Secret Life of Books
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Secret Life of Books
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.&...
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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 t...
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 c...
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. T...
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 o...
TS Eliot 1: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Eliot was a mid-west American living in London in the first decades of the 20th century, who wrote Dickens-inflected poems about fog, wind, damp...
Bleak House by Charles Dickens - SLoB Book Club returns! (feat. Bret Walker SC)
SLoB Book Club is back as Sophie and Jonty dive into Charles Dickens’ Bleak House with the help of special guest Bret Walker, SC – one of Australia’s...
Sucking the Forbidden Fruit: Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market
Nobody expects the Victorian wombats! Given the title, listeners won’t be hugely surprised to hear there are goblins in today’s episode, but wombats!?...
Wings and Things: John Keats' Ode to a Nightingale
In April 1819, the poet John Keats, aged 23, told his brother George that he was done with poetry. A few days later, he smashed out the first poem in...
Paths of Glory: Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
In 1751, a little-known Cambridge academic called Thomas Gray published “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” and became a household name. His poem...
Literary Pilgrimage in New York: From the Mixes Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
A special collaboration between Sophie and the celebrated writer and podcaster Gretchen Rubin, of Happier with Gretchen Rubin, recorded live from New...
Canterbury Tales (General Prologue) by Geoffrey Chaucer
Talent shows like The X Factor, Got Talent and their many spin offs began in the 1380s, not the 1980s! They were invented by Geoffrey Chaucer, who wro...
The Other Bennet Sister with author Janice Hadlow
2026 is the year of the Horse. It is also the Year of Classic Literature, thanks to the current crop of high-profile screen adaptations. And, when it...
Back to School 4: Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
To round out our series on high school novels we're jumping across the pond (aka the Atlantic Ocean) and skipping several decades to find ourselves in...
Back to School 3: A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines
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Back to School 2: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Published in 1961, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie tells the story of a charismatic and narcissistic teacher in a girl’s private school in Edinburgh dur...
Back to School 1: Tom Brown's School Days
Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s School Days (1857) wasn’t the first school fiction novel – that honour goes to a Sarah Fielding, sister of Henry Fielding,...
The Secret Life of (Literary) Honeymoons
From the outset, there’s only one kind of honeymoon in classic literature, and it's disastrous. Honeymoons don't become fixed stars in the literary fi...
Beowulf: Inside the Anglo-Saxon mind
'Although he was a brave and noble warrior, he did not often slay his own friends while drunk'. In this episode, Sophie and Jonty dive deep into the m...
"On Morrison": a conversation with Namwali Serpell
To close out our popular series on the great American novelist Toni Morrison, SLOB brings listeners a wonderful discussion with the novelist and Harva...
Toni Morrison 3: Beloved
Beloved, published in 1987, was Toni Morrison’s fifth novel and instantly seen to be an all-time landmark of American literature, winning the Pulitzer...
SLoB Goes to the Oscars: Frankenstein vs Hamnet
It’s Oscars week!
The golden statues will get dished out on Sunday evening in Los Angeles and the world will be watching. Literary classics are...
Saved from Fire: the Toni Morrison Archives
As part of our series on the writing of Toni Morrison we’re lucky enough to record a conversation with one of the world’s leading Toni Morrison schola...
Toni Morrison 2: Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon (1977) propelled Toni Morrison into mainstream recognition as a major American writer, not just of her own generation but all generati...
The Other Bronte Girl: Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall
With all the fuss and fanfare around Wuthering Heights, we’re worried Emily Bronte is getting more than her fair share of attention. So today we shift...
Jane Austen's Birthday: everyone wants to party with Jane
A special bonus episode about the blockbuster phenom of Jane Austen’s 250th Birthday celebrations. Sophie’s guest is Professor Devoney Looser, one of...
Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights": is the hype worth it?
Best Valentine’s Day ever! SLOB’s “Wuthering Heights” watch-party. Sophie and Jonty take it character by character – inanimate characters included — t...
Wuthering Heights: Is this really the greatest love story of all time?
The storm clouds are gathering in anticipation of the Valentine’s Day release of Emerald Fennell’s raunchy film adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering...
Frankenstein in Oxford: A Conversation with Richard Ovenden, OBE
Sophie talks to Richard Ovenden, OBE, the 25th Bodley’s Librarian at Oxford, about the manuscript of Frankenstein, one of the most extraordinary, and...
Toni Morrison 1: The Bluest Eye
Published in 1970, written by an unknown new writer, The Bluest Eye is the great African American novelist Toni Morrison’s debut. It remains in many w...
Queens of Crime 4: The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham
A serial killer on the loose in the foggy, battle-scarred streets of London after the Second World War. Margery Allingham's The Tiger in the Smoke (19...
To see or not to see: Hamnet tune-up session
With the release of Chloe Zhao's rapturously acclaimed film Hamnet, adapted from Maggie O'Farrell's much-loved 2020 novel, SLOB re-releases one of our...
Queens of Crime 3: A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie
A Murder is Announced (1950) was Agatha Christie’s 50th published book. So when better than the 50th anniversary of her death to celebrate one of her...
Queens of Crime 2: Vintage Murder by Ngaio Marsh
This week, for the second of our episodes on the Queens of Crime, we travel by steamer with Ngiao Marsh and her celebrated detective Roderick Alleyn,...
BONUS: Grantchester's James Runcie on the Golden Age of Crime
James Runcie is author of the acclaimed Grantchester Mysteries - the focus of six books and a hugely successful ITV television series - following vica...
Queens of Crime 1: Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers
Last year, the SLoBlight lingered briefly on Agatha Christie when we celebrated the centenary of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd from 1925. This book, mor...
By George (Eliot) She's Done It! The road to Middlemarch
George Eliot’s Middlemarch is the Mount Everest of Victorian fiction. A book so brilliant and monumental that it’s taken us a year of planning to take...
A SLoB Christmas Cracker
It won't come as a surprise to SLOB fans that the literary classics invented Christmas.
But if you've got your finger on the buzzer and are alre...
The Women Who Made Jane Austen
Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that Jane Austen has a big birthday this week -- her 250th to be exact. Happy Birthday Jane!
...
Big Cat Theory: William Blake's The Tyger
Are you a cat-person or a tyger-person? William Blake was both. Find out why such a big fuss about "The Tyger," which never fails to show up in google...
Henry James 3: Turn of the Screw
Stephen King and Shirley Jackson agree that The Turn of the Screw is the GOAT of ghost-stories. It’s a gripping, excellently creepy potboiler about a...