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PODCAST

Close Readings

London Review of Books

Close Readings is a new multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books. Two contributors explore areas of literature through a selection of key works, providing an introductory grounding like no other. Listen to some episodes for free here, and extracts from our ongoing subscriber-only series. How To Subscribe In Apple Podcasts, click "subscribe" at the top of this podcast feed to unlock the full episodes. Or for other podcast apps, sign up here:

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All Episodes

8:06

Introducing ‘Fiction and the Fantastic’

Close Readings ·

2025/01/03

Marina Warner is joined by Anna Della Subin to introduce Fiction and the Fantastic, a new Close Readings series running through 2025. Marina describes the scope of the series, in which she will also be joined by Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis. Together, Anna Della and Marina discuss the ways the fiction of wonder and astonishment can challenge social conventions and open up new ways of living.The first episode will come out on Monday 13 January, on The Thousand and One Nights.Marina Warner is a

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8:35

Introducing 'Conversations in Philosophy'

Close Readings ·

2025/01/02

James Wood and Jonathan Rée introduce their new Close Readings series, Conversations in Philosophy, running throughout 2025. They explain the title of the series and why they'll be challenging a hundred years of academic convention by reuniting the worlds of literature and philosophy. The first episode will come out on Monday 6 January, on Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling.James Wood teaches literature at Harvard University and is a staff writer for the New Yorker as well as a contributor to the

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10:51

Political Poems: ‘Little Gidding’ by T.S. Eliot

Close Readings ·

2024/12/28

In the final episode of Political Poems, Mark and Seamus discuss ‘Little Gidding’, the fourth poem of T.S. Eliot’sFour Quartets. Emerging out of Eliot’s experiences of the Blitz, ‘Little Gidding’ presents us with an apocalyptic vision of purifying fire. Suggesting that humanity can survive warfare only through renewed spiritual unity, Eliot finds a model in Little Gidding, a small village that for a time in the 17th century served as an Anglican commune before its closure under Puritan scrutiny

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59:50

Among the Ancients II: Marcus Aurelius

Close Readings ·

2024/12/24

For their final conversation Among the Ancients, Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones turn to the contradictions of the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Said by Machiavelli to be the last of the ‘five good emperors’ who ruled Rome for most of the second century CE, Marcus oversaw devastating wars on the frontiers, a deadly plague and economic turmoil. The writings known in English asThe Meditations, and in Latin as ‘to himself’, were composed in Greek in the last decade of Marcus’ life

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10:45

Medieval LOLs: Gwerful Mechain’s ‘Ode to the Vagina’

Close Readings ·

2024/12/18

For the final episode of their series in search of the medieval sense of humour Irina and Mary look at one of the most remarkable women authors of the Middle Ages, Gwerful Mechain, who lived in Powys in the 15th century. Mechain was part of a lively literary coterie in northeast Wales and in her poemCywydd y Cedor(‘Ode to the Vagina’) she challenged the conventional approach of her fellow male poets to praise every part of a woman’s body apart from her genitalia. Her witty, combative verses,

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1:57

Coming next year on Close Readings

Close Readings ·

2024/12/16

As our Close Readings series come to an end this year, you’re probably wondering what’s coming in 2025. We’re delighted to announce there’ll be four new series starting in January:‘Conversations in Philosophy’ with Jonathan Rée and James WoodJonathan and James challenge a hundred years of academic convention by reuniting the worlds of philosophy and literature, as they consider how style, narrative, and the expression of ideas play through philosophical writers including Kierkegaard, Mill,

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13:39

Human Conditions: ‘Sister Outsider’ by Audre Lorde

Close Readings ·

2024/12/10

In the final episode ofHuman Conditions, Brent and Adam turn to Audre Lorde’sSister Outsider, a collection of prose with exceptional relevance to contemporary grassroots politics. Like Du Bois, Césaire and Baraka, Lorde’s work defies genre: as she argues in this collection, ‘poetry is not a luxury’ but an essential tool for liberation. Throughout her work, Lorde sought to find and articulate new ways of living that encompassed her whole self – as a Black woman, poet, essayist, novelist, mother and

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16:29

On Satire: 'A Far Cry from Kensington' by Muriel Spark

Close Readings ·

2024/12/04

In the final episode of their series,Colin and Clare arrive at Muriel Spark, who would never have considered herself a satirist though her writing was as bitingly satirical as any 20th-century novelist's.A Far Cry from Kensingtonhas a deceptively simple plot: Agnes Hawkins, working for a publisher in London in the 1950s, insults Hector Bartlett, a would-be author, by calling him a ‘pisseur de copie’. Bartlett seeks revenge with the help of Hawkins’s fellow lodger, Wanda, with tragic results. Yet the

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12:21

Political Poems: ‘Station Island’ by Seamus Heaney

Close Readings ·

2024/11/28

As an undergraduate, Seamus Heaney visited Station Island several times, an ancient pilgrimage site traditionallyassociated with St Patrick and purgatory. Decades later, Heaney worked through competing calls for political engagement and his long-lapsed Catholicism in ‘Station Island’, a poem he described as an ‘exorcism’.A dreamlike reworking of Dante’s Purgatorio, ‘Station Island’ describes Heaney’s encounters with the ghosts of childhood acquaintances, literary heroes and victims of the Troubles

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11:12

Among the Ancients II: Apuleius

Close Readings ·

2024/11/24

Apuleius’‘Metamorphoses’, better known as‘The Golden Ass’, is the only ancient Roman novel to have survived in its entirety. Following the story of Lucius, forced to suffer as a donkey until the goddess Isis intervenes, the novel includes frenetic wordplay, filthy humour and the earliest known version of the Psyche and Cupid myth. In this episode, Tom and Emily discuss Apuleius’ anarchic mix of the high and low brow, and his incisive depiction of the lives of impoverished and enslaved

