with significance for dystopian views of the future. Some sort of violent, apocalyptic event has resulted in the …
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Margaret Atwood's famous novel The Handmaid's Tale was published in 1984, a year laden with significance for dystopian views of the future. Some sort of violent, apocalyptic event has resulted in the United States being taken over by an autocratic, quasi religious police state, now called Gilead, in which the role of women has been largely reduced to reproduction and domestic service. They are required to wear coloured dresses - red for the Handmaids who are the childbearers, green for the Marthas who do the housework - and any sort of social contact is strictly controlled. The Handmaids are impregnated by high status men known as Commanders, while being physically held in place by the Commander's wife, in an event known as the Ceremony. The central character, now known as Offred, initially appears to accept this state of affairs, but gradually becomes aware of the existence of an underground resistance movement which may offer a means of escape. Atwood's novel explores issues of feminism, and sexual and gender relationships, and its vision of women being denied any form of individual identity or the means to express opinions or feelings was heavily influenced by the Iranian revolution of a few years before, and finds echoes in the situation that women find themselves in in Afghanistan today. The book has many echoes of Orwell's great novel, brilliantly capturing the claustrophobia and fear that living in a tightly controlled surveillance state involves. But does the novel convince? Are its religious aspects a warning of the consequences of indulging the kind of intolerant religious groups gaining traction today? And has the feminist vision Atwood presents become superseded by the MeToo generation? Join us on Book In to find out. Rose Fordham is the reader.
The Tempest - William Shakespeare
The Tempest is Shakespeare's last play, and many have seen its central character, Prospero, as representing Shakespeare himself, preparing for his departure from the stage. But the truth is more complex …
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The Tempest is Shakespeare's last play, and many have seen its central character, Prospero, as representing Shakespeare himself, preparing for his departure from the stage. But the truth is more complex and nuanced; Prospero is indeed a visionary and powerful figure, manipulating the fates of the characters who have been shipwrecked on his island. But he is also tetchy, angry, petty, vindictive and cruel. He assembles all his enemies on the island and forces them to confront their treachery; they are forgiven, and Prospero gives up his magic powers to return to the real world. The character of Caliban has given rise to centuries of debate about slavery, freedom, colonialism and appropriation. And in The Tempest we find some of the very greatest of Shakespearean speeches and language. Join Rupert and Charlie as they look at one of the greatest of Shakespeare's plays.
The Winter's Tale - William Shakespeare
When Shakespeare wrote The Winter’s Tale, he was an older, though not old, man. It was one of what are often called his late plays, and along with The Tempest one of the two great plays he wrote at the end of …
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When Shakespeare wrote The Winter’s Tale, he was an older, though not old, man. It was one of what are often called his late plays, and along with The Tempest one of the two great plays he wrote at the end of his career. In these plays, he experimented with new forms of expression and genre. They seem to stretch traditional genres of tragedy or comedy, and develop a more transcendent sense of magic and mystery. At the end of The Winter’s Tale, the female courtier Paulina perhaps speaks for Shakespeare when she says, ‘It is required/You do awake your faith…’. The Winter’s Tale seems to draw on and reflect back on many of his previous tragedies, and indeed comedies, as it fuses comedy and tragedy into a new genre, romance. In this podcast we will discuss the shocking suddenness of Leontes’ jealousy. We spend time on the most famous stage direction not just in Shakespeare but surely in all of world literature. We’ll discuss how Time appears on stage, and with a snap of his fingers moves the action forward 16 years. We’ll try not to get too melancholy as we discuss the young lovers, and the beauty of Florizel’s declaration of love to Perdita, which is not a staple of weddings or Valentines but deserves to be. And we’ll explore the strangest aspect of all in this strange and wonderful play, the statue, and how it comes to life. Indeed, it is required you do awake your faith.
