William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act Four, Scene Five. Lear has lost his kingdom, his family, his security and his sanity. When he encounters his old friend the Earl of Gloucester, who has been savagely blinded, we witness one of the strangest and yet richest conversations in all of literature. Choked with both rage and guilt, Lear intercuts fantasies of r ... Show More
Aug 2023
EP16 - Family Breakfast | O’Connor, The Lame Shall Enter First
Flannery O’Connor, The Lame Shall Enter First. Sheppard is a high-minded liberal. Norton is his disappointing young son, who seems indifferent to Sheppard’s moral crusades. In the opening paragraphs of this short story Flannery O’Connor presents the two of them at breakfast. Ever ... Show More
1h 37m
Mar 2024
EP17 – Bred in the Bone | Auden, September 1, 1939
On the day the Nazis invade Poland, beginning the Second World War, a poet nurses a drink in a New York bar. The unwarlike Auden has just immigrated to the United States from England, yet he feels a shadow rising behind him in the east that no one will be able to escape. Auden lo ... Show More
1h 19m
Apr 2024
EP18 - The Numb Fingers | Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes” (Part One)
John Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes” (Part One). The first of a two-part episode that considers John Keats’ gorgeous poem. Set in a dreamy medieval world of castles, blood feuds and esoteric folk rituals, Keats gives us a love story with some of the lushest and most opulent imagery ... Show More
1h 14m
Dec 2021
The Sunday Debate: Shakespeare vs Milton
Nearly four centuries after his death, no writer has matched William Shakespeare’s influence across drama, theatre and poetry but a few have come close. John Milton, say his fans, works on an altogether different, higher plane. In Paradise Lost – one of the most significant poems ... Show More
1h 57m
Jan 2021
King Lear, Act 5
In this final recording about King Lear, I chat with Maile and Reagan about Act 5. We ask ourselves if this play is too sad, if ripeness is all, if the gods are just, what Lear has learned about life and love, what true repentance looks like, whether or not Cordelia is dead, what ... Show More
56m 31s