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14:12

Medieval LOLs: 'Tales of Count Lucanor' by Juan Manuel

Close Readings ·

2024/11/18

If you’re looking for advice on sustaining a marriage, or robbing a grave, or performing liver surgery, then a series of self-help stories by a 14th-century Spanish prince is a good place to start. Tales of Count Lucanor, written between 1328 and 1335 by Prince Juan Manuel of Villena, is one of the earliest works of Castilian prose. The tales follow the familiar shape of many medieval stories, presented as a kind of medicine to improve the lives of its readers by example. Yet in his preface Manuel

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17:12

Human Conditions: ‘Black Music’ by Amiri Baraka

Close Readings ·

2024/11/10

In 'Black Music', a collection of essays, liner notes and interviews from 1959 to 1967, Amiri Baraka captures the ferment, energy and excitement of the avant-garde jazz scene. Published while he still went by LeRoi Jones, it provides a composite picture of Baraka’s evolving thought, aesthetic values and literary experimentation. In this episode, Brent and Adam discuss the ways in which Baraka tackled the challenge of writing about music and his intimate connections to the major players in jazz

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16:08

On Satire: 'A Handful of Dust' by Evelyn Waugh

Close Readings ·

2024/11/04

In 1946 Evelyn Waugh declared that 20th-century society – ‘the century of the common man’, as he put it – was so degenerate that satire was no longer possible. But before reaching that conclusion he had written several novels taking aim at his ‘crazy, sterile generation’ with a sparkling, acerbic and increasingly reactionary wit. In this episode, Colin and Clare look atA Handful of Dust(1934), a disturbingly modernist satire divorced from modernist ideas. They discuss the ways in which Waugh was a

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11:39

Political Poems: 'The Prelude' (books 9 and 10) by...

Close Readings ·

2024/10/28

Wordsworth was not unusual among Romantic poets for his enthusiastic support of the French Revolution, but he stands apart from his contemporaries for actually being there to see it for himself (‘Thou wert there,’ Coleridge wrote). This episode looks at Wordsworth’s retrospective account of his 1791 visit to France, described in books 9 and 10 ofThe Prelude, and the ways in which it reveals a passionate commitment to republicanism while recoiling from political extremism. Mark and Seamus discuss

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14:05

Among the Ancients II: Juvenal

Close Readings ·

2024/10/24

In this episode, we tackle Juvenal, whose sixteen satires influenced libertines, neoclassicists and early Christian moralists alike. Conservative to a fault, Juvenal’sSatiresrails against the rapid expansion and transformation of Roman society in the early principate – immigration, sexual mores and eating habits all come under fire. But where his contemporary Tacitus handled the same material with restraint, Juvenal’s work explodes with vivid and vicious depictions of urban life, including

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14:44

Medieval LOLs: Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’, Part Two

Close Readings ·

2024/10/18

Mary and Irina resume their discussion of Boccaccio’sDecameron, focusing on three stories of female agency, deception and desire. Alibech, an aspiring hermitess, is tricked into indulging her powerful sexual urges; Petronella combines business and pleasure at the expense of her husband and lover; while Lydia demonstrates her devotion by killing hawks and pulling teeth. As Mary and Irina discuss, these stories exemplify the ambiguous depiction of women in theDecameron, where the world is powered by

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13:02

Human Conditions: ‘Discourse on Colonialism’ by Aimé...

Close Readings ·

2024/10/10

Brent Hayes Edwards talks to Adam about Aimé Césaire's 1950 essay Discourse on Colonialism, a groundbreaking work of 20th-century anti-colonial thought and a precursor to the writings of Césaire's protégé, Frantz Fanon. Césaire was Martinique’s most influential poet and one of its most prominent politicians as a deputy in the French National Assembly, and his Discourse is addressed directly at his country’s colonisers. Adam and Brent consider Césaire’s poetry alongside his political arguments and

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14:37

On Satire: 'The Importance of Being Earnest' by Oscar...

Close Readings ·

2024/10/04

By the end of 1895 Oscar Wilde’s life was in ruins as he sat in Reading Gaol facing public disgrace, bankruptcy and, two years later, exile. Just ten months earlier the premiere ofThe Importance of Being Earnestat St James’s Theatre in London had been greeted rapturously by both the audience and critics. In this episode Colin and Clare consider what Wilde was trying do with his comedy, written on the cusp of this dark future. The ‘strange mixture of romance and finance’ Wilde observed in the letters

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12:55

Political Poems: 'Autumn Journal' by Louis MacNeice

Close Readings ·

2024/09/28

In his long 1938 poem, Louis MacNeice took many of the ideals shared by other young writers of his time – a desire for relevance, responsiveness and, above all, honesty – and applied them in a way that has few equivalents in English poetry. This diary-style work, written from August to December 1938, reflects with ‘documentary vividness’, as Ian Hamilton has described, on the international and personal crises swirling around MacNeice in those months. Seamus and Mark discuss the poem’s lively

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12:51

Among the Ancients II: Tacitus

Close Readings ·

2024/09/24

The Annals, Tacitus’ study of the emperors from Tiberius to Nero, covers some of the most vivid and ruthless episodes in Roman history. A masterclass in political intrigue (and how not to do it), the Annals features mutiny, senatorial backstabbing, wars on the imperial frontiers, political purges and enormous egos. Emily and Tom explore the many ambiguities that make theAnnalsrewarding, as well as difficult, reading and discuss Tacitus’knotty style and approach to history.Non-subscribers will only

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