Autumn Poems – Keats, MacNeice, Frost – with Pip Torrens and Andrew Crean reading
As the exceptional summer of 2026 fades into memory, we look at three autumn poems. John Keats’ To Autumn is the finest of his Odes and one of the greatest poems written in English. At the moment of fruition …
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As the exceptional summer of 2026 fades into memory, we look at three autumn poems. John Keats’ To Autumn is the finest of his Odes and one of the greatest poems written in English. At the moment of fruition, decay begins; from the high point of life, comes death; and in that moment of equipoise there is an ecstasy as well as a melancholy at the passing of life and of beauty, beautifully captured in Pip Torrens’ wonderful, understated reading. Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal is a sprawling, journalistic account of the autumn of 1938, and he describes the changing of the seasons and the transience of his own emotional life and relationships, against the background of London as it comes to terms with the advent of war and the rise of Nazi Germany. Andrew Crean reads with clarity and sensitivity. And Robert Frost’s short verse Nothing Gold can Stay – just eight lines of three or four words each – is an extraordinarily powerful poem whose apparent simplicity is cratered by one devasting line. Join Rupert and Charlie – and their outstanding guest readers – as they look at these three seasonal poems.
Sense & Sensibility - Jane Austen
As Georgia Oakley's film of Sense and Sensibility is released, Book In looks at Jane Austen's novel. It was the first that she published, but already her genius for satire, social comedy and the …
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As Georgia Oakley's film of Sense and Sensibility is released, Book In looks at Jane Austen's novel. It was the first that she published, but already her genius for satire, social comedy and the extraordinarily subtle expression of human relationships is evident from the first page. Marianne has sensibility, and throws herself at life; unimpressed with the worthy but pedestrian Colonel Brandon, she is thrilled by the arrival of Willoughby, who leaves her house during a rainstorm "to make himself more interesting". Elinor has sense; she watches her sister fly too close to the sun, and is there for her when she falls, all the while quietly waiting for the shy but suitable Edward Ferrers to become available. The relationship between the two sisters is at the heart of the novel, and mirrors Jane's own relationship with Cassandra. Rupert and Charlie look at the book through the prism both of the current film and also Ang Lee's masterful 1995 version, with Emma Thompson's Oscar winning script.
In conversation with Iain Dale - Have I Said Too Much?
Iain Dale is one of the country's leading broadcasters. His evening radio show on LBC attracts millions of listeners, and for 30 years he has been at the centre of British politics as a publisher, radio …
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Iain Dale is one of the country's leading broadcasters. His evening radio show on LBC attracts millions of listeners, and for 30 years he has been at the centre of British politics as a publisher, radio host, author, podcaster, bookshop owner, political candidate and TV pundit. He has interviewed everyone from Margaret Thatcher to Andy Burnham, and in his brilliant and highly entertaining autobiography "Have I Said Too Much?" (to which the answer is clearly "no"), he tells the story of his life and career. He talks about his childhood on a farm, his early political adventures at the University of East Anglia, and his progression through the ups and downs of the political world. In this special edition of Book In, Rupert interviews him about his autobiography. How does he see thefuture of broadcasting in this country, and what will be the role of the BBC? What makes a great radio presenter? What books would he take to a desert island? What kind of music does he like? And is AI music really worth listening to? Join us on Book In to hear Iain talk about his fascinating life.
Re-Release - Philip Larkin Poems
We're swotting up for our next series this week, so sadly haven't had time to record a new episode. Instead, we're re-releasing one of our classics from the archive. Philip Larkin wrote some of …
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We're swotting up for our next series this week, so sadly haven't had time to record a new episode. Instead, we're re-releasing one of our classics from the archive.
Philip Larkin wrote some of the greatest poetry in English in the second half of the twentieth century. Brilliant, famous and successful, he chose to live as a librarian in Hull, largely avoiding the public gaze, and watching the world from the edge of England. His simple language and easily accessible work have made him hugely popular, and his ability to use everyday scenes and events to convey profound ideas and feelings on life, love and death are deeply moving, and achieved in part through superb poetic technique. And yet, while he had multiple relationships, he never really found love; in one of his poems, he says "Life is first boredom, then fear", and both feature heavily in his work. Complicated, irascible, misogynistic, borderline racist, increasingly reactionary as he grew older, he is not on the face of it sympathetic for a modern audience. So why does he remain as popular as ever? What were his attitudes to sex and to death? How does he achieve his technical mastery? And how does Charlie ruin for ever Rupert's love of one of his most celebrated poems?Join Book In to find out.
