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Close Readings — Arts
Close Readings

Close Readings is a multi-series podcast 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: https://lrb.me/closereadings

RUNNING IN 2026

‘Who’s afraid of realism?’ with James Wood and guests

‘Nature in Crisis’ with Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith

‘Narrative Poems’ with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford

‘London Revisited’ with Rosemary Hill and guests

Bonus Series: ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’ with Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones

ALSO INCLUDED IN THE CLOSE READINGS SUBSCRIPTION:

‘Conversations in Philosophy’ with Jonathan Rée and James Wood

‘Fiction and the Fantastic’ with Marina Warner, Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis

‘Love and Death’ with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford

‘Novel Approaches’ with Clare Bucknell, Thomas Jones and other guests

‘Among the Ancients’ with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones

‘Medieval Beginnings’ with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley

‘The Long and Short’ with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry

‘Modern-ish Poets: Series 1’ with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry

‘Among the Ancients II’ with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones

‘On Satire’ with Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell

‘Human Conditions’ with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards

‘Political Poems’ with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry

‘Medieval LOLs’ with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Copyright: © London Review of Books

Latest Episodes:

On Satire: 'A Handful of Dust' by Evelyn Waugh Nov 04, 2024

Show notes

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 at A Handful of Dust (1934), a disturbingly modernist satire divorced from modernist ideas. They discuss the ways in which Waugh was a disciple of Oscar Wilde, with his belief in the artist as an agent of cultural change, and why he’s at his best when describing the fevered dream of a dying civilisation.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjG

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Further reading in the LRB:

Seamus Perry:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n16/seamus-perry/isn-t-london-hell

John Bayley:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n20/john-bayley/mr-toad

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Political Poems: 'The Prelude' (books 9 and 10) by William Wordsworth Oct 28, 2024

Show notes

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 of The Prelude, and the ways in which it reveals a passionate commitment to republicanism while recoiling from political extremism. Mark and Seamus discuss why, despite Wordsworth’s claim of being innately republican, discussion of the intellectual underpinnings of the revolution is strangely absent from the poem, which is more often preoccupied with romance and the imagination, particularly in their power to soften zealotry.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjG

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Further reading in the LRB:

Seamus Perry:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n24/seamus-perry/regrets-vexations-lassitudes

E.P. Thompson

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n22/e.p.-thompson/wordsworth-s-crisis

Colin Burrow:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n13/colin-burrow/a-solemn-and-unsexual-man

Marilyn Butler

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n12/marilyn-butler/three-feet-on-the-ground

Thomas Keymer

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n12/thomas-keymer/after-meditation

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Among the Ancients II: Juvenal Oct 24, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, we tackle Juvenal, whose sixteen satires influenced libertines, neoclassicists and early Christian moralists alike. Conservative to a fault, Juvenal’s Satires rails against the rapid expansion and transformation of Roman society in the early principate. But where his contemporary Tacitus handled the same material with restraint, Juvenal’s work explodes with vivid and vicious depictions of urban life, including immigration, sexual mores and eating habits. Emily and Tom explore the idiosyncrasies of Juvenal’s verse and its handling in Peter Green’s translation, and how best to parse his over-the-top hostility to everyone and everything.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Further reading in the LRB:

Remembering Peter Green

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/september/peter-green-1924-2024

Claude Rawson: Blistering Attacks

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v02/n21/claude-rawson/blistering-attacks

Clare Bucknell & Colin Burrow: What is satire?

https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/close-readings/on-satire-what-is-satire

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Medieval LOLs: Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’, Part Two Oct 18, 2024

Show notes

Mary and Irina resume their discussion of Boccaccio’s Decameron, 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 the Decameron, where the world is powered by rapacious female lusts, sex has no consequences and conventional morality is suspended.

Read more on the Decameron in the LRB: https://lrb.me/decameronpod

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series including Mary and Irina's twelve-part series Medieval Beginnings, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/medlolapplesignup

In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignup

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Human Conditions: ‘Discourse on Colonialism’ by Aimé Césaire Oct 10, 2024

Show notes

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 the particular characteristics of his version of négritude, the far-reaching movement of black consciousness he founded with Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Subscribe to Close Readings:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Brent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Satire: 'The Importance of Being Earnest' by Oscar Wilde Oct 04, 2024

Show notes

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 of The Importance of Being Earnest at 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 of his lover, Alfred Douglas, could equally be applied to Earnest, and the satire of Jane Austen before it, but is it right to think of Wilde’s play as satirical? His characters are presented in an ethical vacuum, stripped of any good or bad qualities, but ultimately seem to demonstrate the impossibility of living a purely aesthetic life free from conventional morality.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjG

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Read more in the LRB:

Colm Tóibín on Wilde's letters: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n08/colm-toibin/love-in-a-dark-time

Colm Tóibín the Wilde family: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n23/colm-toibin/the-road-to-reading-gaol

Frank Kermode: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n19/frank-kermode/a-little-of-this-honey

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Political Poems: 'Autumn Journal' by Louis MacNeice Sep 28, 2024

Show notes

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 depiction of the anecdotal abundance of London life and the ways in which its innovative rhyming structure helps to capture the autumnal moment when England was slipping into an unknowable winter.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4dbjbjG

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Read more in the LRB:

Samuel Hynes: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v11/n05/samuel-hynes/like-the-trees-on-primrose-hill

Ian Hamilton: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n05/ian-hamilton/smartened-up

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Among the Ancients II: Tacitus Sep 24, 2024

Show notes

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 the Annals rewarding, as well as difficult, reading and discuss Tacitus’ knotty style and approach to history.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Further reading in the LRB:

Mary Beard: Four-Day Caesar

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v26/n02/mary-beard/four-day-caesar

Anthony Grafton: Those Limbs We Admire

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n14/anthony-grafton/those-limbs-we-admire

Shadi Bartsch: Fratricide, Matricide and the Philosopher

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n12/shadi-bartsch/fratricide-matricide-and-the-philosopher

Mark Ford: The Death of Petronius

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n24/mark-ford/the-death-of-petronius

Emily Wilson is Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jones is an editor at the London Review of Books.

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Medieval LOLs: Boccaccio's 'Decameron', Part One Sep 18, 2024

Show notes

In the preface to the Decameron Boccaccio describes Florentine society laid waste by bubonic plague in the mid-14th century. But before he gets to that he has a confession for the reader: he has been hurt by love, a love ‘more fervent than any other love’, and intends his work as a guide to life and love for young women in particular. In the first of two episodes on Boccaccio’s hundred novelle of sex, dishonesty and foolishness, Mary and Irina consider why both the preface and first story – about the disreputable merchant Cepparello – start with a confession, before looking at the later tale of the gardener Masetto and his noble efforts tending to the needs of every nun in a convent in Lamporecchio.

Subscribe to Close Readings:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/medlolapplesignup

In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/medlolscsignup

Read more on Boccaccio the LRB: https://lrb.me/decameronpod

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Human Conditions: ‘The Souls of Black Folk’ by W.E.B. Du Bois Sep 10, 2024

Show notes

Brent Hayes Edwards and Adam discuss the ‘ur-text of Black political philosophy’, W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk. Spanning autobiography, history, biography, fiction, music criticism and political science, its fourteen essays set the tone for Black literature, political debate and scholarly production for the course of the 20th century. Souls was an immediate bestseller, the subject of furious debate and a foundational work in the new field of sociology.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Subscribe to Close Readings:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Brent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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