This week our history of the great essays and great essayists reaches the twentieth century and Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929). David discusses how an essay on the conditions for women writing fiction ends up being about so much else besides: anger, power, sex, modernity, independence and transcendence. And how, despite all that, i ... Show More
Mar 2025
Virginia Woolf: life of the week
From To The Lighthouse to Mrs Dalloway, the writing of Virginia Woolf shook up literary norms and challenged societal ideas about what it meant to be a woman. In this 'life of the week' episode, Francesca Wade discusses the impact of Woolf's work, and the key moments of her life ... Show More
37m 5s
Jun 2025
Book Club: Let's Talk About 'Mrs. Dalloway" at 100
<p>“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”: So reads one of the great opening lines in British literature, the first sentence of Virginia Woolf’s classic 1925 novel, “Mrs. Dalloway.”</p><p>The book tracks one day in the life of an English woman, Clarissa Dalloway, ... Show More
42m 38s
Nov 2025
Truth in an age of doublethink
We use “Orwellian” to describe everything from campus dust-ups to authoritarian crackdowns. But what did George Orwell actually stand for, what did he get wrong, and what can we learn from him about our age of surveillance capitalism and distraction? Sean’s guest is Laura Beers, ... Show More
52m 16s