Classic Booker Prize Winners: Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald
In the early 1960s, a group of old barges and minor naval craft have been converted to houseboats. They are falling apart and so are their owners. The boats creak, leak and occasionally sink, and the people who …
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In the early 1960s, a group of old barges and minor naval craft have been converted to houseboats. They are falling apart and so are their owners. The boats creak, leak and occasionally sink, and the people who live on them struggle with life, relationships, money and mental health issues. Penelope Fitzgerald’s marvellous novel, which won the Booker Prize in 1979, describes lives lived on the edge, between water and land, marriage and separation, getting by and financial ruin, and life and death. London, too, is poised between the greyness and discomfort of the post-war period, and the explosion of life and energy in the 1960s. In only 180 pages, she creates a rich and varied cast of attractive and vulnerable women, hopeless husbands, small time crooks, male prostitutes and feral children. Damp is everywhere and disaster just around the corner, yet Fitzgerald’s novel contains warmth, humour and beauty; the elegiac paintings of the Thames by Whistler provide an atmospheric backdrop, with the spirit of Dante haunting the story. Fitzgerald herself had a husband who could not provide, and spent much of her own life in abject poverty, including a spell on a houseboat which sank, taking all her worldly possessions with it. She only came to writing in her sixties, and in this late period produced several novels which are as fine as anything written in the second half of the 20th century. Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss one of the best, Offshore.
Classic Booker Prize Winners: Possession - A.S. Byatt
A.S.Byatt wrote Possession as a completely self-indulgent project, with no thought of commercial or critical consequence. It sold millions and won the Booker Prize in 1990, introducing her to a mass audience …
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A.S.Byatt wrote Possession as a completely self-indulgent project, with no thought of commercial or critical consequence. It sold millions and won the Booker Prize in 1990, introducing her to a mass audience and turning her into a literary superstar. It tells the story of a fictional Victorian poet, Randolph Henry Ash, who is mostly Browning with a dash of Tennyson; Ash falls in love and eventually has a child with another fictional minor Victorian poet, Christabel LaMotte. But their affair remains unknown to posterity until a young researcher in the 1980s discovers by chance some letters they had written to each other. He teams up with another academic, Maud Bailey, to find out what really happened, and like the Victorians, they too fall in love. Part detective story, part love story, part literary tour de force, Byatt herself composes the poetry through which Ash and LaMotte express their feelings for each other, and the letters they write. It is a brilliant, wordy, baggy, exciting, moving and above all literary book, covering Victorian sensibility, London in the mid 19th century, the absurdities of competitive academics in the modern age. Join Rupert and Charlie as they delve into this wonderful and heartwarming novel.
Classic Booker Prize Winners: The Siege of Krishnapur - J. G. Farrell
The Siege of Krishnapur is set in India in 1857 during the Indian Rebellion (or what used to be known as the Indian Mutiny). The small British community are besieged by the rebellious Indians, and as food and …
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The Siege of Krishnapur is set in India in 1857 during the Indian Rebellion (or what used to be known as the Indian Mutiny). The small British community are besieged by the rebellious Indians, and as food and medicine gradually run out, and casualties rise by the day, their instinctive recourse to the social and hierarchical structures by which they have lived their lives is tested to breaking point. Their leader is the Collector, an essentially good and thoughtful man, who tries to maintain discipline, ensure the defences are manned, and keep up morale by promising that relief is near at hand. But his belief in progess and the ability of science and technology to improve the human condition is shaken to the core. Based on letters written by people involved in the sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow, J. G. Farrell's brilliant novel, which won the Booker Prize in 1973, is thriller, satire, love story and history all at once - funny, informative and deeply moving. Farrell died young in a tragic drowning accident; another of his novels, Troubles about the British presence in Ireland, was awarded the Booker Prize for 1970 after his death. Join Rupert and Charlie as they look at this often overlooked masterpiece, and place the story in the context of the rule of the British in India.
Classic Booker Prize Winners: Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie - Part 2
In the second part of the Book In episode on Midnight's Children, Charlie and Rupert look at the way Salman Rushdie places the novel in the context of the extraordinary political and social changes created …
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In the second part of the Book In episode on Midnight's Children, Charlie and Rupert look at the way Salman Rushdie places the novel in the context of the extraordinary political and social changes created by the birth of the Indian nation. How will India change after independence? How is Pakistan different? How did the dreams of independence give way to the chaos of Partition, the creation of Bangladesh and the nightmare of Emergency Rule under Indira Gandhi? Why is Rushdie so brilliant at writing about women? And how is the style like Dickens on acid? Join us as we conclude our discussion of Rushdie's masterpiece.
Classic Booker Prize Winners: Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie - Part 1
On the stroke of midnight of August 15th 1947, the nation of India became independent from Great Britain. Saleem Sinai, the central character of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, is born at …
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On the stroke of midnight of August 15th 1947, the nation of India became independent from Great Britain. Saleem Sinai, the central character of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, is born at exactly the same moment, and in this monumental book, Rushdie tells the story of Saleem's family background, his childhood and his early years as an adult. Saleem's story is also India's story, and it plays out against the background of the birth of this vast and teeming nation. The creation of Pakistan, the subsequent emergence of Bangladesh, the death of Mahatma Gandhi, the emergency rule of Indira Gandhi in the 1970s - all profoundly affect the lives of the central characters. Yet Rushdie's story is rooted in the family and friends of Saleem in all their generosity, pettiness, scatological excess, dishonesty, bravery and humour. The nature of India, the effect of British rule, love, adultery, materialism, spirituality, success and failure are all explored in a kaleidoscopic and often chaotic panorama which reflects the nature of India itself. Has independence been a success? What does Rushdie, a Muslim, feel about partition, the dominance of Hindus and the creation of Pakistan? What is magic realism? And why is there so much snot in the novel? Join Charlie and Rupert as they take on Rushdie's masterpiece, which won the Booker Prize in 1981.
In conversation with Jesse Norman - The Winding Stair
Jesse Norman joins Book In to talk about his brilliant novel The Winding Stair, about the rivalry between Francis Bacon and Edward Coke as they battled for power in the court of King James 1st. In this special …
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Jesse Norman joins Book In to talk about his brilliant novel The Winding Stair, about the rivalry between Francis Bacon and Edward Coke as they battled for power in the court of King James 1st. In this special edition of Book In, Jesse talks to Rupert about the novel – what inspired him and how he wrote it. Bacon was described by Thomas Jefferson as one of the three greatest men who had ever lived, and in his belief in the potential of the human mind and spirit to create a better society and a richer life for people, he was a prophet of the enlightenment. But for much of his career he was outwitted by Coke, frustrated in his ambition to attain an office from which he could create the institutions which would provide the modern and rounded education that he believed were necessary. Meanwhile Coke was the leading lawyer of his day, immersed in precedent, and prosecuting the greatest trials of the time, including the Gunpowder Plotters. And also present in the novel is the fascinating character of James 1st – perhaps the most intellectually accomplished monarch Britain has ever had, but also self-centred, suspicious, paranoid, indulgent of his favourites, and a passionate believer in the Divine Right of Kings. Join Rupert and Jesse as they discuss this extraordinary and formative period in British history, and what parallels there might be with politics today.
The Odyssey - Film Review
Christopher Nolan’s film of The Odyssey has been the blockbuster cultural event of the summer. Within a few weeks of release, it has already grossed nearly $1bn, putting it on course to become one of the most …
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Christopher Nolan’s film of The Odyssey has been the blockbuster cultural event of the summer. Within a few weeks of release, it has already grossed nearly $1bn, putting it on course to become one of the most successful movies of all time. But is the hype justified? Does it matter that while Homer’s hero was interested in glory and honour, Matt Damon’s Odysseus is a traumatised war veteran driven by grief at the loss of his men, and the damage and pain he has inflicted? Why is there so little sex in the movie? Is it too woke? Is it too long? What has happened to the Gods? And who dresses up as Batman? Join Rupert and Charlie as they review the film of the year.
Early C20th Poets: W.B. Yeats - An Irish Airman, Rough Beasts and Golden Birds
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” – the famous lines from W.B Yeats’ visionary and apocalyptic poem The Second Coming are as resonant today as they were when he wrote them in the aftermath of the …
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“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” – the famous lines from W.B Yeats’ visionary and apocalyptic poem The Second Coming are as resonant today as they were when he wrote them in the aftermath of the First World War, with Europe decimated economically, spiritually and culturally. He wrote that “The best lack all conviction, and the worst/Are full of passionate intensity”, and as he grew older, his poetry articulated the worries and anxieties of the age. But he remained a private as well as a public artist, and in his later poems he explored the role of the artist in society, and confronted old age, illness and mortality in some of the greatest poems he ever wrote. But why did W.H.Auden call him silly? Was it OK that within the space of a few hours he proposed not only to Maud Gonne, but also her daughter? And what was automatic writing? Join Rupert and Charlie in the second part of the Book In episode on W.B.Yeats.
Early C20th Poets: W. B. Yeats - Innisfree to Easter 1916
In the early 20th century, as the nation of Ireland emerged from the turmoil of centuries of struggle, oppression, poverty and famine, one figure above all others was both prophet and judge of the tumultuous …
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In the early 20th century, as the nation of Ireland emerged from the turmoil of centuries of struggle, oppression, poverty and famine, one figure above all others was both prophet and judge of the tumultuous process. In his early years, William Butler Yeats created a mythology of Ireland, and later, with poems like Easter 1916 and The Second Coming, he wrote of the ambiguity, the "terrible beauty", that was explicit in the uprisings and civil wars which preceded the creation of the Irish Free State. But he was not just a poet; with Maud Gonne, the actress and revolutionary with whom he fell hopelessly in love and who he compared to Helen of Troy, he became involved in the creation of an Irish Theatre, and in direct political action with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the forerunner of the IRA. On its creation, he became a public figure as a Senator in the Dail, and with the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 became world famous. But he was a man of contradictions, a Republican who detested violence, a Protestant who supported Irish freedom, an intellectual who believed in magic. Join Rupert and Charlie as they look at W B Yeats in a 2 part series.
Early C20th Poets: W.H. Auden
W H Auden wrote some of the most beautiful and complex poetry of the 20th century. Best known to modern audiences as the author of “Stop all the Clocks”, read by John Hannah in Four Weddings and a Funeral, he …
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W H Auden wrote some of the most beautiful and complex poetry of the 20th century. Best known to modern audiences as the author of “Stop all the Clocks”, read by John Hannah in Four Weddings and a Funeral, he grew up in Yorkshire and the Midlands, and his parents were a psychiatrist and a nurse; this provincial, professional background pervades his poetry with its images of industry and science. Like many of his generation, he was on the left and went to Spain to support the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. But when World War Two started, he left for America, from where he observed the carnage with a combination of detachment and guilt. Like his contemporaries Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and T.S Eliot, he converted to Christianity as an adult, and his later work is an extraordinary fusion of private love, public engagement and religious exploration. There are many recordings of him on TV chat shows in his later years, and his extraordinary,Rembrandtesque appearance and gravelly voice convey a public intellectual of a kind which no longer exists in the modern world. Join Charlie and Rupert as they explore the poetry of this brilliant and underestimated poet.
Early C20th Poets: T. S. Eliot - The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday and Marina
In the second episode on T.S.Eliot, Book In looks at the poems he wrote after The Wasteland, as he moved towards a conversion to Christianity. In the Hollow Men, he returns again to the desolation and spiritual …
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In the second episode on T.S.Eliot, Book In looks at the poems he wrote after The Wasteland, as he moved towards a conversion to Christianity. In the Hollow Men, he returns again to the desolation and spiritual emptiness of the West after the First World War, weaving together Dante, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the Gunpowder Plot amongst other themes. By the time he wrote Ash Wednesday three years later he had fully embraced the High Anglican church, and the poem tells of his need to renounce the pride and arrogance which he felt had characterised his behaviour in the past. The language in these poems is incantatory, chanting, rooted in the bible and the prayerbook. Marina is a beautiful meditation on sin, death and redemption, immersed in images of the sea and the coastal New England landscape of his youth. Join Charlie and Rupert as they explore this critical phase of Eliot’s life, and the exquisite religious verse he produced, perhaps the finest in the English language sine the metaphysical poets of the 17th century.
Early C20th Poets: T. S. Eliot – Prufrock, Preludes and La Figlia Che Piange
The first poem that T.S.Eliot published, in 1915, was The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and two years later, it was included as the title poem in a collection called Prufrock and Other Observations. It was a …
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The first poem that T.S.Eliot published, in 1915, was The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and two years later, it was included as the title poem in a collection called Prufrock and Other Observations. It was a sensation; breaking dramatically with the gentle and conventional lyrics of the late Victorian and Edwardian poets of the time, many critics found it pretentious at best and incomprehensible at worst. One speculated that Eliot had thought "I'll just put down the first thing that comes into my head, and call it The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." But Prufrock and the other poems in the collection marked a revolutionary break in literature, and heralded the arrival of modernism, with its representation of the fracturing of western society and the western mind in the wake of the First World War and the work of Freud and Jung as they explained the workings of human consciousness. Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss these brilliant and groundbreaking poems, and how they are both an extraordinary break with the past, but also deeply rooted in western culture from Greek and Roman times onwards.
Early C20th Poets: Thomas Hardy
At the age of 55, and at the height of his fame, Thomas Hardy gave up writing novels and decided to devote the rest of his life to poetry. He was disillusioned with the commercial requirements of novel writing …
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At the age of 55, and at the height of his fame, Thomas Hardy gave up writing novels and decided to devote the rest of his life to poetry. He was disillusioned with the commercial requirements of novel writing, and had been upset by the adverse reaction of some critics to Jude the Obscure. Many people believe that his poems are his greatest achievement, and he is in exalted company in being in the first rank of both poetry and novels or plays, along with Samuel Beckett, DH Lawrence and Shakespeare. Much of his poetry was inspired by his first wife Emma; the beautiful lyric When I Set Out for Lyonnesse was written after he first met her. Their marriage was unhappy, but when she died, Hardy was consumed with grief, and remorse at how badly he had treated her. The poems he wrote at this time are among the most beautiful in the English language. Join Rupert and Charlie as they take a look at some of Hardy’s poems.
Great Sporting Books
Sports Books: Open - Andre Agassi, Fever Pitch – Nick Hornby, Great Cricket MatchesBook In take a look at three books on sport. Open is the autobiography of Andre Agassi: one of the greatest players of all …
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Sports Books: Open - Andre Agassi, Fever Pitch – Nick Hornby, Great Cricket Matches
Book In take a look at three books on sport. Open is the autobiography of Andre Agassi: one of the greatest players of all time, Agassi was driven by his domineering father to hit 2,500 balls a day from the age of 5, and at 13 was sent to the Nick Bolliteri Tennis Academy in Florida, essentially a boot camp for teenage tennis prodigies. By 18, he was in the world’s top 10 and won three Grand Slams but the wheels came off in his mid 20s as his partying life caught up with him and he descended to 141 in the world. His subsequent comeback and further success is one of the great redemption stories in sport, and he tells the story in his compelling and brilliant book, Open.
Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch was the book which charted, and perhaps partly caused, the transformation of football from the muddy pitches and hooligan supporters of the 1970s and 1980s to the cool, fashionable, sophisticated product it is today. Through accounts of specific matches involving his beloved Arsenal FC, Hornby charts his own childhood and adolescence and sets them in the context of the social and economic changes occurring in Britain at the time. Funny, wide ranging and a little bit nerdy, it is a brilliant account of growing up in the UK in the transformative years of the late 20th century.
Cricket has produced some great literature over the years; Great Cricket Matches is a collection of accounts written by various writers and was given to Rupert as a child. He selects three pieces from it which he has always loved and shares them with Charlie and the Book In audience.
World Cup Special
It’s World Cup time again! As hope springs eternal for Harry Kane and Co, and as the nation becomes obsessed by whether England should play Rashford or Gordon, and how to fit in Jude Bellingham, Rupert and …
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It’s World Cup time again! As hope springs eternal for Harry Kane and Co, and as the nation becomes obsessed by whether England should play Rashford or Gordon, and how to fit in Jude Bellingham, Rupert and Charlie choose their own teams from the pages of (mainly) English literature. Recalling the style of the England teams of his youth, Charlie opts for a 4-4-2 formation, and selects players from clubs as diverse as Chaucer, Tolkein and Dickens. Rupert goes for the more sophisticated, continental 4-3-3, and relies fairly heavily on Milton, while also making use of C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald Fraser. Both, obviously, can’t ignore Shakespeare and Dickens. So which of the teams would give the French and Argentinians a run for their money, and is either good enough to go all the way and lift the Jules Rimet trophy? Join Book In to get in the mood for this quadrennial footballfest, and decide for yourself.
The Odyssey - Homer
Around the 8th century BC, the inhabitants of Greece began to write things down. Amongst these were some of the poems telling of ancient times which bards had passed from generation to generation, and the …
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Around the 8th century BC, the inhabitants of Greece began to write things down. Amongst these were some of the poems telling of ancient times which bards had passed from generation to generation, and the greatest of these poems were the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Odyssey tells of the adventures of one of the Greek heroes, Odysseus, as he returned to his home in Ithaca from the Trojan War. His journey took 10 years, and included adventures which are famous to this day, including his encounter with the one-eyed Cyclops, and negotiating the twin dangers of Scylla and Charybdis. When he finally reaches Ithaca, he has to deal with the suitors who are occupying his palace and trying to persuade his wife Penelope that he is dead and that she should marry one of them. Attributed to a man called Homer, the true authorship of the work is unknown. But it asks questions which resonate with us now. What is home? What is a hero, and how should men behave? Why is the journey itself so important? What makes a great leader? How does a son find his own identity when he has a powerful father? Is adultery justifiable? How should you behave towards strangers? Told in beautiful poetry, the descriptions of Odysseus and his men sailing across the wine dark sea haunt our imaginations today as they would have done for the Greeks who heard these stories so many centuries ago. Join Rupert and Charlie as they look at this extraordinary and magnificent work of literature, which has influenced almost every great writer since, and which is the first expression of the western consciousness that we have.
C20th Novels: The Old Devils - Kingsley Amis
By the mid 1980s, Kingsley Amis was generally considered to be finished as a novelist. Devastated by the collapse of his marriage to Elizabeth Jane Howard, he was hugely overweight, drinking far too much and …
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By the mid 1980s, Kingsley Amis was generally considered to be finished as a novelist. Devastated by the collapse of his marriage to Elizabeth Jane Howard, he was hugely overweight, drinking far too much and renting a basement flat from his first wife and her third husband. But in 1986, he published what his son Martin regarded as his masterpiece, The Old Devils, which won the Booker Prize. Set in the south Wales in which he had spent the first 15 years of his professional life, it follows the lives of several couples who have known each other since childhood and are now in their 60s. Their world is thrown into turmoil by the return from London of Alan Weaver and his beautiful wife Rhiannon. Alan is a minor TV celebrity who has built a career on being a professional Welshman; on his return, old relationships are rekindled and long dormant affairs restarted. In a haze of alcohol and cigarettes, Amis portrays the reality of physical decline, the pathos of remembering past and lost love, and the sense of imminent death with humour and sensitivity. His satire of Welsh nationalism and the excesses of Welsh cultural figures like Dylan Thomas is merciless, and yet there is a warmth and tenderness in his descriptions of characters with whom he shared so many physical and emotional qualities. Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss this fine novel, which was the start of a late renaissance for Amis’ career.
C20th Novels: A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
What really happened in the Marabar Caves? This is the central mystery of A Passage to India, EM Forster’s most celebrated novel, set in colonial India in the early 20th century. An Indian doctor, Aziz, wants …
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What really happened in the Marabar Caves? This is the central mystery of A Passage to India, EM Forster’s most celebrated novel, set in colonial India in the early 20th century. An Indian doctor, Aziz, wants to show some English visitors the real India, and takes them on an expedition to the strange caves which are a short trainride from the city of Chandrapore. He goes into one of the caves with Adela Quested, a young woman recently arrived from England. But Adela suddenly flees from the cave and accuses Aziz of attempting to rape her. The incident creates a crisis between the communities, and forces the central characters to confront existential issues about themselves and their lives. Forster explores the relationship between the career soldiers and administrators who nominally run India, and the various classes of Indians, and through this prism asks some fundamental questions: what is the nature of friendship? Can it transcend racial divides? What is the real India? And how do characters like Mrs Moore cope when everything they have believed in sems suddenly worthless? Forster never wrote another novel after this one, although he lived for nearly 50 more years. Join Rupert and Charlie as they discuss this most subtle and sensitive of writers.
C20th Novels: The Quiet American - Graham Greene
Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American is set in Vietnam in the 1950s – the French are trying to hold on to colonial power and are supporting the south in its struggle against a communist insurgency in the …
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Graham Greene’s novel The Quiet American is set in Vietnam in the 1950s – the French are trying to hold on to colonial power and are supporting the south in its struggle against a communist insurgency in the north. America is not yet involved militarily but is taking an interest. The novel tells the story of an American agent called Pyle who is supplying advice and explosives to a shadowy group who he believes can provide a “Third Way” for the country. Pyle meets a British journalist, Fowler, and it is through Fowler’s eyes that the story unfolds. His voice is to a large extent Greene’s voice – jaded, cynical and weary, but he retains the capacity for love and hope. He has a beautiful Vietnamese girlfriend called Phoung, who the idealistic Pyle falls in love with. How does this triangle play out? Who is Pyle really and what is he trying to achieve? Why doesn’t Fowler want to go home? And how does Greene’s Catholicism play out in the entangled lives of these three characters? Join Charlie and Rupert as they discuss this most subtle and nuanced of novels by one of the masters of 20th century British fiction.
C20th Novels: Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - Part 2
At Book In, we continue our discussion of Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful novel Brideshead Revisited. We look at the characters of the Marchmain family - the children Sebastian, Julia, Bridey and Cordelia, and the …
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At Book In, we continue our discussion of Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful novel Brideshead Revisited. We look at the characters of the Marchmain family - the children Sebastian, Julia, Bridey and Cordelia, and the parents, Lord and Lady Marchmain, and at how Charles Ryder interacts with them, and we also talk about the extraordinary creation of Anthony Blanche who is so important both as a friend of Sebastian and as a commentator on the Flyte family. And we look at the humour in the book - as always, Waugh is a brilliantly writer and the scenes with Charles and his father are amongst the funniest he wrote. Why do the Flytes all fall in love with the slightly dull and passive figure of Charles? Why does Julia fall in love with the brash, heartless Rex Mottram? Why does Lord Marchmain come back to Brideshead to die? And does the 1981 TV series of the book stand up today? Join Rupert and Charlie on Book In to find out.
C20th Novels: Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - Part 1
Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh’s most famous novel. Magnificent but flawed, he wrote it while recovering from an injury during the Second World War, and the lush, sumptuous world of Oxford in the 1920s …
Shownotes
Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh’s most famous novel. Magnificent but flawed, he wrote it while recovering from an injury during the Second World War, and the lush, sumptuous world of Oxford in the 1920s which he portrays is in stark contrast to the drab reality of life in the army. He later said that he regretted the richness of the language he had used, and declared that the novel was about the “operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters”. The Catholicism is of course central to the novel, as it was to Waugh’s own life, but despite his somewhat disingenuous revisions, the power of the book continues to come from the vividly described memory of happy times that had passed, and love that had died. In the first episode of a two part podcast, Rupert and Charlie look at Waugh's own life and conversion to Catholicism, and discuss how the Catholic faith affects the Marchmain family. Why can’t Julia be with Charles? Do we blame Lord Marchmain for leaving his wife? And why is Waugh so rude about Hooper? Join us on Book In to find out.
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